New Book Examines the Legacy of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin
UT Professor Amy J. Elias brought together a community of writers to create the first major book about the historic creative and personal relationship of Knoxville-born painter Beauford Delaney and writer James Baldwin.
Elias, director of UT’s Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts, edited Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin, available now from Duke University Press. It is a collection of 20 essays by an international collaboration of scholars, enhanced further by 33 color plates of Delaney’s art.
“It talks for the first time about their work together, their relationship, and how their work related,” said Elias. “They never created art together, but they lived together, they worked together, they philosophized about art together. They influenced one another’s aesthetic and lives in all kinds of ways.”
The contributing authors first gathered to share their insights at a symposium hosted by the Denbo Center in Knoxville just before the 2020 pandemic lockdown.
“The symposium was based on a partnership that I had established with the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA),” said Elias. “I was invited to become part of what was called the Delaney Project, headed by museum curator Steven Wicks, then-director David Butler, and community organizer Sylvia Peters.”
This collaborative project sought to increase hometown recognition of the artistic legacy of both Beauford and his brother Joseph Delaney. The brothers were internationally known artists in their lives. Joseph returned to Knoxville, but Beauford stayed in the northeast before moving to France with Baldwin, where he lived until his death in 1979.
“He’s a native Knoxville son, and during his lifetime he created an international reputation,” said Elias. “He was one of the foremost painters of his generation.”
Beauford Delaney was most notable for his work in abstract expressionism, but also had associations with other artistic movements as his style changed over time.
“His painting moved from realism through modernist modes to arrive at a unique form of abstractionism,” said Elias. “He was also known for his portraiture, but his portraiture had an abstract quality. This made him very interesting to the modernist movement and modernist painters.”
Delaney experienced psychological problems in his life and was impoverished when he died in a French mental health facility.
“James Baldwin was with him, and he was buried in what was essentially an unmarked pauper’s grave in Paris,” said Elias. “He somewhat dropped out of art history.”
To reinvigorate his place in art history, the Delaney Project inspired the 2020 KMA exhibit “Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door” and the symposium that first gathered the contributors for the new book, including cultural theorist and poet Fred Moten, writer Hilton Als, and David Leeming, who had been Baldwin’s assistant and was the only author to have previously produced authorized biographies of both Delaney and Baldwin.
These scholars bring their expertise together in the new book to create a comprehensive collection of critical essays that offer a fuller picture of the way Delaney and Baldwin shared their private lives and shaped each other’s artistic values. Elias wrote the introduction, handled all art permissions, contracted the volume with the press, and worked with contributors and the Delaney estate to shape their symposium presentations into full articles.
“Their papers are much expanded and much better researched, and even sometimes changed in topic from the symposium,” said Elias. “My introduction lays out the full history of the Baldwin/Delaney relationship, as well as background on what’s been published about them.”
Coupled with numerous illustrations and the color prints of Delaney’s art, the result is an engaging deep dive into a significant 20th century artistic legacy—inspired by a project that built new community connections in the process.
“It’s really a watershed, breakthrough book in all kinds of ways,” said Elias. “And because it’s a book about a friendship and how personalities affect one another artistically, it seems fitting that the book itself is a collective endeavor.”
By Randall Brown