MeMoMu_HOHI_024 OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Posted in ARTS & SOUL
Out of the Shadows: The Queer Life of Artist Beauford Delaney
by Tyra A. Seals June 29, 2022
"Beauford was the first walking, living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my Master and I as his Pupil."
— James Baldwin, on Black, queer artist Beauford Delaney's impact in his 1985 essay collection, "The Price of the Ticket."
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Beauford Delaney was born in Tennessee on December 30, 1901, and grew up on Knoxville's East Vine Avenue. The Delaney home was located within a lively Black American business district during the first half of the 20th century, very close to the historic Free Colored Library of Knoxville and the Gem Theatre. Poet Nikki Giovanni, who became a neighbor to the artist's mother Delia Delaney years later, describes the area in her essay "400 Mulvaney Street":
Mulvaney Street looked like a camel's back with both humps bulging—up and down—and we lived in the down part. At the top of the left hill a lady made ice balls and would mix the flavors for you for just a nickel. Across the street from her was the negro center, where the guys played indoor basketball and the little kids went for stories and nap time.
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Baldwin's words about Delaney in the Retrospective catalog echo the sentiments of the group: "Perhaps I am so struck by the light in Beauford's paintings because he comes from so much darkness—as I do, as in fact, we all do… And I do not know, nor will any of us ever really know, what kind of strength it was that enabled him to make so dogged and splendid a journey."
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And truth be told, we all want a love like Delaney had—a beloved community that invests in our well-being because we are valued way more than any painting ever could be.
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