Audacity and Awesomeness

The color brown’s critical role in Barkley L. Hendricks’s portraiture – again, not just as an indication of the African ancestry of his figures and its melanin trait, but as a subconscious jolt and tactical foil to black, white, and the conventional color palette’s grip on modern painters – comes under further scrutiny when the groundbreaking Miss T is viewed alongside another important study in opposition: John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau). For Sargent, Madame Gautreau’s perfunctory, raw umber background visually anchored, or rather, obliged her stark, white/black figure, whereas Robin Tyler’s brown face, neck, and collarbone, comprising a fraction of the overall composition, pulsated with life and variability and rendered the surrounding areas relatively inert.