#12 Chrysler Treasures - James Baldwin
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Twelveth in a series of caches highlighting the art of Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, VA 23510. The Chrysler Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, Sunday from Noon to 5 pm. Admission is Free. Website: www.chrysler.org. This painting may be seen in Gallery 222 at the museum.
Intense yellow brings a sacred & redemptive light to Beauford Delaney’s (1901-79) portraits of people he admired, as seen here framing the writer & Civil Rights activist James Baldwin (1924–1987). Though Delaney often exhibited with Harlem Renaissance artists, he preferred the company of intellectual circles in New York’s Greenwich Village. His abstract, colorful, & highly textured paintings found many admirers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Baldwin, who was only a teenager when they first met in 1940. Delaney became a spiritual mentor to the budding writer based on their mutual struggles against poverty, racism and homophobia, and this portrait, created 25 years later, celebrates their lifelong creative friendship.
James Baldwin was an American essayist, novelist and playwright whose eloquence & passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s & early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe. The eldest of 9 children, he grew up in poverty in the black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his semi-autobiographical novel, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (1953), and in his play about a woman evangelist, "The Amen Corner" (1965). After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next 8 years. His second novel, "Giovanni’s Room" (1956), deals with the white world & concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of essays, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955). In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, "Nobody Knows My Name" (1961), explores black-white relations in the United States. This theme also was central to his novel "Another Country" (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues. The New Yorker magazine gave over almost all of its November 17, 1962, issue to a long article by Baldwin on the Black Muslim separatist movement & other aspects of the civil rights struggle. The article became a best seller in book form as "The Fire Next Time" (1963). By the spring of 1963, Baldwin had become so much a spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement that for its May 17 issue on the turmoil in Birmingham, Alabama, Time magazine put James Baldwin on the cover."There is not another writer," said Time, "who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South."
A great influence on Baldwin was the painter Beauford Delaney. In The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin describes Delaney as ..."the first 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 teacher and I as his pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow."
Other caches in this series include:
Chrysler Treasures #1 - The Norfolk Mace (GC7C965) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #2 - Man (GC7EAZX) Located in Gallery 221
Chrysler Treasures # 3 - Angel Appearing to Shepherds (GC7EC96) Located in Gallery 211
Chrysler Treasures # 4 - The Neophyte (GC7ECR7) Located in Gallery 214
Chrysler Treasures # 5 - The Wounded Indian (GC7EMPZ) Located in Gallery 212
Chrysler Treasures # 6 - Picasso (GC3B4KQ) Located in Gallery 219
Chrysler Treasures # 9 - Veronese (GC7EYA3) Located in Gallery 204
Chrysler Treasures #10 - The Last Judgement (GC7EYE5) Located in Gallery 202
Chrysler Treasures #11 - The Vegetable Vendor (GC7EZM5) Located in Gallery 207
Chrysler Treasures #12 - James Baldwin (GC7F3HN) Located in Gallery 222
Chrysler Treasures #13 - Ganymede and the Eagle (GC7F4BK) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #14 - Renoir (GC7F3PJ) Located in Gallery 217
Chrysler Treasures #15 - Samurai Armor (GC7F6M8) Located in Gallery 106
Chrysler Treasures #16 - Tiffany Glass (GC7F5WY) Located in Gallery 116
Chrysler Treasures #18 - Naga Buddha (redux) (GC8A8PE) Located in Gallery 107
Chrysler Treasures #19 - Sarcophagus (redux) (GC8A8X8) Located in Gallery 109
Chrysler Treasures # 21 - Libenksy and Brychtova (GC7QFM0) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 22 - Abstract Expressionism (GC7QG86) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 23 - Hamlet Robot (GC7QG8E) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 24 - Here Kitty, kitty (GC89AWG)
Chrysler Treasures # 25 - Bernini's Bust of Christ (GC8RZB5) in Gallery 205
Chrysler Treasures # 26 - MacPherson and MacDonald (GC8ZXF5) in Gallery 218
Chrysler Treasures # 27 - Karen Lamonte (GC8ZY3Q) in Gallery 108
Chrysler Treasures # 28 - Amor Forgiven (GC90M9V) in Galley 216
Chrysler Treasures # 29 - Standing Warrior (GC90VFT) in Gallery 105
#Chryslercache
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
percr zlegyr