The Undersung
Our critics on great artists who mightve been lost to the canon.
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Its never quite worked out that way.
When he reached Central Park, he stopped because of his severely blistered feet.
Things had never been tougher for American artists let alone black ones.
Art schools didnt take black artists, and independent-studio classes banned black artists from figure-drawing sessions with white models.
Undaunted, Delaney began drawing at a midtown dance studio.
Somehow, his career took off almost overnight.
He met and charmed everyone.
A list of his friends and acquaintances includes Stuart Davis his closest painter compatriot W.E.B.
He later called the artist his principal witness.
Delaney was a kind of surrogate nurturing father to the writer.
The caption read, One of the most talented Negro painters.
I love his work especially his highly colored, optically intense, dense figurative paintings.
Delaney should be regarded as such as well.
His sense of visual, jigsawing geometry and strong, graphic distillation of structure is second only to Daviss.
So why has Delaney been disappeared from collective memory?
Baldwin was right, but Delaney struggled with French and became even more isolated.
Twombly, Baldwin, and Miller returned often to New York, while Delaney never did.
So he never got to rejoin the conversation.
At a distance, Delaneys work seemed passe an artist painting in a void, outside the canon.
