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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

February 27, 2009 www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

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Fresh

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A prime example of this phenomenon is the photograph of "Rose McClendon as Serena," a sculpture Barthé made that is pictured in situ at Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned house in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Born with the 20th century in January 1901, Barthé was, to an extent, a man between worlds, viewed by many blacks as an "Uncle Tom" who preferred the company of whites to his own race, but regarded by the white community as a credit to those of African de-

scent.

He was certainly the first to be successful at depicting the African and African-American body in three dimensions, displaying the same nobility in his works' realism that Richard Bruce Nugent's drawings gave in their stylization.

Barthé knew Nugent, that multi-talented butterfly, having met him while Nugent was performing in Porgy and Bess. His attraction to the actor was immediate and "fleeting," according to Vendryes.

Both were beautiful young men, but Nugent was the more erratic of the two, and his contributions to the New Negro Artistic Movement lay almost undiscovered for years.

Barthé, like Baldwin and other African American artists both before and after, left the United States, although he went to Jamaica, where the lazy Caribbean days mingled with his barely-expressed homosexuality and his liberal Catholicism to make him a much more open person. He later traveled to England with a companion, Jamaican writer Don Harken, who hoped to complete a novel about his island home.

After ups and downs, traveling throughout Europe, Barthé returned to the United States in the 1970s, eventually settling down in California, where the sexual liberation of the day made him feel young again— he could openly admire his models' taut physiques, and the sexuality inherent in his work could finally be brought to the fore.

While his health declined and many of his old friends died, he found a benefactor in actor James Garner, who kept him in comfort until his death in 1989.

Vendryes' book is a more than fitting monument to the artist, one of the last lights to blink out from the Harlem Renaissance.

Barthé

✓

A LIFE IN SCULPTURE | Margaret Rose Vendryes

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Richmond Barthé, Black Majesty, 1969.

Bronze, 24 inches high. Property of Steve Newman, Boca Raton, Florida.

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Richmond Barthé, Fallen Aviator, 1945. Bronze, 1834 inches. high. Collection of Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama. National Archives

Mesnard Painting and Faux Finish