The Color Of The Year

in an empty white field, not really a space, a thin young black man with a short afro and thin mustache stands in a white trenchcoat over a white shirt and white trousers and black shoes, belt tied and arms behind his back, a room with arched stained glass windows reflected in the mirror finish lenses of his aviator glasses reveal the space of this 1976 painting by barkley l hendricks, which is now in the collection of the whitney museum
Barkley L. Hendricks, Steve, 1976, magna, acrylic and oil on linen, 72 x 48 in., collection: the Whitney

The way Steve simultaneously inhabits a physical space and floats entirely free on a monochrome picture plane is my favorite thing about this Barkley Hendricks painting, but I’m posting is here now because Hendricks painted it with the color of the year.