12019-08-27T10:27:36-07:00Lauren Cesirof37e4e52c3d9a4ff08b7937020ee9048f11c6739346708This image is featured in the exhibition, “not but nothing other: African American Portrayals, 1930s to Today.“ Hover over the highlighted rectangles for more information and links to related content.plain2019-09-04T11:49:18-07:00Acrylic on canvas66 x 42 in.Gift of Leonard BocourBinghamton University Art MuseumLauren Cesirof37e4e52c3d9a4ff08b7937020ee9048f11c6739
This page has annotations:
12019-09-02T11:00:18-07:00Lauren Cesirof37e4e52c3d9a4ff08b7937020ee9048f11c6739Yarde made other works with mixed media.Lauren Cesiro3plain2019-09-02T11:02:18-07:00Lauren Cesirof37e4e52c3d9a4ff08b7937020ee9048f11c6739
12019-09-03T18:51:55-07:00Richard Yarde (1939-2011) The Mirror, circa 19763Label & Mediaplain2019-09-04T11:49:29-07:00 When Richard Yarde made this self-portrait around 1976, he had already entered his second decade as a painter and professor at some of the most prestigious private colleges in New England—quite an accomplishment for a child of Barbadian immigrants raised in Roxbury, the center of Boston’s African-American community. Childhood classes at the city’s Museum of Fine Arts and the later encouragement of one of his teachers at Boston University convinced him to pursue a life in art.
Here, the setting is intimate, domestic—perhaps his home in Northampton, Massachusetts—but Yarde transforms the commonplace room into something monumental in this large-scaled painting carefully composed of blocks of high-keyed color. He looks at himself in the mirror and paints his likeness, attempting to turn the canvas itself into a mirror of his identity. All the drama of this work resides in the implicit question Yarde poses as he looks at his reflection: can this medium of painting, which for so long has seen me as an object, be made to capture my proper likeness? Can it be bent to my purposes and become a true mirror of myself?