Baldwin, Delaney, and Black Artists’ Genealogical Legacies

In this chapter, Shawn Anthony Christian explores how the friendship between James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney constituted an instance of Black artistic relation as genealogical transition, something deeper than “artistic influence” and more historically and culturally familial than simply a “transmission of ideas.” Baldwin’s public tributes to Delaney compel consideration of the enduring ways Black artists embrace and then exemplify shared values and aesthetics. Just as Baldwin “read” Delaney’s paintings and found in them both affirmation and challenge, especially for his own art, subsequent generations of writers have reflected on and documented what it meant for them to read Baldwin. Rachel Ghansah, Kiese Laymon, and Jesmyn Ward are among a group of contemporary Black writers whose comments and published writings pointedly declare their readings of Baldwin as inheritance.