James Baldwin Creative America Analysis

Writer, James Baldwin believed as an artist, one must pursue and attain a “state of being alone” to find one’s way. (Baldwin, Creative America, p. 1) Like Baldwin, aloneness was a “silence” that painter Beauford Delaney described and which he found in light, a spiritual as well as atmospheric light. Each man needed this “light,” this “silence,” and this “aloneness,” as Baldwin said, to “illuminate [the] darkness;” to delve into their individual creative spaces, explore their shared cultural backgrounds, and embrace their trans-global identities.

After James Baldwin moved to Paris he invited Delaney to join him. After arriving in France, Delaney took a train to Normandy. Noting the “natural splendor” of its countryside, he wrote: “The clear

(Leeming, Beauford Delaney, p. 5) Having known Delaney for many years, he believed his “light” was a religious one. Baldwin proclaimed “If we stand before a Delaney canvas, we are standing, my friends, in the light . . . . This light “held the power to illuminate, even to redeem and reconcile and heal.” (Leeming, Amazing Grace, p. 129) Light played a critical role in the compositional structure of both men’s work. Their shared interest in light formed a signature bond in the writer and the painter’s creative relationship, enhancing each man’s understanding and appreciation of the other’s

In France, Baldwin was still political in his thinking and writing, but he believed in truth, the craft of the English language, and writing. Delaney, star had risen in New York due to his Expressionist street and club scene paintings of Harlem. It dimmed after moving to Paris, where he dove into the technique of non-linear paint marks and explored the physical and psychological properties of light, especially in the color yellow. Both men held onto their individual identities. To work as an artist, Delaney felt he had to be in Paris, while Baldwin moved to St. Paul de Vence in the South of France where Delaney visited frequently. Delaney spoke of the light there and the effect it had on “the work of our Lonely people.” The people were he and Baldwin. (Leeming, Amazing Grace, p. 186)

Each man fed and advocated for their global citizenship-ness, which freed them to unframe the false expectations assumed for them by both blacks and whites, based on their race. They honored their own creative individuality--their internal light which helped them offset the absurd limitations of racial and physical place, and embrace their renewing sense of personal “silence,” a silence that Delaney found most comforting and stabilizing in St. Paul de