Richmond Barthe and Richard Hunt at the Anacostia Museum - sculpture exhibit; Washington, D.C

Art in America, July, 1993 by David Ebony

This handsome show, titled "Two Sculptors, Two Eras," compared the work of African-American artists of different generations: Richmond Barthe, who died in 1989 at the age of 88, and Richard Hunt, 34 years his junior. There are biographical similarities between the two--both studied at the School of the Art institute of Chicago and both eventually became known for monumental public sculptures. Major public works by Barthe are in Haiti and in Jamaica, where he lived for many years; one of Hunt's most recent works is a large-scale sculpture grouping in the plaza of the Bennett Williams Building in Washington.

But their works are another question. Curator Samella Lewis selected a group of 36 sculptures spanning their careers (18 by each artist, displayed in separate but adjoining rooms) to make a case for what she sees as a "continuum of form and content." This is a stretch, especially regarding form, since Barthe worked in a traditional figurative idiom and Hunt's work is more abstract. But in his youth Hunt was impressed by Barthe's sculptures in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the earliest pieces by Hunt in the show--blobby, expressionist figures--do indeed seem to pick up where Barthe left off, in terms of a progression toward abstraction.

The comparison is facilitated in a number of ways. Works shown are similar in scale and medium. Most are rather small, 1 to 2 feet high, except for several larger works by Hunt, such as Open Form and Fish Curve Hybrid, about 6 feet tall. Since Barthe worked almost exclusively in cast bronze, Hunt's work in that medium was emphasized here. The well-known sleek, welded-metal junk sculptures that Hunt made in the '60s were conspicuously absent. Barthe's best pieces on display were made in the '30s and some of them, such as Feral Benga (1937), have a Deco feel. The graceful, elongated, curving limbs of this sword-wielding nude relate to certain of Hunt's works such as the fantastic, stylized snake titled Serpentine (1970) or the thrusting arm of Boxer Hybrid (1971).

The relationship of these two artists is most fascinating in the matter of content, particularly the way each has expressed his own experiences in, and issues pertinent to, the African-American community. The defiant male figure of Barthe's Stevedore (1937) has a powerful, heroic stance that is echoed in Hunt's abstract but similarly heroic vision, Freedmen's Column Model (1985). The band of abstracted figures that wrap around the middle of this later work hint at an epic narrative, like a modern-day Trajan's Column. While Barthe's means of expression is more literal, Hunt communicates the concept of freedom through the metaphor of flight, with upwardthrusting, winglike forms suggesting soaring birds.

If all of Hunt's sculpture is considered, the work of these two artists is not totally convincing as the continuum this show proposes. However, one comes away from this thoughtful exhibition with a feeling for the points of correspondence between the two. ["Richmond Barthe - Richard Hunt: Two Sculptors, Two Eras" will travel to the Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tenn.; the Museum of Afro-American Life and Culture, Dallas, Tex.; and the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, La.]