Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. Heralded as a cultural prophet in life and death, James Baldwin and his legacy have transcended reality and spiraled into myth.
The Black American writer was many things: aesthete, flaneur, playwright, essayist. Disciples cling to his words as gospel, mining text for magic until its author is absorbed by our exaltation and buried within our interpretations. In the face of such deification, how does one conceive a faithful portrait of a man as enigmatic as Baldwin? Cultural critic Hilton Als has made significant efforts to humanize and memorialize the pathbreaking writer, most recently in an art-essay hybrid book, God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin.
The project is born out of a 2019 exhibition curated by Als for David Zwirner gallery in New York and includes reproductions of some of the featured artworks, alongside brief essays about Baldwin by Als, critic Teju Cole, filmmaker Barry Jenkins, and novelist Jamaica Kincaid, among others . While the compendium considers how Baldwin saw himself — particularly in the context of art, music, and film — it most effectively elucidates how contemporary artists see themselves in and through his work. God Made My Face also succeeds in reminding.