Amy J. Elias, editor

List of Illustrations xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction. Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin / Amy J. Elias 1
I. Circuits of Selfhood
1. Jimmy and Beauford: The Bond of the Unusual Door / David Leeming 39
2. The Mentor: James Baldwin, Beauford Delaney, and the Habit of Doing / Hilton Als 50
3. “You Pay for Your Life with Your Life”: James Baldwin’s Search for Jimmy Baldwin, 1969–1972 / Ed Pavli¿ 53
4. Beauford Delaney’s Black Queer Fatherhood / Magdalena J. Zaborowska 66
II. Synesthesia and Arts in Dialogue
5. Blue(s) as Cymbal: Beauford Delaney (Elvin Jones) James Baldwin / Fred Moten 79
6. Baldwin and Delaney: Yellows and Blues / Robert G. O’Meally 98
7. Chiaroscuro, Delaney’s Aesthetic Vision, and Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” / D. Quentin Miller 119
8. Yellow Light, Black Abstraction: Jazz, Writing, and Ethical Shattering in Baldwin’s and Delaney’s Works / Walton M. Muyumba 131
9. Baldwin/Delaney/Cazac / Nicholas Boggs 146
10. Singed Innocence: Baldwin, Delaney, and the Problematic Black Child / Robert F. Reid-Pharr 160
III. Visibility, Performance, Abstraction
11. Baldwin and Delaney: The Politics and Performance of Black Sight / Indie A. Choudhury 171
12. Shared Subjects / Rachel Cohen 187
13. Choosing Both: Abstraction and Singularity in Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin / Monika Gehlewat 197
14: “Architects of the Spirit”: Color and Intimacy in Beauford Delaney’s Post-1950 Abstractions / Abbe Schriber 208
15. Feeling Modernist: Beauford Delaney’s Self-Portrait (1944) / Levi Prombaum 224
16. “The Giacometti Effect”: Reconsidering Beauford Delaney’s 1966 Portrait Bust of James Baldwin / Stephen C. Wicks 240
IV. Continuing Influence
17. Queer Radiance: Beauford Delaney at the Bathhouse / Tyler T. Schmidt 251
18. Baldwin, Delaney, and Black Artists’ Genealogical Legacies / Shawn Anthony Christian 266
19. In a Speculative Light: The Portrait Project / Jered Sprecher 278
Bibliography 289
Contributors 309
Index
Plate Credits