Yarde seemed comfortable in the sparse room, his quiet thoughtfulness and intellectual curiosity apparent over the course of our meandering conversation, which touched on everything from the honking geese at the nearby pond to Chinese biomorphic charts.
Born and raised in Boston, Yarde is a first-generation American whose parents came to the United States from Barbados. Art has always been a central part of his life. He fondly recalled a precocious note he wrote when he was only four or five years old that declared, "When I grow up, I want to be an artist."
A few years later, he began to study at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston each Saturday, further developing his interest in drawing, painting and sculpture. Though he shied from making art in high school, he returned to his practice at Boston University (BU), where he received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in painting.
The professors to whom he was closest in college, painters Conger Metcalf and Walter Murch, profoundly influenced his decision to pursue art as a career. Yarde said, "They just made you feel that painting was a very, very important thing to be doing in the world."
Yarde continued as an instructor at BU after graduation, and later worked in the foundling studio art program at Wellesley College. It was there that he found "room for experimentation," angling away from the emphasis on post-Impressionist style that had shaped his training at BU.
At Wellesley, Yarde began to explore African-American history in greater depth. This search led to a series on dance-a form that he calls "a carrier of the culture." He became fascinated with the forgotten Savoy Ballroom, an integrated dance venue that operated in Harlem from 1926 to 1958. The Savoy hosted infamous musicians-Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Count Basie-and was the birthplace of a dance called the "Lindy Hop." Originally called the "breakaway," the Lindy Hop was hugely popular in the 30s and 40s, even being performed all over the U.S. by travelling professionals. It faded as rock 'n' roll superceded jazz in popularity by the late 50s, but experienced a resurgence in the 80s when dance historians rediscovered it.
Yarde never saw the Savoy-it was razed and replaced by a housing project before he had the chance-but his watercolor paintings of Lindy Hop dancers embody the energy and movement that, by all acounts, characterized the Savoy in its heyday.
Yarde recently completed a children's book, called "Stompin' at the Savoy" (after a Big Band classic), which extends the excitement of the famous Harlem ballroom to generations even further removed from its history.
A struggle with illness, beginning in the early 90s, marked a turning point in Yarde's work. At the onset of kidney failure, Yarde told me, "I was getting lots of X-rays, I was getting all kinds of treatment, and I started to use some of these things that I thought were very visual to make studies." His piece "PM/AM," currently at the Mead, centers on his experiences as a patient, incorporating images of ultrasounds in a biomorphic chart drawn from Chinese esoteric traditions.
The chart, Yarde explained, associates each of the body's major organs with a time of day-one could consult the circular chart to discern the optimal time for a successful operation on one's spleen, for instance. The chart also looks like a mandala, reflecting Yarde's wide-ranging research into the religious symbols of various cultures, which yielded the circle-within-a-square motif in his series "Ringshout."
Yarde's broad inspirations make "PM/AM" complex and intricate; painterly ultrasounds share the same space as what appears to be Braille, all of which is elucidated by a rich palette of deep indigo and crisp white, drawn from the palette of Nigerian textiles. Yarde confirmed that the pattern of dots in each section of the chart was intended to resemble Braille, clarifying, "It has to do with establishing mystery in the work that comes from some kind of coding … the whole point is to have something there that's totally elusive."
With my questions about "PM/AM" answered, I was surprised to find that the work still retained a sense of mystery. Yarde manages to cultivate visual and conceptual depth that, much like the body, cannot be truly plumbed even with studied investigation.
Richard Yarde will give a lecture in conjunction with the exhibition "Visionary Anatomies," in Stirn Auditorium on Thurs., Feb., 8 at 4:30 p.m. His children's book, "Stompin' at the Savoy," is now on view at the Eric Carle Museum at Hampshire College.