>> His virtuoso way of painting kind of makes the people jump off the canvas and bedazzle you.

>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio-- How painter Barkley L. Hendricks used a camera to bring his worldview into focus.

Then from John-Boy to a man among men.

We talk to actor Richard Thomas about his latest role: Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

>> He's not a sort of a distant, righteous king figure.

He's a man going through a real, a real change in his life.

>> BOWEN: Plus, we remember actor Emilio Delgado, beloved by generations as Luis on Sesame Street.

>> Everybody thinks that we're just part of the family.

>> BOWEN: Yeah.

>> There we were, in their living rooms for 50 years, you know?

>> BOWEN: And, it's the art in advertising by way of America's first poster museum.

>> You just see an image, and you understand the purpose of the poster right away.

In fact, that's what makes a good, effective poster.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: First up, painter Barkley L. Hendricks.

He was a wanderer traveling the world, capturing the people who captivated him.

Now, a Rose Art Museum exhibition explores how much that work relied on a tool he called his mechanical sketchbook.

Barkley Hendricks was a renowned painter of people, placing the strangers who caught his eye against halos of hot pink or fields of ocean blue.

Personality oozes here-- even out of the finely textured denim.

But after his death in 2017, the discovery of photographs Hendricks made over a lifetime revealed how much he saw with his camera.

>> The way an artist would sketch in a sketchbook to kind of remind himself of what he saw.

Barkley Hendricks called the camera his mechanical sketchbook.

>> BOWEN: Which is the name given to this show at Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, where Gannit Ankori is the director.

>> His virtuoso way of painting kind of makes the people jump off the canvas and bedazzle you.

The photographs, they also have that mesmerizing, riveting presence.

>> BOWEN: From his earliest days, growing up in North Philadelphia, Hendricks walked the city with a camera around his neck.

But it was during his travels throughout Europe in 1966, when the then 21-year-old artist saw and photographed work that would change his life-- paintings by the old masters.

>> He also knew his art history really, really well.

For example, in this self portrait, when you see the way he's dressed and the way he gestures, you immediately think of Velasquez in Las Meninas, or his self-portrait in a hub.

The hub becomes a convex mirror, and it recalls Van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding portrait, or Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.

>> BOWEN: Hendricks found the museum paintings riveting for their beauty, but striking for their lack of Blackness.

>> He decided that his role would be to bring his people-- his friends, his family, himself-- bring them visibility.

>> BOWEN: He also often turned the gaze on himself-- occasionally in nude self-portraits.

He titled this painting "Brilliantly Endowed," after a 1977 New York Times review labeled him, quote-unquote... >> "Brilliantly endowed."

Meaning as a painter.

But, of course, all the tropes of the hypersexuality of Black men and what that means.

>> You see him playing with visibility, hyper-visibility, and invisibility, in these various ways that I think in a post-2020 U.S. is very important for us to think about, how Black and brown people come into view... >> BOWEN: Elyan Jeanine Hill, the show's co-curator, is talking about this photograph, in which Hendricks proudly wears the banner of Superman just as he disappears behind sunglasses, and all while nude from the waist down.

>> I think part of the revelation of what he's doing in photography is that... we get to see the world through his eyes, in a sense.

He's central.

We don't get to kind of push him to the side and make our own assumptions.

>> BOWEN: Hendricks bristled at assumptions.

Especially when his work was labeled political.

What did he have to contend with there, when people would use that word over and over again?

>> Yeah, I think people often used the word as a way to dismiss his work as doing only one thing, when what he was really doing was showing this deep complexity of the people he saw around him, but also of the nation that he lived in.

>> BOWEN: A nation where he saw Anita Hill fashioned as a pariah, where space was made for the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederate flag was embraced.

>> He's building in these contrasts.

He has images of Confederate flags, him trying to understand the political tensions in the U.S.

But then I also notice in Passion Dancehall #1, which is an image of a man and woman dancing, and it's Jamaican dancehall-- and the colors in it are the colors of the pan-African flag or the Black Liberation flag.

>> BOWEN: Hendricks seemed to revel in life's pleasures-- in togetherness, in the personality of pumps, and the portability of musical play in boomboxes.

All signs he recorded as the beauty in life.

>> There's a lot of sensuality in the beauty that he portrays.

That, for me, brings to mind the portrait of Vendetta.

She's nude, she's sitting in lotus position.

Her body forms these angles that are, like, almost star-like.

>> BOWEN: Not to mention a mechanism, like the mechanical sketchbook, for seeing the world with the widest possible lens.

♪ ♪ Next, actor Richard Thomas has had countless lives on stage and screen.

Audiences first came to know him as John-Boy Walton.

But his skillful actor's journey has led to him playing all manner of man.

In his latest stage role, he takes on a lion of literature, playing Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

The show is presented by Broadway in Boston.

Richard Thomas, thank you so much for being with us.

>> It's my pleasure, thanks for having me.

>> BOWEN: So this is, of course, a story that America just loves, and already theater audiences love it.

I know it's... if not the, the highest grossing play in Broadway history.

What's the affection that you bring to this piece?

>> Well, like so many other Americans, I mean, I read...

I read the book in school and was deeply moved by it.

You know, when you read it in middle school or in early high school, right in the, right in that time of life when you're starting to build a, a social conscience, you know, and you're, and you're sort of learning about being a citizen, about all those things, one's sense of outrage and empathy is really heightened, you know, in young people.

And so, I'm really...

I'm just thrilled I'm going to be able, be able to do it.

But I will say in terms of attachment to the material, in order to prepare, I read it again and I hadn't read it many years.

And anybody who hasn't read that book since they were a kid, read it again.

Because there is so much for a more...

I hate to use the word "mature," but an older sensibility to read... in rereading that... in reading that material.

Yeah, I mean, it's part of the zeitgeist, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it.

>> BOWEN: And part of the zeitgeist, and, and it... it elevates you, because it's just such an iconic character.

Atticus Finch almost lives up here, he's monumental at this point.

So, as an actor, this is what you do so skillfully, how do you bring him into real life?

>> Well, you know, you can't play an icon.

It's not possible.

You know, icons go up on the wall.

You, you can't, you can't play them.

You can only play a person.

And so for me, the journey has been to find a... to find the man, just the guy, the person, and the points at which I can connect with him, and... and then where Atticus and I have a mutual affinity.

He's not a sort of a distant, righteous king figure.

He's a man going through a real, a real change in his life.

Just as the children, the kids are losing their sense of idealism about the world and some of their innocence about the world, he is also learning about the realities of the world that he's lived in, and how they come up against his own ideals.

>> BOWEN: So there is a bit of interesting casting news that we learned recently, that Mary Badham, who played Scout in the film, is in this production with you.

Is that... is there a level of surrealness to that?

>> It is a genius stroke of casting, pure and simple.

I mean, the great thing about having Mary in the, in the, in the production is that she's sort of, she's like carrying the torch.

She's playing Mrs. DuBose.

I know that Mary was concerned when she read.

She asked some of her friends, especially her African-American friends.

She says, "They're asking me to play Mrs. DuBose, who is this really mean, racist woman and I..." And they said, "No, you've got to do it.

You got to do it, Mary."

And she's absolutely great.

Everyone's going to love seeing her.

And she's, she's, you know, she's committed her life to social justice.

It's a.... she's an extraordinary woman.

>> BOWEN: I've been wondering about when you started on the stage, with your parents, who are dancers.

Have you come to understand what the place of performance is in your life?

>> You know, I was raised-- home life was the ballet, the world of the ballet, because my parents were ballet dancers, and they're teachers.

And I grew up backstage, you know, literally, as a child, from... during on tours and everything, with... they were... when I was a child, it was with the Balanchine company.

So the theater was my home, and... and then I just started acting before I was old enough to start studying dance.

And by the time I was old enough to start studying dance, I was already working.

I was lucky enough to have a sort of fledgling career.

>> BOWEN: What's also struck me is, is what happened in your career after The Waltons.

>> Right.

>> BOWEN: And, and you did something that a lot of people struggle with, that they get typecast.

What was that journey after that role, and to, to define yourself?

Re... perhaps redefine yourself as an actor.

>> Well, that's a great question, and I think it applies to any actor who's been lucky enough to have a success in a particular piece of material, even features, or, you know.

You know, there is a tendency, "I'll get him.

He's good at that."

And there's a period of time after you've had a big success-- I think especially with, with a television series, because you come into people's homes over a period of years, and if you're lucky enough to have had a successful show.

And so they're, they're...

I had to understand, and I was young, you know, when I left the show, I was 25, turning 26.

I remember, you know, you're ready to go, you're ready to change, you're ready to move on.

But you've got to give people... (laughing): some time to catch up with this idea that you're-- that you have, you know, you have a range.

And it helped that I had been acting for a long time before I got the show, so I didn't feel like, "Oh my God, my whole career was in that, in that, in that piece of material," although obviously it was the most important thing that had happened to date.

>> BOWEN: The other thing I've seen is so many actors are at pains to be so removed from that piece, to the fact that I think some of them dislike it.

They dislike the mentions.

But that's not you.

You, you embrace that, that story, that character still.

>> Oh, I love that show.

But actually, at first, you get annoyed.

You know, even if you love the show, when you're off the show, it's like, "Okay, is it going to be like 'John-Boy dead at 90'?"

And yes, it is.

It is going to be that.

(laughs) And you have to kind of... (laughing): Eventually, there's acceptance that this is the way it's going to be.

But because I loved the show so much, and I... because I thought it was such a good, a good show, you get over your impatience, and eventually you just love it, and, and are so happy when people still remember.

>> BOWEN: I want to ask you about another role for, for a couple of different reasons now.

But Agent Gaad.

First of all, we at GBH are epic fans of The Americans.

>> What a great show.

>> BOWEN: You were told that you-- that there was this part created, and he was not to be like any other, you know, common sense depiction that we have had over the years of FBI agents.

So how did you find your way into making him such a compelling character?

>> Well, thank you.

I loved Agent Gaad and I loved that show.

>> She's going to be in a lot of meetings, hear a lot of things.

>> Look, if by some wild chance there is something here, we need to know.

>> The thing that I loved about the way they wrote Frank Gaad was that there was something strangely opaque and mysterious about him.

You know, he could be empathetic and caring, or he could be quite cold and, and calculating.

And some people thought he was a good guy and some people thought he was a bad guy-- and I love this kind of mysterious quality about him, which, which was really delicious to embrace.

I just loved doing that show.

I was so grateful to have been given that part.

>> BOWEN: And finally, I just want to ask, you have worked with some of the most extraordinary actors on the stage.

James Earl Jones, and of course Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman, John Gielgud.

Is there someone who had the most profound effect on you in terms of shaping your craft?

>> Well, and I am extremely fortunate in that I was able as a young actor to work with some extraordinary actors.

I mean... and you're just soaking it in.

And I would say the first person who profoundly affected me as a teacher was Geraldine Page.

When I worked with her, I was about ten years old, in, in Strange Interlude.

And to listen to her every night, and watch with her, and play with her every night was one of the most extraordinary experiences.

Joanne Woodward?

Absolutely.

And Paul Newman.

This was my first picture, Winning, the two of them, you know, inexpressibly important to me, their warmth and support, but also just watching the truthfulness of their work.

I mean, I've been so lucky, I learned from so many.

And Gielgud is someone who was very important to me because when I was... when I'd be preparing for a big Shakespeare part, the first voice I'd go to for sense and for understanding the text and hearing the text for the verse was always Gielgud's recordings.

So when I finally got an opportunity to work with him, it was just... well, you could just imagine what that was.

I mean, I was just... you know, I was just stupid with, with excitement.

(laughing) >> BOWEN: Well, Richard Thomas, it's such a pleasure to speak with you and welcome back to Boston.

It's great to have you here again.

>> Thank you, I cannot wait.

I love Boston, and I love playing Boston, and I cannot wait to bring the Mockingbird to you guys.

It's...

I'm, I'm so excited about this tour.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's music to our ears.

The Arlington Jazz Festival tops our list of events happening in Arts This Week.

Tuesday, find out how found objects become artistic subjects.

Photographer Stephen Albair's exhibition Silent Scenes is the subject of a virtual talk at the Griffin Museum of Photography.

The next generation of figurative painters has arrived at the I.C.A.

A Place For Me, celebrates community and the self-- see it Wednesday.

Thursday is the first day of the 11th annual Arlington Jazz Festival.

Featuring a performance by the internationally touring Jesse Williams Group with local vocalist Cassandre McKinley.

Christmas Eve festivities go comedically askew in Straight White Men.

The Hovey Players bring this story of identity and privilege to the stage on Friday.

Saturday at the Harvard Art Museums, see how history was shaped by textiles.

The show Social Fabrics unravels how woven fabrics thread their way into the story of society, with works from the ninth through 12th centuries.

>> L-O-V-E. Man, and you know that says love, and that's a good word.

>> Love.

>> Right.

>> BOWEN: For those of us who grew up on Sesame Street, Emilio Delgado was a neighbor and a friend-- even if we didn't actually know him.

His character Luis was a fixture on the street for 44 years.

He died last month at age 81.

And we remember him now with a conversation he and I had in 2019.

>> BOWEN: Emilio Delgado, thank you so much for being here.

>> My pleasure.

>> BOWEN: Well, how open were people to you when you first began auditions, and you began making your way into acting?

>> I was going around, banging on doors, auditioning and everything.

But it was very difficult, because at that time, it was considerably different in terms of the representation of Chicanos, Mexican Americans, Latinos.

It just wasn't, wasn't apparent, you know?

There, there were no jobs.

>> BOWEN: So, what did it mean, then, when you got the job on Sesame Street?

>> Well, it changed everything for me.

But I was very proud of the fact that that whole time before I got that job on Sesame Street, I had been very much involved in trying to change that for Latinos.

I was part of, of several groups in Los Angeles, of Latinos and Latinas, that we were trying to make people see that we were human beings, that, look, we were bankers, and we were teachers, and we were professional people also, we weren't just gang members or maids or prostitutes.

Here I was on a national television show, and, and knowing that the part of Luis was a regular person on... in the community, he had, he had his own business, you know?

Of course, later on he got married, he had a family.

And it was representing a Latino and Latinas as regular people.

>> To love her and care for her always?

>> I do.

>> BOWEN: Because you, you join the show two years in, was it apparent immediately what kind of hold this was having over kids, myself included?

>> Oh.

>> BOWEN: The little, the little Jared in here is screaming that I'm talking to you right now.

I'll be fully transparent.

(both laughing) But did you understand what the show meant, or did it, did it grow in that regard?

>> No, we didn't know.

I mean, I didn't know.

I mean, I came, I came into New York City, and that was a totally different experience for me.

I had never worked with puppets before or Muppets as, as they were known then.

But I think a very important thing that, with me, as an actor, is that I had a, I had a fantastic sense of the cancelation of disbelief, you know?

I mean, I just went with it.

And I didn't even look at the puppeteer under the table.

>> BOWEN: Well, finally, I have to ask, you're in the rare position, I would guess, of people... You have such a wide audience and such a huge audience of people who grew up watching you that they feel they must have some level of ownership over you as you go about in the world-- what is that like?

You must feel that responsibility.

>> Oh, absolutely, yes.

But I like to think of it as that they... everybody thinks that we're just part of the family.

>> BOWEN: Yeah.

>> We're part of their family.

There we were in their living rooms for 50 years, you know?

And it's like, yeah, we're just somebody that they know, like an uncle or a cousin or something like that.

And whenever somebody meets me out on the street or somewhere, it's, that's the way they feel.

It's like, "Oh, my gosh, I hadn't seen you in so long," you know?

>> BOWEN: Well, I'll thank you, Uncle Emilio Delgado, thank you so much for being on the show.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

>> It's a pleasure to be here, Jared.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Finally now, it's the sign of many times.

We're off to New York City, to the home of Poster House: the nation's first museum dedicated to the art and history of posters.

>> Hi, I'm Angelina Lippert, the Chief Curator of Poster House, the first museum in the United States dedicated to the art and history of the poster.

A poster is a public-facing notice meant to persuade that marries word and image.

This phenomenon really began in the late 1860s when Jules Chéret, the father of the poster, perfected the already-existing color lithographic process so that posters could be made cheaply and quickly using the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Prior to this time, posters were primarily text-based, so they were broadsides.

And that required that you had to be literate in order to understand them.

Posters do away with that.

You just see an image and you understand the purpose of the poster right away.

In fact, that's what makes a good, effective poster.

If a poster doesn't communicate its purpose to you in less than a second, it's failed.

Poster House typically has two or three exhibitions on view at any time, in addition to our permanent poster history timeline, which you can see behind me.

At the beginning of this timeline starts with the father of the poster, Jules Chéret.

So because the earliest posters are done via stone lithography, every single color making up that poster would have to be printed separately.

And by combining those colors, that's how you get the full rainbow effect in any given poster.

And that's what Jules Chéret invented.

and what makes this poster incredibly special is it's actually a progressive proof.

A progressive proof is really, really rare because a printer would typically only make one.

And it was a way for a printer to determine if all the different colors separated out line up, and if it prints cleanly.

Chéret originally designed this for a department store.

However, it rejected it.

We don't know why because it's a beautiful image.

The next stop on the poster history timeline focuses on Leonetto Cappiello-- the father of modern advertising.

One of the things you'll notice in this poster is that the background is a flat, saturated black.

He was the first poster designer to really to offset a central image with a sharp, flat, saturated background.

He puts a woman in a green dress on a red horse, but what does that have to do with chocolate?

This poster is for Chocolate Klaus.

And that was the entire point.

This is the first time we see a mascot born in advertising.

In fact, people were so captivated by this beautiful image, that they would go to their local store, and instead of asking for the chocolate by name, they would instead say, "Uh, you know, "can you give me the... the, you know, the lady on the red horse?"

And that's how that brand became memorable and known throughout Paris.

♪ ♪ The next step on our timeline is Marcello Nizzoli's poster for Campari.

Campari has one of the richest histories in posters.

They've created literally hundreds of posters.

All are standout.

This is very interesting because it's Italian Art Deco.

Italian Art Deco in advertising combined a lot of different styles.

So you'll get elements of futurism, of cubism.

And also, the Italians love to play with shadow, and really deep, rich colors in their posters.

So you'll get a lot of that in this design.

♪ ♪ This is one of my favorite posters in the collection.

It's by the Stenberg Brothers.

It's for the film The Last Flight.

Poster design in Russia at this time under Lenin was a hotbed of creativity.

These designers rarely saw imported films before creating the posters for them.

They would just get the title, or maybe a film still, very minimal information.

I also often have to tell people that this is not photo montage.

The ability to insert a large photograph into posters was not really available at this time.

Instead, what the Stenbergs would do, is project a film still onto the wall of their studio, and then trace over that figure.

And also this style of art would be made completely illegal under Stalin, so it's a really short, beautiful, and important period in poster history.

After that, we look at the mid-century posters of Switzerland and the international typographic style.

These posters are amazing because you get an array of printing techniques all in one poster.

After that, we focus on psychedelic posters, where we have nine amazing examples of the most important psychedelic poster artists from 1966 to 1970.

An incredibly short, explosive period in poster design.

All of these posters advertise the main venues for psychedelic music at that time-- so the Fillmore, the Winterland, the Avalon, as well as a ton of bands that you will absolutely know like Big Brother & the Holding Company.

♪ ♪ After that, we focus on Paula Scher, and her remarkable contributions to the Public Theater in what is now almost 30 years of advertising for one single institution.

She helped redefine how theatrical advertising was done in New York, making it as vibrant and explosive as the theater itself.

For the letter press process, we focus on Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., a favorite designer of mine.

He combines a layering technique that makes his posters completely unique.

He's a contemporary letter press printer working in Detroit, which means he's making his living making posters today, which is amazing.

Poster House is still collecting important posters made today.

We actively collect posters from all around the world from all major and minor ad agencies.

So please stop by and see them.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, a man who refuses to separate art from life.

>> Oh no, it's all one thing.

My work is my life.

>> BOWEN: We'll have that and much more.

I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

As always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

♪ ♪