Nocturne
illustration of 1960s Black America, depicting a short story by
Eldridge Cleaver. Illustrator Marvin Hayes uses a radically graphic
compositional devise by inserting the story subjects inside the circular
glow of a flashlight. Hayes uses a wide-angle effect that makes the
circular glow flashlight larger in the picture frame resulting in a
striking design.
1969 was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights
Movement, marking a significant shift in the Black experience's presence
in the American consciousness. Appropriately, the painting is black in
its look and feel. The symbolism of a light emerging from the blackness
supports the overall narrative of the story and expresses the core
nature of the author and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. In 1969, few
mainstream American newsstand magazines featured the writings of Black
authors, especially those visions that were ahead of its time and
embraced a radical stance on issues of race. This work and the
trailblazing story it illustrates are historically significant in that
regard.
This fiction story by Eldridge Cleaver titled "The
Flashlight," has the caption "It was both his prized possession and
something that possessed him--a metallic tube that held the mysteries of
his future."
"The Flashlight" was originally published in Playboy
and then re-published in Germany with an image of Eldridge Cleaver on
the cover.
December 1969 issue of Playboy Magazine,

Marvin Hayes is an award winning illustrator, whose work appeared in
Esquire, McCall's, Playboy, Redbook, Readers' Digest, Time, and Good
Housekeeping. Encouraged by Ted Rousseau and Meyer Schapiro, he turned
to fine art, working primarily in egg tempera and copperplate etchings.

Marvin Everett Hayes is an American painter and illustrator, working primarily in egg tempera and copperplate etchings.
Early life and education

Hayes was born on September 30, 1939, in Canton, Mississippi. Before
he was two, his family moved to Orange, Texas, where his father, Aubrey,
was stationed with the Navy during World War II. Shortly after the war,
he moved to Hamshire, Texas, with his parents and older brother. His
mother, Myrtle, was a nurse.
Hayes’ artistic talent was discovered
and encouraged by Juanita Martin of Saratoga, his high school English
teacher, and Mr. Bennett, an accountant for the rice dryer in Hamshire,
and a wonderful painter who taught Hayes how to paint and took him to
the Beaumont Art League[1] for drawing classes. In 1958, Hayes graduated
Hamshire-Fannett High School in Hamshire, Texas.
Hayes was athletic.
In 1958, he was recruited by legendary coach Bear Bryant and received a
football scholarship to Texas A&M University.[2] After only one
season, he returned home to care for his sick mother and help his older
brother through school. Hayes stayed out of school for a semester, then
received an academic scholarship to Lamar University in 1960-63[3] and a
job offer from Lamb Printing. In 1963, Hayes graduated Lamar University
Magna Cum Laude, was Phi Beta Kappa, and national student editor of
"Kappa Phi Magazine" (the honor fraternity for art students). From Lamar
he went on scholarship to Columbia University in New York, where he was
Meyer Schapiro’s assistant for three years.
Artistic career

Following graduation, Hayes became an award-winning illustrator,
appearing in Esquire, McCall's, Playboy, Redbook, Reader's Digest, Time,
and Good Housekeeping. Encouraged by Ted Rousseau and Meyer Schapiro,
he turned to fine art, working primarily in egg tempera and copperplate
etchings.

Hayes won First Award in 1972 in the 22nd Annual New England Painting
and Sculpture Exhibition Graphics Exhibition. The same year he had work
accepted in the International Graphics Exhibition.

Hayes’ 1977 masterwork, God's Images. The Bible: A New Vision,
illustrates the Bible through 53 etchings, with text by poet-novelist
James Dickey. The book sold over a hundred thousand copies and was
reviewed favorably by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Book
Digest, among others. It won the National Bible Committee Award for
books, presented by then-president Jimmy Carter. Hayes appeared on
several television shows, including the Today Show and the Dick Cavett
Show.

From 1965 to 1991, Hayes lived in Wilton, Connecticut, where he took
care of his ailing mother. His mother died in 1988, 15 years after his
father's death in an auto accident. When he returned to New York City,
he had been honored as a humanitarian in Connecticut and in New York,
among others with Wilton's Distinguished Citizen Award and the Partners
in Caring Award for Connecticut.

Since June 1963, Marvin Hayes has been affiliated as a volunteer with
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, working in the
Education, Drawings and Prints, Media and Objects Conservation
Departments. He first used his skill as a typist and knowledge of offset
printing, typesetting and book layout to help design many of the books
and catalogs at the Metropolitan Museum including the three major
catalogs for the Italian Renaissance 15th to 18th Century Drawings
catalogs under Jacob Bean. When computers became available, he taught
the other workers at the Metropolitan how to use them.

In 1999, Marvin and Antoine Wilmering created a 360⁰ virtual reality
picture of the Gubbio Studiolo on a DVD to go with the magnificent two
volume publication by Antoine Wilmering and Olga Raggio – one about the
restoration and the other about its history. Antoine Wilmering is a
world class wood conservator who now works for the Getty Museum.

Hayes has worked on many shows at the Metropolitan Museum. For
several years, he recorded instances when the staff of the Metropolitan
were interviewed on television including the Director Philippe de
Montebello's Sunday show on PBS and made DVDs for the Watson Library at
the Metropolitan. Marvin helped curator Wolfram Koeppe and devised a way
to show the furniture of David and Abraham Roentgen which is beautiful
wood inlay marquetry with secret compartments, sliding panels, rolltop
desks, clocks, thermostats, and in some cases opened like beautiful
butterflies. The viewers were able to see actual videos of the pieces
being opened and displayed showing all of its secret compartments and
sliding panels and mechanical inner workings. A video clip from the 2012
show of the Berlin cabinet went viral on YouTube with over thirteen
million hits (Now at 11/22/2016) Use this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKikHxKeodA
The technique of using monitors to enhance, enlarge, and illustrate
objects such as furniture, sculpture, pottery, and jewelry has become a
standard since Marvin first suggest it.

Marvin worked on the 2008 Rembrandt Drawings show and for Master
Curator Dr. Carmen Bambach he worked over ten years on several shows and
made a database for all the Italian and Spanish drawings. He worked on
the 2003 blockbuster exhibit of the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci in
which he created three illustrations in the catalogue. Marvin also did
preliminary imaging work for Dr. Carmen Bambach on the Michelangelo
drawings show due in November 2017.

Hayes has given lectures, seminars and workshops at Yale, Harvard and
Columbia Universities, the Rhode Island School of Design and Carnegie
Institute, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lamar
University. A member of the Microsoft development team, he was an early
proponent and innovator of digital imaging and an expert in video,
scanning, color calibration and large format printing. He is on the
Microsoft Online Research Panel, evaluating software in Beta, and new
computers and hardware. He has written software programs for many years
and before Microsoft Word and Word Perfect, he created the word
processing programs for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hayes won the top award in the New England Annual Painting and
Sculpture Show, The National Print Show, and the Bi-Annual Texas
Tri-State Show. In 1983, he received the Distinguished Alumnus Award
from Lamar University, and a presidential scholarship was created in his
name.
Marvin Hayes lives in New York City with his partner Frank Bara