Swann Galleries: African-American Fine Art Sale 2338

Swann Auction Galleries' upcoming African-American Sale, Shadows Uplifted: The Rise of African-American Fine Art, focuses on 19th century, Works Progress Administration (WPA), and Harlem Renaissance artists whose work helped to shape the landscape of American art. Shadows Uplifted: The Rise of African-American Fine Art, Sale 2338, will be held on February 13, 2014. It includes 82 lots of paintings, sculptures, drawings, fine prints, and photography by artists who emerged from the shadows of academic and genre painting, and defined a new visual culture during the Harlem Renaissance and WPA eras. These treasures capture many of the earliest, select, and scarce works from this time period.

According to Swann Galleries, "the auction's title is taken from Frances Harper's 1892 book , Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted, one of the first novels written by an African-American female author. The struggles faced by African-American visual artists at the turn of the century mirror those of the book's protagonist-- a young woman in antebellum South. 


Some highlights of Shadows Uplifted follow:

Lot 14
Henry  Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)
Study for Disciples Healing the Sick

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Study for Disciples Healing the Sick. Oil on thin plywood panel, circa 1930, 10½"x 13¾"
Image: Swann Auction Galleries

Study for Disciples Healing the Sick, a wonderfully modern and painterly oil, is an excellent example of Tanner's late studies for his Biblical scenes. As preliminary works, Tanner experimented in palette, medium and composition in these small scale paintings. This Study, Lot 14, was one of the studies made in preparation for the much larger painting, Disciples Healing the Sick, circa 1930, 36"x 48", in the collection of the Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries.

Study for Disciples Healing the Sick has an estimate of $60,000 - $90,000.


Lot 25
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (1890-1960)
Untitled (Head)

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Untitled (Head). Stained and oiled wood, circa early 1930s, 12½"x 6½"x7"
Image: Swann Auction Galleries

Untitled (Head) is the first work by early modern sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, who studied at Rhode Island School of Design, to come to auction. This enigmatic and imposing untitled carved wood head dates from the early 1930s.

This androgynous head is most similar in its material, and simplified polished features to Prophet's polychrome wood Discontent, circa 1929. Instead of a skull cap, Discontent is cloaked in a cowl but shares the distinctive Roman nose and features of this untitled head. Lot 25 has an estimate of $35,000 - 50,000.

Additional sculpture highlights are Beulah Ecton Woodward's African Head, Lot 58 (estimate $10,000 - $15,000); Augusta Savage's iconic Lift Every Voice and Sing, Lot 59 (estimate of $12,000 - $18,000); Sargent Claude Johnson's The Knot and the Noose, Lot 79 (estimate of $40,000 - $60,000); and William E. Artis' Michael (Head of a Boy), Lot 82 (estimate of $8,000 - $12,000).


Lot 28
James A. Porter (1905-1970)
Self-Portrait

James A. Porter, Self-Portrait.
Oil on linen canvas, circa 1935, 14"x 12" 
Image: Swann Auction Galleries

James A. Porter, artist, art historian, and head of the Howard University Art Department, shows himself here as a young artist at his easel. Porter was widely exhibited in the 1930s at such venues as the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum, and the Harmon Foundation (New York). In 1943, Porter's seminal Modern Negro Art was published; it was one of the first comprehensive academic studies of African-American art.

This work, Self-Portrait, is the cover image for Sale 2338, and it is the first portrait in oil on canvas by Porter to come to auction. Its estimate is $12,000 - $18,000.


Lot 55
Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-1999)
Coal Breakers

Hughie Lee-Smith, Coal Breakers. Oil on canvas, 1938, 30¼" x 25¼" 
Illustrated: King-Hammond, Leslie. Hughie Lee-Smith, plate 5, page 17. Image: Swann Auction Galleries

Lot 55 is a scarce early painting by Hughie Lee-Smith from the late 1930s, and it is one of his earliest paintings to come to auction. Coal Breakers (1938) is Lee-Smith's first known social-realist oil painting, and an important early manifestation of his long interest in depicting figures in desolate landscapes. Coal Breakers is the top lot in Sale 2338 and has an estimate of $80,000 - $120,000.

Printmakers are represented in Sale 2338 by Dox Thrash, Claude Clark, Allan Freelon, Hayward L. Oubre, Albert Alexander Smith, and others, including a collection of approximately 200 linoleum cut blocks (Lot 47) by Allan Rohan Crite.

An illustrated auction catalogue, with information on bidding by mail or fax, is available for $35 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010. View online catalogue.

Live online bidding is available. Also, you may make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please call Swann's bid department (212-254-4710, ext. 0) during business hours (Monday - Friday, 10 AM - 6 PM). For further information, please contact Nigel Freeman, Director (African-American Fine Art Department) at 212-254-4710, extension 33, or via e-mail at nfreeman@swanngalleries.com.

21st Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art

Established at Howard University in 1990 by Floyd Coleman, the James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art is named in honor of James A. Porter (see photograph), the pioneering Art Historian and Professor. Porter's 1943 publication, Modern Negro Art, laid the foundation for the field of study. Floyd Coleman will be one of the 2010 Honorees at the Annual Colloquium Benefit Gala.

The Theme for the 21st Annual James A. Porter Colloquium is FEARLESS: Risk Takers, Rule Breakers, and Innovators in African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora. This is an excellent opportunity for art historians, artists, critics, curators, collectors, interdisciplinary scholars, museum professionals, gallery owners, librarians/archivists, students, and the general public to support and be engaged in the documentation of African American art and visual culture.


The three-day program, sponsored by the Howard University Department of Art is presented in conjunction with The David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora and the Howard University Gallery of Art, will examine the theme - FEARLESS - by focusing on “issues and ideas that reveal how this drive, impulse, and attitude often propel artists to break the rules, invent new aesthetics, and resist reductive categories that seek to marginalize them and their work. Papers and presentations will interrogate and re-contextualize the critical roles of courageous resistance and willful exuberance in spite of political, economic, and social realities.”

Dates: April 15 – 17, 2010

Place: Howard University, Armour J. Blackburn Center, Washington, DC           General admission is free, but registration is requested.


Register: http://jamesaportercolloquium.org/docs/Registration.html

Honorees: The Annual Colloquium Benefit Gala will honor Peggy Cooper Cafritz, Elizabeth Catlett, Floyd Coleman, and Jeff Donaldson (posthumously). 

Keynote Address: Renee Cox

Speakers: Jacqueline Francis and Okwui Enwezor

Contact: Portercolloquium.org@gmail.com

Telephone: 202/ 806-6171

For the full Colloquium schedule and highlight information on honorees and speakers, follow these links: http://www.jamesaportercolloquium.org/program.html and


http://www.jamesaportercolloquium.org/gala.html

Cancellation Update: The Distinguish Lecture in the Visual Arts in Honor of David C. Driskell with Elizabeth Catlett has been canceled. See NEWS at the David Driskell Center: http://www.driskellcenter.umd.edu/

Further Readings: This brief section provides additional selective information regarding James A. Porter and his accomplishments, and reviews from the time period that Modern Negro Art was published. There is a short biographical sketch on James A. Porter at the Black Renaissance in Washington, 1920-1930s Web site; a site that was created through a Carnegie Foundation grant awarded to the District of Columbia Public Library. 

The following three reviews, which were written during the time period that Modern Negro Art was published, are reflective of its immediate positive reception. The first review, written by Carter G. Woodson, appeared in "The Journal of Negro History," (volume XXIX, No. 2, April 1944). Woodson states "This book, on the whole, well deserves the designation of being one of permanent value. It comes to support the Negroes' claim in art just as works like those of Maud Cuney-Hare and other productions have established beyond a doubt the rightful place of the Negro in music. ...The Negro's heritage...will eventually influence those of esthetic bent to greater achievement. It does not matter so much what the medium of expression may be, the impression has been made through the years of the ordeal through which the Negroes have borne their trials and tribulations, and from the portrayal of these afflictions will come masterpieces."

Allan Freelon, in his role as Special Consultant in Art, Philadelphia Public Schools, reviewed Modern Negro Art in the spring 1944 issue (vol. XIII, no.2) of "The Journal of Negro Education." Freelon states that "Mr. Porter's research has been painstaking and thorough, bringing together in one volume, personalities, who generally were unknown beyond the limits of their immediate locale until the appearance of this volume. He skillfully integrates these artists and artist craftsmen into their time and place in the American scene; the economic and social development of the period under discussion always being shown as influencing their development or arresting their growth." In closing remarks of his review, Freelon praises the book as a
"scholarly work, fully documented with profuse footnotes...that should prove valuable to all students of Negro art and culture. Modern Negro Art is a must for all Americans interested in the cultural development of their country." 

The final review by Constance H. Curtis (New York Amsterdam News, November 6, 1943) has foresight in its expressed assessment that "Porter has written a workmanlike and unprejudiced volume, which will serve for a good many years both as a guide and a commentary on Negro art."  These were simply a few of the reviews praising this publication.

Be a part of the continual dialogue on African American art by attending and supporting FEARLESS: Risk Takers, Rule Breakers, and Innovators in African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora at the 21st Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art at Howard University.

James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art

TRAJECTORIES: Discourse and Critique in African American Art and Art of the African Diaspora

This is an excellent opportunity for art historians, artists, critics, curators, collectors, interdisciplinary scholars, museum professionals, gallery owners, librarians/archivists, students, and the general public to support and be engaged in the documentation of African American art and visual culture. Participate in the 20th Annual Celebration of the James A. Porter Colloquium at Howard University.

Dates: April 16 - 18, 2009

Place: Howard University, Armour J. Blackburn Center, Washington, DC

Honorees: Sharon Patton and Judith Wilson

Keynote Address: Salah Hassan

Speakers: Cheryl Finley and Emma Amos

Contact: info@portercolloquium.org

To register and for the full Colloquium schedule and highlight information on honorees and speakers, follow this link: http://portercolloquium.org/colloquium/2009/colloquium-program/

COLLOQUIUM OVERVIEW
"The James A. Porter Colloquium is the leading forum for scholars, artists, curators and others in the field of African American Art and Visual Culture. Established at Howard University in 1990 by art historian, Dr. Floyd Coleman, the annual Colloquium is named in honor of James A. Porter, the pioneering Art Historian and Professor, whose 1943 publication Modern Negro Art laid the foundation for the field of study. The Colloquium continues his legacy through dynamic programming, scholarly research and artistic leadership. Past Colloquium presenters have included such leading scholars and artists as David Driskell, Ann Gibson, Leslie King Hammond, Michael D. Harris, Samella Lewis, E.J. Montgomery, John Scott, Deborah Willis and Judith Wilson."

MISSION
"The Porter Colloquium continues its tradition of boldly promoting innovative perspectives, ground breaking scholarship and open critical dialogue on African American art. During this year’s three-day program, scholars, artists, and cultural critics will examine the ideas that influence how works of African American artists are viewed, interpreted and valued. To this end, the Colloquium reveres the legacy of Professor James A. Porter and honors artists of color with clear and probing analyses of our visual traditions."

LEGACY CONTINUES

This is the 20th Annual Celebration of the James A. Porter Colloquium, celebrating the legacy of Professor Porter and honoring artists of color with clear and probing analyses of our visual traditions. As has been its tradition, during this annual three-day program, scholars, artists, and cultural critics will examine the ideas that influence how works of African American artists are viewed, interpreted and valued.

This year’s theme, Trajectories, "provides a frame by which art historians, artists, critics, curators, collectors and interdisciplinary scholars, privilege topics, concepts, and issues that further tease out the complexities, the multiple levels of meaning, the subtleties, the contradictions in recent artistic production and art scholarship. The trajectories that are being explored in Porter Colloquium sessions this year include demographics, the movement of people and ideas over large parts of the world and particularly their immigration to the United States and to major art centers around the world. To be sure, the changes that have taken place over the past two decades need reexamination, particularly with respect to the changes in artistic productions and the exploration of concepts and ideas that have helped to change the artistic landscape."

PARTNERSHIP
The presentation of James A. Porter Colloquium is presented in conjunction with the following programmatic partners: The David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland: http://driskellcenter.umd.edu/ and the Howard University Art Gallery.

© 2009 Black Art Project... all rights reserved. For permission to reproduce contact: blackartproject@comcast.net or blackartproject@yahoo.com .