Swann Galleries: African-American Fine Art Sale 2378

Swann Auction Galleries will feature Ascension: A Century of African-American Art on April 2, 2015. This auction, Sale 2378, is the latest in a series of Swann's African-American Fine Art auctions, and it consists of 178 lots. The theme of Ascension, the act of rising to an important position or a higher level, continues the recognition and elevation of African-American art to its rightful place in American art history. 

As we celebrate Women's History Month, this post highlights works by select women artists featured in Sale 2378 as representative samples of a broader spectrum of African-American women artists. It is a tribute to all African American women artists, acknowledging and recognizing the contributions that they have made to the field of American art. 

As time passes, I hope to see more female artists included in auctions such as this, as well as main stream art auctions. As one of the crucial vehicles in bringing awareness to the collector, auctions play a crucial role; and through this awareness, the collector can make a significant impact in changing the structure of the art world. For the future, lets envision a newly informed collector, wielding power in collection building, that moves in the direction of more female and racial inclusion. This newly informed collector will deconstruct the existing western structure, emphasizing American white males. The end result leads to a more representative and inclusive sample of  American art in our galleries and museums.     

In addition to the artists highlighted in this post, Ascension: A Century of African-American Art, features works by Barkley L. Hendricks, Charles White, Romare Bearden, Edward Bannister, Thomas Watson Hunster, Henry Ossawa Tanner, James A. Porter, Delilah William Pierce, Richmond Barthé, Betye Saar, Allan Freelon, Hale Woodruff, Dox Thrash, Sargent Johnson, Jack Whitten, Faith Ringgold, Eugene J. Martin, Sam Gilliam, Edward Clark, Hank Willis Thomas, and others. 

Beulah Woodward, Maudelle. Painted terra cotta, mounted on a wood base, circa 1937.
Approximately 12" high. Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 21, Beulah Woodward, Maudelle

This beautiful bust is a very scarce example of this early Californian sculptor's work. In this sensitive portrayal, Woodard displays a powerful realism - particularly in the careful modelling of her subject's features. Maudelle Bass (1908 - 1989) was a professional dancer and artist's model. Lot 21 has an estimate of $10,000 - $15,000. Price Realized with Buyer's Premium: $12,500.

Loïs Mailou Jones, Lobsterville Beach. Oil on linen canvas, 1945. 26" x 32". 
Signed and dated in oil, lower right recto.
Signed and inscribed "Howard University, Washington, DC"
in ink, and titled in chalk on the upper stretcher bar, verso.
Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 39,  Loïs Mailou Jones, Lobsterville Beach   

This painting, Lobsterville Beach, is an impressive Impressionist canvas and one of the largest landscapes by Jones that Swann Galleries has located of a Martha's Vineyard subject. This lot has an estimate of $30,000 - $40,000. Price Realized with Buyer's Premium: $62,500.

Laura Wheeler Waring, Untitled (Still Life with Tulips and Figurine).
Oil on canvas board, circa 1940-45. 23 3/4 " x 19 3/4".
Signed in oil, lower left. Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 40,  Laura Wheeler Waring, Untitled (Still Life with Tulips and Figurine)

During her distinguished career Waring created a number of landscapes and still lifes. This painting, Still Life with Tulips and Figurine, is in the impressionistic style characteristic of a large portion of her works. From a private collection in Massachusetts, this lot has an estimate of $8,000 - $12,000. Lot was Unsold.

Mavis Pusey, Untitled. Oil on burlap canvas, circa 1968. 42" x 52½".
Signed in oil, lower left recto. Signed in pencil, lower right verso. Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 89,  Mavis Pusey, Untitled

This striking modernist abstraction, Untitled,  is typical of Mavis Pusey's distinctive late 1960s canvases. She was born in Jamaica and immigrated to New York at the age of 18 to study at the Art Students League. Lot 89 has an estimate of $15,000 - $25,000. 
Lot was Unsold.

Elizabeth Catlett, Glory. Cast bronze with a copper-colored patina, on a wooden base,
1981. 14" x 9½" x 10". From the first part of the total edition of 9,
which was later completed in 2006.
Initialed "EC" and dated, rear lower edge. Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 146, Elizabeth Catlett, Glory  

The sitter for this bust is Glory Van Scott, performer, dancer and educator, who gained fame as the principal dancer with the Katherine Dunham, Agnes DeMille, and Talley Beatty dance companies and as a performer on Broadway in the 1960s and 1970s. Lot 146 is the fourth known cast of this bust and it has an estimate of $25,000 - $35,000. Price Realized with Buyer's Premium: $57,500

Carrie Mae Weems, You Became Playmate to the Patriarch and Their Daughter.
Diptych of Chromongenic prints, with etched text on glass, 1995.
Both: 23½" x 19½". Both signed, dated and numbered 2/10 (left panel) and
1/10 (right panel) in pencil on the flush mounts, verso.
From the series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried. Image: Swann Galleries

Lot 167, Carrie Mae Weems, You Became Playmate to the Patriarch and Their Daughter

Another set (each numbered 7/10) of these images were offered in the Photograph auction, April 24-25, 2006, at Christie's New York. In that sale the pair had an estimate of $3,000 - $5,000, and reached a realized price of $15,600. 

Fast forward to Sale 2378. Lot 167, You Became Playmate to the Patriarch and Their Daughter, has an estimate of $15,000 - $25,000. Price Realized with Buyer's Premium: $23,750.

Kara Walker, The Emancipation Approximation (Scene 18).
Color screenprint on Somerset 500 gram paper, 1999-2000. 44" x 34".
Initialed, dated and numbered "XVII/XXV" in pencil, verso.
 Published by Jenkins Sikkema Editions, New York.
From The Emancipation Approximation portfolio.

Lot 169, Kara Walker, The Emancipation Approximation (Scene 18).  

Lot 169 is one screenprint (scene 18) from the set of twenty-six screenprints. Another edition of this print appeared in the Modern and Contemporary Editions auction at Phillips on June 8, 2011 with an estimate of  $6,000 - $8,000 and sold for $10,625. 

Lot 169, The Emancipation Approximation (Scene 18), has an estimate of $6,000 - $9,000. Price Realized with Buyer's Premium: $23,750.   

The works will be on public exhibition at Swann Galleries, to check dates, see Preview Dates.  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, or online.

For further information, and to make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please contact Nigel Freeman at 212-254-4710, extension 33, or via email at nfreeman@swanngalleries.com.                                                     

Live online bidding is also available via invaluable.com. Thanks to Swann Galleries for the use of images and written material in the catalogue.

Further Readings:
Elizabeth Catlett

Elizabeth Catlett / New York Times

Loïs Mailou Jones

Loïs Mailou Jones / Callaloo Interview with Charles H. Rowell

Loïs Mailou Jones / Smithsonian American Art Museum...

Mavis Pusey

Kara Walker / Sikkema Jenkins and Co.

Kara Walker / Walker Art Center

Laura Wheeler Waring

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems / Shainman Gallery

Beulah Woodward

Select African American Art Exhibitions: Fall Highlights for 2013

This highlight features a few exhibitions that are either opening or will still be on view in the the fall of 2013. Presenting the exhibitions as they approach their opening dates or shortly after opening, assures a freshness and currency of information for visual art enthusiasts. A number of important traveling exhibitions that opened earlier in the year are still being featured across the country and are accessible from the Blog page entitled: Select Art Exhibitions in 2013. This page is updated on a weekly basis by either adding newly discovered exhibitions or removing those that are approaching their expiration date. Its intent is to provide comprehensive coverage of current ongoing exhibitions on view for the current quarter of the year.

Black Art Project (BAP) welcomes any information or leads that you might have relating to Black art exhibitions, particularly regional exhibitions that are not traditionally marketed on a national scale. BAP will verify the accuracy of any information submitted. Thank you for any assistance that you provide.

Brooklyn, New York

Brooklyn Museum

Wangechi Mutu (Kenyan, b. 1972). Riding Death in My Sleep, 2002. Ink and collage on paper, 60" x 44". Collection of Peter Norton, New York. © Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey will be on view in the Elizabeth Sackler

Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum from October 11, 2013 through

March 9, 2014. This is Wangechi Mutu’s first survey in the United States; it is

the most comprehensive and innovative show yet for this internationally renowned, multidisciplinary artist.

More than 50 works from the mid-1990s to the present, including collage, drawing, sculpture, installation and video are featured in Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey. The exhibition features many of the artist’s most iconic collages drawn from major international collections, rarely seen early works and new creations. 

A richly illustrated, full-color catalogue accompanies the exhibition Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey.

College Park, Maryland

University of Maryland

The David C. Driskell Center

Alison Saar, Weight, 2012, Fiberglass, wood, rope, cotton scale and miscellaneous objects, 80"x 65"x 24".
© Alison Saar, 2013. Image courtesy of LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA.

Alison Saar: STILL..., a collection of 11 sculptures created by artist Alison Saar, includes works from 2010 to 2012 and combines the ruggedness of nature with solid structure; the exhibition includes four never-exhibited works and six new pieces. Alison Saar: STILL... will be on view at the David Driskell Center from September 12 through December 13, 2013.

Alison Saar’s work is deeply tied to her multiracial heritage, and it is through this lens which she so strikingly captures the human spirit. Through her sculptures, she displays the primal intensity of people underlying the civility of everyday life. Saar scrutinizes bigotry and historical burdens and portrays these concepts through a visual and kinesthetic tension, such as in the powerful piece titled Weight that shows a young black girl on a swing, weighed down with shackles, a lock and key, boxing gloves and other assorted items on a cotton scale. "Combining African art and ritual, Greek mythology, and German aspects of expressionism, Saar challenges stereotypes and offers an indictment of human discrimination." SEE more images from Alison Saar: STILL....

A catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

  Ithaca, New York

 Cornell University

 Johnson Museum of Art

Laylah Ali, Untitled, 2000, gouache and pencil on paper, Collection of Susan Greenberg Minster. Photo courtesy of the artist

Johnson Museum of Art presents Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series. The exhibition will be on view September 14 through December 22, 2013. The Greenheads series - created between 1996 and 2005- will be shown as a comprehensive body of work. Over forty of these gouache paintings from a total of more than eighty have been gathered from collections to chronicle the series' development.

Laylah Ali: The Greenheads Series "chronicle the development of her dramatis personae—thin, round-headed two-dimensional beings of indeterminate sex and race—who anticipate, respond to, or enact unseen power struggles." The exhibition will allow viewers to examine the evolution of Ali’s series.

Madison, Wisconsin

University of Wisconsin–Madison Campus

Chazen Museum of Art

Romare Bearden (1912–1988), Cattle of the Sun God, 1977, collage, © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York. Courtesy Ann and Sheldon Vogel

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey, featuring approximately 50 works, will be on view through November 24, 2013 at the Chazen Museum of Art. The museum will also organize extensive educational and community programming in conjunction with the exhibition. "In 1977, Romare Bearden created a series of collages and watercolors based on Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. Rich in symbolism and allegorical content, Bearden’s Odyssey series bridged classical mythology and African American culture. The series conveyed timelessness and the universality of the human condition, but was displayed for only two months in New York City before the works went to private collections and public art museums."

Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey is organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in cooperation with the Romare Bearden Foundation and Estate and DC Moore Gallery. It was curated by English and jazz scholar Robert G. O’Meally, the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature and founder and former director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University. 

SEE exhibition related programs. A catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Barbara Chase-Riboud, American, born 1939, All That Rises Must Converge / Red, 2008. Red bronze, silk, cotton, and synthetic fibers, 74 1/2" x 42" x 28", Base: 23 1/2" x 17 5/8". Courtesy of the Artist.

Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from September 14, 2013 through January 20, 2014. The exhibition will bring together more than forty works from the United States and Europe that examine Barbara Chase-Riboud’s artistic career, focusing primarily on her important Malcolm X sculptures. See this exhibition in the following galleries: 172, 173, Alter Gallery 176, and Great Stair Hall.

Chase-Riboud’s sculptures dedicated to Malcolm X have been likened to contemporary interpretations of the steles erected in various parts of the ancient world to commemorate important people and events. Cast from cut and folded sheets of wax, the sculptures combine bronze, manipulated into undulating folds and crevices, with knotted and braided silk and wool fiber. 

The artist developed the first four sculptures in this series in 1969, inspired by the civil rights movement and her political and personal experiences living in France and traveling to North Africa, China, and the Soviet Union. Chase-Riboud returned to the series in 2003 and again in 2007–8, creating a total of nine additional works. Reconciling vertical and horizontal, mineral and organic, light and dark, the artist has forged in the Malcolm X steles powerful beacons dedicated to the possibility of cultural integration.

There is a catalogue, Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Steles, offering insightful assessments of the works in the exhibition and includes the artist's reflections in her own voice on her oeuvre. 

 Sacramento, California
Crocker Art Museum

 

Kara Walker, Untitled (Scene #5 from Emancipation Approximation portfolio), 1999–2000. Screenprint on paper, (7/20),   44" x 34".

Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker's Tales of Slavery and Power will be on view September 22, 2013 through January 5, 2014 at the Crocker Art Museum. 

Featuring 60 objects from the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, the exhibition demonstrates the artistic approach Walker takes to subject matter, historical narrative, and the complexities and ambiguities of racial and historical representation. To make her pursuit compelling, Walker radically reinvented the 19th-century silhouette portrait, elevating the practice of tracing onto and cutting out black paper figures into a formidable, grand format for her "nightmarish fictions."  

The graphic nature of the artist's work, both in content and format, moves from the wall to moving picture in this presentation of silhouettes, drawings, prints, and video. As race remains one of the most difficult conversations to have in America, this exhibition is especially timely amid the discourse on race today, 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. 

St. Louis, Missouri

Washington University in St. Louis

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

        

Rashid Johnson, Self Portrait Laying on Jack Johnson's Grave, 2006.

Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks is the first major solo museum exhibition to survey the career of this Chicago-born, New York-based artist. Featured in the Kemper Museum's Ebsworth Gallery, the exhibition will be on view September 20, 2013 - January 6, 2014.  Message to Our Folks, titled after a 1969 album by avant-garde jazz collective Art Ensemble of Chicago, the exhibition examines how Johnson's work has developed over the first fourteen years of his career.

"Johnson incorporates commonplace objects from his childhood into his work in a process he describes as hijacking the domestic. He transforms these materials—plants, books, record albums, photographs, shea butter, soap—into conceptually loaded and visually compelling art that investigates the construction of identity. Steeped in individual experience while invoking shared cultural references, Johnson's work also calls upon black American creative and intellectual figures, extending the legacy of these cultural icons."

A fully illustrated catalog, the most comprehensive documentation of Johnson’s work to date, accompanies the exhibition.  

Venice, California 

L A Louver Gallery 

Alison, Saar, The Cotton Eater study (sugar sack shroud series), 2013
found sugar sacks, gesso, charcoal and graphite, 81" x 37". Image courtesy L.A. Louver, Venice, CA.

Alison Saar: Slough, featuring new sculptures and drawings created in 2013, will be on view at L A Louver Gallery from September 3 through October 5, 2013. The title of the exhibition, Slough, is defined as "a situation characterized by lack of progress," or "to cast off or shed dead skin." It is this duality of meaning, and a sense of both impasse and renewal, that pervades the 15 new works in the exhibition.

The Cotton Eater Study (sugar sack shroud series) is a large drawing measuring 81 x 37 inches rendered with charcoal and graphite on found cotton sugar sacks. This and other drawings on cotton panels from the sugar sack shroud series are on view in the exhibition. Another of those drawings, Backwater Blues, "which Saar created in New Orleans during her fellowship at the Joan Mitchell Foundation in April 2013. Dismayed by the lack of progress following the tragedy of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Backwater Blues illustrates a woman clothed in a sheer slip gazing back as water rises above her ankles. Framed by a found screen door, the drawing sheds light on the media’s voyeuristic coverage of the devastation  following the hurricane, where footage of victims often disheveled and undressed, were broadcast without any regard for their dignity."

Black Art Project (BAP) Booklist 5

This is the fifth in a continuing series, highlighting either recently published books or those that are forthcoming, that have an African American art focus. When building a personal library that has some focus on African American visual art, it is advisable to make your book purchases shortly after the book or catalogue has been published. Making an early purchase more readily assures you that the titles you are interested in have not gone out of print. When a title does go out of print, the secondary market becomes a viable option; however, you must then weigh cost and condition differences among the few dealers that may have a copy for sale. I can not over emphasize that fine art books are published in smaller print runs than books in other subject disciplines.

The following post and the addendum of recent publications are simply a few new titles that have been released since the last Booklist: 

Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery which is co-authored by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer is a Temple University Press publication. According to Willis, “We wanted a range of images that showed the scope of the thinking about what freedom looked like. ...We consciously looked for black photographers; we consciously looked for images of women, whose stories have often not been included.”

"Published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 2013, the book brings together more than 150 images — half never seen by the public — that depict the many ways slavery, Emancipation and freedom were represented by photography during the Civil War era and beyond." (New York Times, 12/21/12: Books) 


Henry Taylor is a forthcoming title published on the occasion of Taylor's 2012 exhibition (January 29 - April 9. 2012) at MoMA PS1. Henry Taylor, a Los Angeles-based artist, applies his brush both to canvas and to unconventional materials, including suitcases, crates, cereal boxes, cigarette packs, etc. His source material includes everyone and everything around him.

Before Taylor studied art formally, he "worked for ten years as a psychiatric nurse at a state hospital. This experience sharpened his interest in, and appreciation for, individuals from all economic and social backgrounds, and encouraged a passion to create an intensely empathetic style of portraiture." 

The expected release date for this publication, which is illustrated throughout, is April 2013. Text is by Laura Hoptman, Naima Keith, and there is an interview by Peter Eleey. 

       

Kara Walker: Dust Jackets for the Niggerati, another forthcoming publication, has an expected United States release date of April 30, 2013. This publication documents Dust Jackets for the Niggerati--and Supporting Dissertations, Drawings Submitted Ruefully by Dr. Kara E. Walker, "a major series of graphite drawings and hand-printed texts on paper that grew out of Walker’s attempts to understand how interpersonal and geopolitical powers are asserted through the lives of individuals. In scenes that range from the grotesque to the humorous to the tragic, these works vividly and powerfully explore the themes of transition and migration that run through the African-American experience." 

The book, published by Gregory R. Miller and Co., is fully illustrated with reproductions of the entire series. It includes text by Hilton Als, James Hannaham, Christopher Stackhouse, and Kevin Young.

Theaster Gates: My Labor Is My Protest was a fall 2012 show (September 7- November 11) at London's White Cube in which Gates created a multi-faceted installation that  "investigated themes of race and history through sculpture, installation, performance and two-dimensional works exhibited both inside and outside the gallery. ...Also included in the show and accompanying catalogue is documentation of The Johnson Library, a library on black American culture installed at the gallery.

This catalogue is edited by Honey Luard with text by Bill Brown, Fred Moten, and Jacqueline Terrassa. 

To view other recent titles, see BAP Booklist on WorldCat.