I drove to New York yesterday for the Swann Auction Galleries’ sale of African American fine art with my art-auction buddy Kristin. I hadn’t planned to go to this one, but there were some pieces I wanted to see in person.
I don’t think this was one of Swann’s larger auctions; there were only 140 pieces and the sale moved rather quickly. The auctioneer lightened up the proceedings by peppering his calls with snatches of humor that snapped me out of my nodding-off.
Kristin, though, thought this was one of the better auctions. That’s likely because she got a chance to spot some celebrities. Nothing makes her happier than to see some actor or personality show up. Once, she told me, Beyonce and her mother were there and bidding.
Yesterday’s auction was a collage of vignettes, and here are some of them:
Celeb sightings:
As I sat there, my head down, working my Droid, Kristin spotted her first celebrity: Anthony Mackie. I looked up and instantly recognized the actor whom I had seen on stage earlier this year during the Academy Awards on TV. He had been among those celebrating the Best Picture win for the movie “The Hurt Locker.” Mackie had played a sergeant in the movie about an elite bomb squad unit in Iraq.
Here he was at Swann raising his numbered paddle to bid on some African American art. Was he buying for investment? To hang on the walls of a new home? He picked up at least two pieces, including Elizabeth Catlett’s “In Harriet Tubman I Helped Hundreds to Freedom.”
Soon, another actor arrived in the midst of the bidding. Neither Kristin nor I could recall his name but we knew him: the shaved head, the silver loop earring in the left ear. Search for “Crooklyn” on your phone, Kristin urged. I did, and up popped a photo and name: Delroy Lindo. He sat next to a man whom he later seemed to be conferring with as he bought artwork.
Lindo picked up at least five pieces, including Charles White’s “Portrait of a Man” and Jacob Lawrence’s “Confrontation at the Bridge.”
Discoveries:
Soon after we arrived, I was about to pass by a small oil painting on the wall when I decided to stop and take a closer look. It was a folk-artsy landscape, with brightly colored flowers, trees and a stream with boulders. It was signed “Minnie Evans” and dated 1957 in the lower right corner. I checked the catalog to learn more about the painting and the artist, and my interest was piqued.
The piece was called “Greenfield Lake,” which the catalog described as a “Henri Rousseau-like park scene in Wilmington, N.C., where she had worked as a gatekeeper in Airlie Gardens since 1948.” Evans apparently was better known for creating images in crayon and watercolor on paper. The catalog said that this was believed to be her first oil landscape to come to auction. Evans had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1975.
The painting sold for $4,320 (all the prices in this post include the buyer’s premium of 20 percent).
Here are examples of her crayon drawings. And here’s a preview of a documentary about her called “Angel That Stands By Me: Minnie Evans Paintings,” along with a transcript of the video. She died in 1987.
Another piece that caught my eye was an oil painting by Haywood Bill Rivers called “Untitled (Woman in Armchair, Smoking Pipe).” It, too, was a folk-art-style painting, and according to the catalog, Rivers was inspired by Horace Pippin. The painting (circa 1948-1950) sold for $13,200. Here’s another example of his work.
Robert Savon Pious’ “Joe Louis vs. Clarence ‘Red’ Burman” was a wonderful oil on illustration board of a fight scene. Pious was connected early on to the Harmon Foundation, a benefactor of African American artists during and after the Harlem Renaissance. He was also a cartoonist and book illustrator. The auctioneer started bidding at $30,000, but the painting did not sell.
Sculpture:
Sargent Claude Johnson’s “Mask” – which sold for $67,200 – was one of those pieces I had seen in books and was delighted to get a chance to actually see in person. Johnson is a well-known sculptor whose works bring in high prices at auction.
Another in that category was William Edmondson’s “Squirrel.” According to the catalog, the squirrel was one of a pair that sat near the front entrance to a family’s Nashville home in the 1940s.
Edmondson was a self-taught sculptor who worked in stone, primarily during the 1930s. He started out carving animals and then moved into carving people. In 1937, he had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the first for a black artist. The squirrel sold for $31,200.
Hollywood still photographer:
The woman thought she recognized the man; he was involved in the movies but she couldn’t remember which one. He mentioned a few, including “Juice,” which starred rapper Tupac Shakur; “The Way We Were,” “On Golden Pond.” That made me start to wonder, too: Was he a director? Producer? So Kristin and I struck up a conversation with him.
His name was Adger W. Cowans, and he spent his career photographing stills for Hollywood movies. I pulled out my Droid and looked up his name. Up it popped with not only his movies but his photography and fine art. I showed him some photos: One was a lovely scene with trees silhouetted against the moonlight. Another shot was a similar moonlight scene of what looked like a child doing a flip against a gray background.
As he talked, he was looking among his things for a photo he had done of singer Abbey Lincoln, who died last year. He said the photo had been enlarged and placed on the stage during her funeral. Lincoln was not the only famous person he had photographed, according to my Google search. He’s done Mick Jagger, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughn. After leaving the Navy in 1960, he became an assistant to Gordon Parks at Life Magazine.
Cowans’ main career was in Hollywood, where he photographed stills for such movies as “Nothing But a Man,” Cotton Comes to Harlem,” “The Cotton Club,” “Dirty Dancing,” and “City Hall.”
It was a thrill meeting him. That’s what I like about auctions: you never know what remarkable people you might bump into.
Highlights of the day:
Robert Colescott’s “A Legend Dimly Told,” which sold for $132,000.
A Jacob Lawrence piece from the 1940s of a card-playing couple. It was a whimsical piece, much unlike the Lawrence paintings I’m familiar with. It was called “Two Card Players” and dated to a time when Lawrence and his wife – the artist Gwendolyn Knight – spent in New Orleans. It was unsigned but the auction house had documentation from a Lawrence expert. It sold for $67,200.
Note: A retrospective of 70 paintings and other works by Lois Mailou Jones – whose work “Le Sacré-Cœur, Montmartre, Paris” was in the Swann auction and sold for $16,200 – will be on exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts through Jan. 9, 2011.
