For a minute at auction last weekend, I thought it was African American Women Month, not Black History Month.
For there were four conspicuous images of black women: a photograph, an oil painting, a poster and a calendar. It’s not often that I come across images of people who look like me on the auction tables. And when I do, they are usually the demeaning and stereotypical ones from another time. Most of the items at auction are vintage and represent periods when we were treated more as prey than citizens.
I’m not sure if anyone else noticed the images as earnestly as I did. I’m always looking for them – on tables, on walls, among documents, hidden inside junk boxes. I spotted the first one from afar as I was about to start my walk-through at the auction house. It looked like a photograph, touched up in color, of an African American woman. Just under her cuff, I could see a nice jeweled watch. (Click on the photo above for a fuller view.)
She had the look of a school teacher or someone in a similar profession, sitting there proper and erect. I couldn’t find a date to determine when it was taken.
I wasn’t even sure if I would bid on it. Usually, items with an African American theme tend to spark a bidding war because they are so collectible these days. Our history is in vogue! When the auction began, I was still uncertain until the auctioneer dropped the starting bid to $5. Then I raised my auction number; no way was I going to let anyone else leave the auction house that day with this woman’s photo for $5.
Then another bidder stepped in, and we went at it tit-for-tat until it ended at $17.50 – in my favor. Later, my auction-buddy Janet mentioned that she had considered bidding before she saw me step in. She, however, didn’t want to pay $17.50 for it.
So, Ms. School Teacher came home with me.
The other image was an oil on canvas of three women. The artist had completed two of them, but the other was like a ghost. She had no color, just faint brush strokes, unfinished. It was as if the artist had stopped in mid-project. It made me wonder about the circumstances. Did something happen to the painter? Was the piece actually completed and the third woman, possibly a sister, was no longer alive and this was the artist’s interpretation of her presence? I’d love to know the story.
I picked up the painting – which was pretty large and frameless – and turned it over to its back to see if there was a signature or some inscription. There was none. Soon, another auction-goer stopped, just as intrigued as me. I asked the rhetorical question that I always ask: Why would someone give away something so personal?
He told me that he had been a curator at a museum in Massachusetts specializing in furnishings. He’d go to houses and families would tell him to take the stuff, he said, because they did not want it. He’d always ask if there was anything they wanted to keep. Usually, they said no. He would suggest that some grandchildren may want the keepsakes.
He was an antiques dealer for 19 years, he offered, and now sells in Gettysburg. PA, and online.
When the painting came up at auction, neither he nor I bought it. It didn’t appeal to me. As I stood there listening to the auctioneer funnel down to the lowest bid of $5, a young man next to me jumped in. He got the painting for $12.50. I assumed that he would sell it, but he told me that he was buying it for himself. He likes unusual things, he said, adding that the painting was different because it was unfinished.
The third image was a poster from the Million Woman March in October 1997. Remember that one, which drew from 300,000 to two million people, depending on who’s counting, to Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia? It came two years after the Million Man March in Washington, organized by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Both were aimed at addressing issues of relevance to the African American community. The woman’s march was organized by Empress Phile Chionesu and Asia Coney, and powered by community activists and other grassroots people in Philadelphia.
I hadn’t seen a MWM poster in years. I don’t think this one was the official poster but likely may have been sold by a vendor. I still have some buttons that I bought from a vendor at the event. I wasn’t around when the poster sold, but the event is much too fresh for the poster to have any collectible value yet.
The final image came to my attention as I waited for some items in the back room, the one I call the junk room with the really cheap stuff. I noticed a black woman’s face peering from a calendar in a box. How had I missed it? I couldn’t get any closer to check it out, so I decided to wait until the auctioneer came to it.
When he did, I had to fight my way through the crowd, giving me little time to look at the calender. The box also contained several books, including “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron (published in 1967). I didn’t get a chance to take out the calendar – another buyer was fumbling with the items, too – before the auctioneer sold the box lot for $10.
