I had gone to the art preview at Freeman’s Auctioneers to see works by African American artists Lois Mailou Jones, Romare Bearden and Ron Adams.
Jones, whom I had interviewed in 1993, is one of my favorites and it’s not often that I see her works up for sale. Most people are familiar with Bearden’s name. And I had met Adams, an artist and printmaker, some years ago when I bought a Charles White print from him.
Now, the works of all three were being auctioned alongside a bounty of paintings seized from the home of the Birmingham, AL, owner of HealthSouth Corp., who had been accused of accounting fraud. They included such names as Picasso, Miro, Warhol and Dali.
I was more interested, though, in the art less talked about – the African American art. At the preview the day before the auction, I searched the walls for the three works. I finally came upon two original prints: Bearden’s color lithograph “Mecklenburg Autumn.” Adams’ “Blackburn,” a lithograph of master printmaker Robert Blackburn that is also in the Smithsonian.
Next to them should have been the Jones painting, but it was nowhere to be found. I was about to ask an auction staff until I remembered seeing a large black binder of artwork. I flipped through the binder (a note suggested that flipping be done carefully), and Voila! There it was, unframed and wrapped in plastic.
It was a study that she had painted in 1994. It was all golds and browns and yellows of an African-style face – a mixed media on paper.
As I was looking through the binder, I also came across three very colorful and whimsical prints that called out to me. They contained African mask-like images of what looked like crayon drawings of children at play, happy and content, but created with a deft hand. All were watercolor and black ink on paper, and untitled.
I checked the identification: George Lilanga. Tanzanian 1934-2005.
I was instantly interested in them, but figured that they’d go for much more than I was willing to pay (I’m spoiled from paying little for art at mom-and-pop auction houses).
I Googled and found the website georgelilanga.com, which opened by welcoming you to the “imaginary world of Lilanga.” And then I understood the images. Lilanga was born a Makonde in a village in southern Tanzania, where he started out by carving cassava root, according to the website. He next moved into carving the traditional hard black wood used by the Makonde, joined a group of carvers in the city of Dar es Salaam and promoted his work there. He later ventured into drawing. Lilanga held exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Japan.
The site, which also includes his sculpture, described his works this way:
“The imaginary world of Lilanga is inhabited by cartoon-like personages, not very different from people. They may only have two fingers on their hands, three toes on their feet, extended lips reminiscent of the traditional Nona Makonde women and elongated ears, but otherwise the rest of the body is human-like. A common name used for Lilanga’s works has been the equivalent of devil Mashetani but the negative connotation of this term is misleading. Lilanga’s art is rather the world of spirits. ‘Mizimu’ meaning all the presences filling one’s mind, deceased or living.”
The movement in the artwork was Mapiko, the dance of the Makonde people . Artist Keith Haring is said to have been influenced by Lilanga’s depictions of his people.
At the auction, I didn’t get a paddle number because I didn’t want to be tempted. I waited for the Lilanga pieces to come up. The prices were reasonable, and the bidding was low: The two pieces sold for $305, the single for $325.
The Jones study drew two bidders, one on the floor and the other on the phone. I had met the floor bidder before at one of my favorite auction houses when he bought an Elizabeth Catlett drawing and several other pieces. He got the Jones for $3,000.
Bearden went for $1,600, and Adams did not sell.
The main attraction at the auction, though, was the paintings from the estate of Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth, which owned health-care facilities. He had been accused of and acquitted of fraud in a criminal case in 2005, but found guilty a year later of bribing the former governor of Alabama and imprisoned, according to the Birmingham News.
The sale of his assets came from a civil trial that found him culpable for accounting fraud – it came out at trial that he faked $1.3 billion in profits at his company, according to the newspaper. Lawyers for the company’s shareholders are trying to recoup more than $2.8 billion to pay his debts.
An auction of Scrushy’s household and personal items – down to his suits and ties – was conducted in March.
This was the second such auction that I had gone to in a month. The first was a marshal’s sale that featured a Philadelphia-area man who was has been charged with engaging in a $17 million Ponzi scheme. He is awaiting trial. The items seized from his house included cars, Christmas decorations, furniture, cameras, exercise equipment and more.
The sale at Freeman’s was all about the artwork. My local newspaper wrote about the Picassos and Chagalls that Scrushy had either purchased under his own guidance or through the advice of someone who knew good art.
The auction drew a large crowd, with people lining the back wall and seated in all the chairs. A bank of about a dozen phones were set up for bidders and two computers accessed the internet. In most auctions like these, bidders are usually museum reps.
Here are some of the prices (which do not include the premium charged by the auction house) of about 20 works sold from the collection:
Marc Chagall, “L’Echelle Au Ciel,” $150,000.
Pablo Picasso, “Portait De Femme De Profil,” $80,000.
Pablo Picasso, “Tete De Femme No. 5 (Portrait De Dora Maar),” $47,500.
Joan Miro, “L’Oiseau Mongol,” $18,000.
Salvador Dali, “Paradiso,” $60,000.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Enfants Jouant A La Balle,” $45,000.
Donald Roller Wilson, “She Had Seen It.” Don’t you just love this one. I didn’t hang around for this sale, but the Freeman site says it sold for $8,000 and another one like it for $13,000.
The following were not part of the Scrushy sale, but I found them interesting:
Josef Dobrowsky, “Floral Still Life,” $18,000. The oil on canvas had an auction estimate of $4,000-$6,000.
Francis Newton Souza, “Still Life,” $12,000. The woman sitting next to me shook her head. She couldn’t figure out why anyone would pay that much for the painting. I wondered the same thing. In fact, I wondered about that for many of the paintings; so did the old gentleman next to me who several times pointed out works that he said resembled a child’s handiwork.
Le Pho, “Le Debout D’ete,” $60,000.
Jose Clemente Orozco, “Reclining Nude,” $18,000. I had seen Orozco’s name a week or so ago when I came across what looked like a reproduction of a Mexican scene. He was a Mexican muralist who was not as well known as his contemporary Diego Rivera.
