For most of the auction I could only see the back of Faith Ringgold’s head. She was wearing a fabric cap, burgundy on top with a wide black band.
At one point, she turned her head to the right for a look over her shoulder, and I thought I detected a smile. She probably felt the exuberance of the crowd during the auction of a quilt that she had made for writer Maya Angelou back in 1989. Ringgold, 84, is noted for her quilts, which tell stories in paintings and words.
Titled “Maya’s Quilt of Life,” this one bore excerpts from such Angelou works as “The Heart of a Woman” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
The room was packed with about 100 people whom the always-entertaining auctioneer Nicholas Lowry had welcomed to a proud (and perhaps lucky) Swann Auction Galleries’ sale of 44 artworks from Angelou’s collection. “Some of you came here to watch,” he said. “Some of you came here to bid. Some of you are just here.”
The quilt and an equally beautiful painting by African American artist John Biggers were the highlight of the New York auction. And both did exceedingly well. The collection – which included the quilt, a Mel Edwards sculpture, photograph, paintings and prints – brought in about $1.25 million (including a 25 percent buyer’s premium, according to my calculations from the sale).
Bidding on the Ringgold quilt started at $80,000 and proceed upward at a clip. After hitting $300,000, the bid lingered, but potential buyers – most on the phone – kept it going.
Click to listen to the bidding on the quilt:
By the time it was over, the quilt sold for $380,000 (which did not include the buyer’s premium charged by the auction house).
The price brought a round of applause from the audience, just as the final price on Biggers’ “Kumasi Market” had done. It had sold for $320,000 (minus the premium). Both, I believe, were acquired through phone bids.
The excitement about the sale price of the quilt was palpable, and I was certain Ringgold was feeling the same. It was “okay,” she said mildly when I asked her about it after the auction. Surprised, I wanted to know more. She explained that her works sell for more in private sales.
Her comments were the same expressed by artist David Driskell at a Swann auction earlier this year after several of his works – not owned by him but sold on the secondary market – were sold. Driskell said that his paintings sell for much more privately at the New York gallery that represents him.
Auctions are generally like that, though. People who come to them normally don’t expect to pay a pretty penny for anything sold in that venue. And works by African American artists never really match the price that they are actually worth. That has always been the case, and it was inherent in the applause of people in the audience who were familiar with that history of denial.
Ringgold’s dealer at ACA Galleries in New York was ecstatic, though. “It’s an incredible day,” said Dorian Bergen, president of ACA Galleries. “I’m happy.” She took the business rather than the artistic approach. The $380,000 price was comparable, she said, to the $400,000 that Ringgold quilts normally sell for privately.
What was important about this sale, Bergen noted to Ringgold, was that it puts a public value on her quilts. Privately, there’s no record of sales for public view; now there is. This was Ringgold’s first quilt to come to auction, according to the auction catalog.
The quilt was commissioned by Oprah Winfrey for her friend Angelou’s 61st birthday in 1989, and someone suggested that perhaps Winfrey purchased it. It had hung in Angelou’s home in Harlem, according to the auction catalog.
Most of the artwork up for sale were signed prints by African American artists. Several of the works bore personal inscriptions, and some were produced as gifts to Angelou, who died last year at age 86. She was one of the country’s greatest writers, and Lowry peppered the auction with many of her quotes about art, women and life.
Some of the prints seemed to attract prices way beyond what I recalled from other auctions and from their estimates in the Swann catalog. So I figured it was the Angelou mystique. Nigel Freeman, director of Swann’s African-American Fine Arts Department who manages its twice-a-year African American art sale, agreed about the provenance of the pieces.
“There are people who wanted pieces of her collection,” he said. “These belonged to Maya Angelou.”
What a difference a name makes. The only painting that did not sell was one that Angelou herself painted in 1969 titled “The Protector of Home and Family” featuring a woman holding a gun. It was offered with a starting price of $9,000.
Here are prices for some of the other artwork that was sold (prices do not include the buyer’s premium), including “Survivor” by Elizabeth Catlett that I purchased at an auction recently:
For those fortunate enough to go home with a work of art once owned by an immortal soul was indeed, a good day to have.
ALL of that art work is so beautiful!!
That quilt is incredible. My other favorite is the Romare Bearden “The Obeahs Choice.”
Thanks for posting.