Auction Action in African-American Art

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Swann Galleries
African-American Fine Art Sale
Feb 6, 2007
Above: Romare Bearden color screenprint Martin Luther King, Jr.—Mountain Top, 1968

I don’t know why no one thought of it before. The market for African-American art has been on a quiet, steady rise for the last decade or so. But not until last month did any auction house think to mount the first dedicated sale of African-American art.

Frankly, it’s about time.

Credit Swann Galleries for figuring it out. With a decade’s worth of annual Printed and Manuscript African-Americana sales under their belt, and a print department that has been regularly offering works on paper by undervalued 20th-century black artists, this market has been right under their noses. They have the history of establishing prices in a highly fragmented market. They have the clients. They’ve built the secondary-market niche. Having waded in up to their knees, Swann finally decided to take the full plunge.

So, on February 6 this year, they offered more than 200 lots of paintings, prints and sculpture ranging from rare early 19th-century works, through the Harlem Renaissance and WPA, into mid-century abstraction, up to contemporary stars like Kara Walker. All in all, more than a century’s worth of deserving artists whose work is still largely undervalued relative to the red-hot American art market.

All of which attracted a standing room crowd of more than 200, with major collectors and museums in the hunt.

No surprise that the high lot of the day came with Jake Lawrence’s 1977 portfolio The Legend of John Brown, which sold for $156,000. Lawrence, along with Romare Bearden, has been a pillar of the African-American art world for the last 50 years, and this work grafts his stark modernist sensibility onto a hot topic in black history. (The print series replicated a series of small panels he had originally painted in 1941, at the start of his career.) The only other six-figure work was Elizabeth Catlett’s elegant, African-inspired carved mahogany torso of 1976, which sold for $120,000.

Overall this inaugural sale proved a strong first outing. Results totaled $2.3 million, above the $2 million low estimate. And 19 artists hit new record prices.

What was missing—thankfully—was the raucous irrationality, a la what was on prominent display in auction rooms in London that very same week. With most works falling within estimate, this felt more like a market cautiously but confidently finding its level. My guess is that this can probably be explained by two factors: 1) there has traditionally been a small cadre of knowledgeable, dedicated collectors and dealers sharing this fairly small pool, stabilizing the market; and 2) historical patronage for African-American artists was never abundant, meaning that the available supply of top material is not endlessly deep; owners of the genre’s real gems may be waiting until the auction is better established before they open the vaults. As expected, the sale was strongest in prints and drawings, where Swann has a long-established pipeline. But we weren’t seeing really top collages by Romare Bearden (the one shown above is a color screenprint), or a surfeit of large, important works by Norman Lewis and others. Swann President Nicho Lowry promises even better material ahead, with a major institutional collection headlining their next African-American sale this fall.

All that said, Swann should be applauded. They spirited a mother lode of material from the market woodwork, bringing out not only big names like Charles White, Beauford Delaney, Benny Andrews and Lois Mailou Jones, but they provided first-time auction exposure for more than half of the catalog’s 70 artists. Give them time. They’re on to something important here, they’re committed to this material and they made a great first move. It’s the kind of risk-taking, market-making auction that you won’t see at Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Onward and upward!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am and is filed under Fine Art, Auction Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.