Art for Sale Page 2

By Richard J. Powell

Many artists whose careers extended back to the 1930s and 1940s resurfaced with a renewed sense of racial solidarity and political insurgency during the Black Arts Movement. Painters Lois Mailou Jones and John Biggers and sculptor and printmaker Elizabeth Catlett all aligned themselves with the younger generation of black artists, creating works that underscored their shared interest in African design sensibilities, the black figure, and the continuing struggle for civil rights.

For many abstract artists like Frank Bowling, Sam Gilliam, Richard Hunt, Barbara Chase-Riboud, and Raymond Saunders, critical and commercial success provided evidence that black artists were capable of overcoming racial obstacles and taking their rightfully earned places within the contemporary scene. These advancements were made all the more emphatic by the achievements of artists like the Washington painter Alma Thomas, who, at the age of eighty, was the first African American woman to have a solo exhibition at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972. Artists who subscribed to a black nationalist agenda argued that Thomas (along with the other well-known black abstractionists) created works that did not challenge the aesthetic sensibilities of the white cultural mainstream. In response, abstractionists like Al Loving, Ed Clark, Joe Overstreet, Jack Whitten, and William T. Williams felt that this line of thinking showed how pervasive more conservative approaches to the visual arts were in African American communities. Both positions demonstrated how difficult it was for even the most sophisticated art connoisseurs to glean cultural elements out of abstractions. The same myopia often existed in interpretations of works by folk artists like Clementine Hunter and the evangelist-turned-painter Sister Gertrude Morgan.

As artists and audiences grew more conversant in the diverse ways that one could express black culture, the 1970s and 1980s ushered in a variety of artists and artworks all comfortably operating under the rubric of Afro-American art. From the photorealism of painter Barkley L. Hendricks and neomannerist stylizations of painter Ernie Barnes to the cloth-and canvas accretions of mixed-media artist Benny Andrews and altar-like installations of sculptor Betye Saar, African American art could no longer be contained in neat, stylistic categories. The important exhibitions of past and present African American art organized by curators David C. Driskell and Edmund B. Gaither and the definitive histories and art publications of Elsa Honig Fine, Samella Lewis, and Ruth Waddy helped educate the experts and uninformed public alike on all that might constitute an African American art.

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On Friday, the main Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton (800 Vine St., Downtown) gets its 2011 exhibition season underway with My Castle on the Nile: Illustrated Sheet Music by Black Composers, 1828-1944. It will be up through Feb. 28 in the museum’s Cincinnati Room. The show draws on sheet music from the library’s extensive collection, featuring covers that are hand-drawn and often reproduced as brightly colored chromolithographs.

While it has work by such well-known figures as “Fats” Waller and Duke Ellington, it also delves deeper into the music’s history. For instance, there is 1828 sheet music by Francis Johnson, the first African-American composer to have his works published in this form and to give racially integrated concerts. Also featured is 19th-century Tin Pan Alley composer Gussie Davis, a native Cincinnatian who wrote “Irene, Good Night” in 1886, made famous decades later in an altered version — called “Goodnight, Irene” — by the folksinger Leadbelly.

The show was curated by Theresa Leininger-Miller, assistant art history professor at UC who will give an opening lecture at 2 p.m. Saturday. For more information, call the Library’s Geneology & History Department at 513-369-6905.

Go here for library hours and exhibit information.

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By Adams Susan,

Hanging in Robert Johnson’s den is an oil from the 1930s by an African-American artist named Palmer Hayden. The painting depicts a black American businessman getting his shoes shined.

The subject is nattily dressed in suit and spats, a little like Johnson himself, who is sporting a crisply pressed blue shirt and a shiny yellow tie.

Johnson may be known for the low-budget comedy routines and booty-shaking music videos that drove the success of BET, the cable channel he founded that turned him into America’s first black billionaire in 2001.

But in his private moments he is moved by art that documents the struggles and achievements of black people in America. Since the early 1980s Johnson, 62, has assembled some 250 pieces by 19th- and 20th-century African-American artists.

Though Johnson’s collection is probably worth only a couple of million dollars, it includes some of the most famous names of the genre: cubist-inspired collage artist Romare Bearden (1911-­88); modernist Harlem painter Jacob Lawrence (1917­-2000); and Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859­-1937), who studied under Thomas Eakins in the 1880s and was the first black painter to gain international acclaim.

Son of a Mississippi factory worker, Johnson started his channel in 1979 with a $500,000 investment from John Malone. He sold it to Viacom in 2001, receiving $1.5 billion in stock for his 63% share. Today he owns an NBA team, North Carolina¹s Charlotte Bobcats, and runs RLJ Investments in Bethesda, Md., which includes hotels, car and motorcycle dealerships, a bank and a nascent hedge fund and private equity arm. (Johnson’s current net worth: perhaps $700 million.)

In Pictures: Where To See African-American Art

In Pictures: Black Masters

Though mainstream museums and galleries have been slow to appreciate work by African-Americans, the black community has been collecting for decades.

Bill and Camille Cosby have built a collection of 400 works, including artists like Bearden, Lawrence, late-19th-century landscape painter Edward Mitchell Bannister, self-taught 20th-century artist Horace Pippin and 1960s abstract painter Alma Thomas.

Basketball star Grant Hill owns a collection of midcentury work. Entertainer Harry Belafonte has been collecting African-American art since the 1950s and Oprah Winfrey has been buying a mix of work, including pieces by contemporary artists like Whitfield Lovell. Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Richard Parsons and Kenneth Chenault also collect.

Now white collectors and institutions are discovering these long overlooked works.

“What’s happened in the last five years is a paradigm shift,” observes Steven L. Jones, 61, an African-American dealer in Philadelphia. “This means that the best work is going up exponentially in value.”

Last year Swann Auction Galleries in New York became the first auction house to create a department of African-American art and in February sold a 1944 modernist oil by Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas for $600,000.

Johnson bought most of his art in 1998, when he learned that a significant body of work, the Barnett-Aden collection, was for sale by the Florida Education Fund, along with the building where the art was housed, the National Museum of African American Art, in Tampa. Johnson acquired 222 pieces, including 68 drawings, paintings, prints and sculptures from the original gallery. The rest of the pieces, all by black artists, were added by the museum. Johnson says he doesn’t recall what he paid, but a dealer familiar with the sale pegs it at $400,000. Two dealers who know the collection say it’s tripled and possibly quadrupled in value in the last decade.

Prices continue to climb for quality pieces, even while other collecting categories founder.

Manhattan dealer Michael Rosenfeld says business is strong; he made three six-figure sales during two weeks of stock market turmoil in November. The highest prices for artwork by African-Americans come in the still overheated contemporary art market, where Andy Warhol protégé Jean-Michel Basquiat is the reigning star, with a 2007 auction record of $14.6 million. Kara Walker, 39, who makes large cut-paper silhouettes containing sexual images and black stereotypes like pickaninnies, stirs controversy and commands prices over $400,000.

Johnson, who plans to stage a Washington, D.C., exhibition of his art this February, believes the works should be displayed separately from those of white Americans.

“This is work by artists who were influenced by the fact that they were African-Americans living in America and dealing with all that that means,” he argues.

Sometimes they provocatively exploit racial stereotypes. Example: a 1940 canvas hanging in Johnson’s office by Archibald Motley. Called “The Argument,” the painting depicts a street scene and a couple of men who look like minstrels in blackface, with oversize red lips. Johnson doesn’t have a problem with this picture.

“It’s just black folks being black folks,” he observes, smiling. “They’re talking about what happened in the club last night,” he adds. “Or maybe they’re talking about when they’re going to have a black president.”

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The artworks, valued at approximately $120,000, will be on display from Jan. 13-Feb. 20 at the Ross Art Museum, 60 S. Sandusky St., Delaware. Rembert will visit the Ohio Wesleyan campus Feb. 10 to meet with students, demonstrate his leatherworking techniques, and participate in a panel discussion dealing with the accomplishments and impact of African American artists and the issues affecting the production and acceptance of their works.

Rembert’s studio demonstration will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Feb. 10 in Edgar Hall, 35 S. Sandusky St., home of Ohio Wesleyan’s fine arts department. The panel discussion will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 10 in Room 312 of the R.W. Corns Building, 78 S. Sandusky St. Artist and educator Willis “Bing” Davis of Dayton, Ohio, will moderate the discussion. A reception for Rembert and his exhibition, “Winfred Rembert: Memoirs in Paint,” will follow from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Feb. 10 at the Ross Art Museum. All of these events are free and open to the public.

Four of the Rembert artworks being donated to the university are gifts from Gordon V. Smith and Helen Crider Smith of Potomac, Md., who graduated from Ohio Wesleyan in 1954 and 1956, respectively. The Smiths first saw Rembert’s work at New York’s Adelson Galleries during an exhibit co-sponsored by Peter Tillou Works of Art of Litchfield, Conn.

Tillou, a 1957 Ohio Wesleyan graduate and friend of the Smiths, is donating two Rembert works from his private collection. Tillou met the artist nearly a decade ago and was immediately drawn to his vibrant personality and creativity. Over the years, Tillou has become friends with Rembert and assisted him in exhibiting and marketing his art.

“This is a wonderful example of the enduring friendships created at Ohio Wesleyan and the lifelong connections of our alumni with the university,” said President Rock Jones, Ph.D. “When Gordon and Helen Smith saw Winfred Rembert’s captivating art, they immediately thought of the educational and aesthetic value of adding them to the Ross Art Museum’s permanent collection. Their passion inspired former classmate Peter Tillou, who assisted with the acquisition and added his own generous gift.”

A self-taught artist, Rembert uses more than 60 tools to carve his life onto leather. Born in 1945, he grew up working in the cotton fields of Cuthbert, Georgia. During the 1960s, he was arrested after a Civil Rights march and later survived a near-lynching. He spent seven years in jail during which time he worked on a chain gang and learned to make leather wallets. Years later, his wife suggested he use the medium as a canvas for his life.

According to the Hartford Courant, Rembert’s works “glisten with style, flair, vitality, skillful draftsmanship and dramatic use of perspective. They capture and charm the eye with their bright colors and shapes that almost seem to pop out at you.”

Ohio Wesleyan’s Rembert collection now includes:

• Amazing Grace (2008). “Amazing Grace is one of the songs I remember that was sung in the fields,” Rembert said. “I just loved to listen to the singing. … I still sing those songs today when I’m working.”
• The Alexander Sisters (2009). “Mr. Alexander was a preacher, and all his kids could sing. … They could really wreck a church—their harmonies were like no other.”
• Saved and Saintified (2005). “I never considered myself saved and saintified; church folk said you can’t get to heaven unless you are saved and saintified. … I go to church almost every Sunday and it looks as if I’ll never get saved and saintified.”
• The Wood Boy (2007). “The teacher made me the wood boy. I would go outside, get wood, and feed the potbelly stove. I didn’t mind because I didn’t want to be called on by the teacher to answer questions.”
• Chain Gang (2010). This black-and-white piece represents Rembert’s chain gang memories.
• Cotton Field #4 (2003). This unfinished piece shows Rembert’s intricate leatherwork before he applies dyes.

With the Rembert acquisitions, Ohio Wesleyan’s permanent art collection grows to nearly 2,500 pieces. Other recent acquisitions include pieces by African American, Native American, and Hispanic artists.

“Ohio Wesleyan is fortunate to have such a rich and varied portfolio of artworks,” said museum director Justin Kronewetter, M.F.A. “The Rembert gifts add to the diversity and importance of the university’s collection. I am grateful to our visionary alumni, and I encourage everyone to come see this important exhibition.”

The Richard M. Ross Art Museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is fully handicap-accessible and admission is always free. For more information, call (740) 368-3606.

Ohio Wesleyan University is one of the nation’s premier small, private universities, with more than 90 undergraduate majors, sequences, and courses of study, and 23 Division III varsity sports. Located in Delaware, Ohio, just minutes north of Ohio’s capital and largest city, Columbus, the university combines a globally focused curriculum with off-campus learning and leadership opportunities that translate classroom theory into real-world practice. OWU’s close-knit community of 1,850 students represents 45 states and 52 countries. Ohio Wesleyan earned a 2009 Presidential Award for Excellence in General Community Service, is featured in the book “Colleges That Change Lives,” and is included on the “best colleges” lists of U.S. News & World Report and The Princeton Review.

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A man whose resume reads: former Air Force Test Pilot, America’s first African American Astronaut Candidate, Computer Systems Engineer, Aviation Consultant, restauranteur, real estate developer, and construction entrepreneur can best be described as a true renaissance man. Ed Dwight has succeeded in all these areas. However, for the last 3o years, Ed has focused his direction on fine art and sculpture, large scale memorial, and public art projects. Since his art career began in 1978, after attaining his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Denver, Ed Dwight has become one of most prolific and insightful sculptors in America.

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