J'Accuse! Charles White

Tomorrow's auction of African-American Fine Art offers an incredibly powerful drawing by Charles White, J'Accuse! No. 10 (Negro Woman). The circular charcoal drawing depicting the faces of several African-American women was used on the cover of Ebony magazine in 1966. 

It is the first of the artist's important works from his J'Accuse series to come to auction. The title comes from an Émile Zola article against anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus Affair, and White used it to reference the racism, discrimination and oppression faced by African Americans. The pages of Ebony's special issue devoted to The Negro Woman, describe how African-American women in the 1960s were beginning to defy the female roles and stereotypes of the era. 

Echoing that theme of strong, heroic women is White's iconic and monumental drawing General Moses (Harriet Tubman) which he completed for the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1965. It sold at Swann in October 2007. 

Photography Auction & Benefit: Justice for All Women

The only thing better than buying a fine photograph for your collection, is buying one and knowing the funds are going to help women and children in need. On Monday, April 23, Daile Kaplan, Swann VP and Director of Photographs, will be the auctioneer at the 2012 Annual Photography & Benefit Auction for inMotion-- a non profit that provides free legal services to low-income women in New York City.

Among prominent photographers featured in the auction are Diane Arbus, Julie Blackmon, Elliott Erwitt and Saul Leiter. Bidders will also be able to compete for a private portrait commission by Harry Benson, the legendary photojournalist. 

Harry Benson, The Beatles with Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964.

In addition to the live auction, there will be a cocktail reception, silent auction and a seated dinner. The event will be held at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers at 811 Seventh Avenue, between 52 and 53 Streets. For more information on the evening's festivities and full auction details, visit inMotion's website.

Thursday's Top Lots: Vintage Posters

Last week Swann kicked off the auction season with a sale of Vintage Posters, with very strong results - in fact, it was our highest-grossing February poster sale to date. The top lot among many high-earning Art Nouveau posters and decorative panels was Alphonse Mucha's The Seasons. The full set of four posters sold for $78,000. In fact, work by Mucha accounted for a quarter of the top twenty lots.

Two of Mucha's four Seasons panels, 1896.

A classic American poster from 1896, Sutro Baths, a large 80 x 82'' image promoting the once thriving San Francisco bath house, tied the current record at auction, bringing $19,200.

Sutro Baths, San Francisco, 1896, by an unknown artist.

Notable in this sale was the fact that while prominent lots like The Seasons did very well, prices for posters outside the mainstream were also higher than expected. A previously undocumented poster for Buffalo Bill's French tour in 1905 earned $15,600, and Hebraic and Judaic posters, like Miskovitz's [The Promised Land,] a poster for a movie billed as the first filmed in Palestine, circa 1930s, also brought record prices.

W.F. Cody / Buffalo Bill, Paris, 1905.

Putting Pen to Paper

In 2012 Swann will inaugurate our newest department: Fine & Vintage Writing Instruments. The department will be headed by Rick Propas, a pen collector, connoisseur and specialist. If you are interested in beginning or expanding your collection, or if you have fine pens that you would like to consign for the debut auction, please contact Rick at 212 254 4710, ext. 304, or rpropas@swanngalleries.com.

Monumental Kara Walker Portfolio in Swann's Feb 16 Auction

Swann's February 16 auction of African-American Fine Art contains a particularly strong section of fine prints and photographs. Among the highlights is contemporary artist Kara Walker's Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), a portfolio of 15 lithographs with screenprinting from 2005.

Alfred H. Guernsey's and Henry M. Alden's 1866 Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, based on images from Harper's Weekly, serves as the framework for this monumental portfolio depicting the history of the Civil War. Walker uses these original illustrations as the framework for her interpretation, on which she overlays her signature black cut silhouettes. While her cut images reference history, particularly slavery and the Civil War, this was the first time the artist directly juxtaposed her own historical images with ones from the period. "These prints," Walker explains, "are the landscapes that I imagine exist in the back of my somewhat more austere wall pieces." 

The images can be haunting and irreverent, while exploring issues of race, gender, sexuality and violence.

The Most Famous Private Press Book

The Kelmscott Chaucer is considered the finest Arts and Crafts era publication,
and the pinnacle of private press publishing

Perhaps the most famous of the private presses, the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith was the creation of master craftsman William Morris. At a time when the printed page and book production in general was suffering, he believed that the high standards of the past could be re-awakened and re-created to achieve complete harmony of type and illustration; for each book to be seen as a complete object of beauty. 

Text was printed in red and black Chaucer and Troy types. The large woodcut illustrations
by Sir Edward Burne-Jones were redrawn by Robert Catterson-Smith and cut by W.H. Hooper and W. Spielmeyer.

The press produced 53 books between 1891 and 1898. Both the first and final titles of the press are being sold in a small, select collection in Swann's February 23 auction of Private Press & Illustrated Books, as well as their crowning achievement, The Kelmscott Chaucer. Morris’s aims and aesthetic inspired the birth of several other English presses such as the Ashendene, Doves, Eragny and Vale presses, each of which are also represented in the sale.

A dedication copy of Aragny Press's Songs by Ben Jonson,
one of only ten printed on vellum, is another sale highlight.

William T. Williams Painting Comes to Auction

Swann's February 16 auction of African-American Fine Art will feature the first painting by celebrated artist William T. Williams to come to auction. The monumental 1971 acrylic on canvas, titled Eastern Star, was bought from the artist's first solo gallery exhibition in New York by the current owner.


This large and exciting work is an excellent example of Williams's unique abstract vision--an elegant, layered Minimalist abstraction, infused with the geometries of jazz and non-Western cultures.


Williams was born in Cross Creek, North Carolina, attended Pratt Institute and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and earned an M.F.A. from Yale University. In 1969 he participated in The Black Artist in America: A Symposium, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 


Williams's abstract painting achieved early institutional recognition when the Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchased his 1969 painting Elbert Jackson L.A.M.F, Part II. His paintings were also included in such important exhibitions as the Studio Museum in Harlem's Inaugural Show, the Whitney Biennial and New Acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1970, both the Jewish Museum, New York, and the Menil Collection, Houston, commissioned paintings.


In addition to his long career as a painter, Williams has taught at Brooklyn College for more than 40 years.

Is this the world's first ski poster?

Ernest Haskell's Truth / Xmas, New York, 1896. 

Skiing for sport began in the mid 19th century in Northern Europe, although the activity as a means of transport and hunting dates back thousands of years. Americans caught on in the early 20th century, and by the late 1920s the country was in love with the sport, with winter resorts in full swing--kicking off what is known as the Golden Age of American Skiing.


Ernest Haskell's 1896 poster advertising the magazine Truth, which depicts a lovely lady skiing downhill, is the earliest American ski poster, predating the first American book on skiing by nearly 10 years.

Theodore A. Johnsen's The Winter Sport of Skeeing, was the first American ski book.
It was published in 1905.

Haskell's design has a similar head start on the first European posters for the sport, which are generally believed to be promotional images for the French winter resort town of Chamonix, from the early 1900s.

Chamonix / Mont Blanc, after Abel Faivre, circa 1985.

If you have an example of an earlier ski poster, send us an email: blog@swanngalleries.com

Happy Birthday, Max Roach!

Today Max Roach, jazz musician, activist, educator and collector, would have turned 88.  Swann is proud to offer several works from the artist’s estate in our upcoming February 16 sale of African-American Fine Art, including a sriking group of portraits of Roach by David Hammons & Bruce Talamon. The screenprints were sent to the artist by Hammons & Talamon as potential album artwork, though it is unknown whether or not they were ever used.

David Hammons & Bruce Talamon, Untitled (Max Roach Album Art), group of 4 color screenprints, 1977. Estimate $50,000 to $75,000. At auction February 16.

Max Roach was born in North Carolina but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. His early exposure to music came through the church, but he found himself drawn to the drums from a very early age. He was still a teenager when he began to play with such jazz masters as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Coleman Hawkins. Before the age of 30, he had already become one of the seminal drummers of the 20th century, whose breakthroughs influenced several subsequent generations. His early successes as a sideman led him to even great achievements as a bandleader in his own right starting in the 1950s.

Always among the most socially engaged of jazz artists, Roach was an inspiring figure both to the Civil Rights movement and to the Black Power movement that developed in the 1960s. His “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite” (1960) was one of the most powerful artistic statements to come out of that milieu and is consistently cited as one of the key recordings in the history of jazz music. His collaborations with other artists ran from classic jazz combos to full orchestras; vocal choruses and inventive string ensembles, including the Uptown String Quartet and the Double Quartet with his daughter Maxine; large all-percussion groups, improvisational duos with avant-garde adventurers such as Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp and Anthony Braxton and major dance productions with such figures as Alvin Ailey and Bill T. Jones. His theatrical partnerships embraced playwrights as diverse as William Shakespeare and Amiri Baraka, Sam Shepard and Wole Soyinka.

Roach’s contributions went well beyond the strictly musical. Ever cognizant of the exploitation of black musicians, he was never hesitant to speak out against injustice. He was a leading businessman, co-founding (with Charles Mingus) the Debut Records label, operating his own publishing and production companies (Milma, MR Productions), even organizing alternative festivals and venues to assure the fair treatment of participating musicians. He was a dedicated teacher, serving from 1972 on the music faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and generously sharing his insights and experiences via lectures and public appearances worldwide. An adventurous creator, a tireless performer, an articulate spokesman, a passionate educator, Roach was recognized as one of the great American artists and received numerous honors and awards, including the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” grant.

Bill Hunt: The Photo World's Impresario

On December 7, Swann and Aperture Foundation hosted a talk and booksigning with photography collector, curator and educator Bill Hunt in honor of his book, The Unseen Eye. Hunt and Swann's Photography Director Daile Kaplan had a lively and entertaining conversation that touched on various topics including the first photograph Hunt ever bought, his inclusion of 19th century images in the collection, and what he calls "the best picture in the world."


Click below to watch a recording of the talk.


Bill Hunt Talk Ver 3 from Number 44 Productions on Vimeo.