Art Feeds the Soul

As I was thinking about what I’d like to write about this week, each time an idea came up, it had to do with art. With all of the insanity swirling around us (melting ice caps, weather gone amok, conflicts everywhere—the entire koyaanisqatsi/naqoyqatsi enchilada—aaahh, look it up; you should know about these things), you might think art a frivolous thing to talk about. I say art is the only thing that has kept me, sometimes, from throwing up my hands and finally deciding that mankind is truly going to hell in a handcart. Angst essen Seele auf, (Fear Eat Up the Soul) as the filmmaker Werner Fassbinder so beautifully reminds us in the title of his 1974 film (queue it; it is so worth watching). Art feeds the soul. So I'm dedicating this week to art in Gotham City.

In 1925 a man named William Nickerson founded Golden State Mutual Life, a black-owned company in a cubicle-sized office on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. There Nickerson and his team of dedicated agents set out to build an insurance company. By the end of that year, Golden State had paid its first death claim, established its first branch office, and moved its home office to a more spacious facility. Still headquartered in Los Angeles, California, the company thrives with more than a billion dollars of insurance in force, and policy owners in
more than 14 states.

How Golden State got started, and how it managed to succeed throughout the decades would make for an interesting story, considering it was founded during a time when African-Americans barely had their civil rights.

But that’s not why I brought you here. The story today is that while the folks at Golden State worked to create a thriving business, they were doing something else: collecting works by black artists.

I found this out just the other day, when I got a p.r. notice of a sale at the Swann Galleries, an auction house located on East 25th Street. Golden State is going to be auctioning part of its collection on October 4. I have strong opinions about auctioning off collections: I hate to see it happen. If they don’t go to universities or museums, then the pieces wind up in private hands, often with little or no access.

Still, it’s wonderful to see works by artists of color more and more being considered in mainstream venues. The fact that the bid prices are so low, compared to works by white contemporaries—for instance, the bid price for General Moses (Harriet Tubman) an ink on illustration board drawing by Charles White (1918-1979) is $200,000/250,000, the highest in the catalog for a single work of art—is a double-edged sword: not great for the artists, a number of whom are still living, but advantageous to us regular folks—a linoleum cut by one of my favorites, Elizabeth Catlett (born 1915) is listed at $1,000/1,500. While that’s not chump change for many of us, including me, it is still within the realm of possibility.

I’ve met and worked with Nigel Freeman, the director of African-American fine art at Swann. He is as thoughtful a curator as any one could be, and passionate about what he does, eager to continue to help gain black artists their rightful place in history. He really wants you to come look at the pieces in person. I urge you to go see the works, and attend the auction if there’s something you just have to bid on (don’t be shy; at the risk of sounding patronizing, it’s not like those auctions you see in the movies with a bunch of snooty rich people bidding on Aubusson settees; this is open to all!) The preview exhibition begins Sunday, September 29 and runs through Thursday, October 4, with the auction taking place at 2 pm. The catalog is available, for a price, but you can look at it for free online. And if you have any questions I know Nigel (nfreeman@swanngalleries.com) or one of his colleagues will be happy to answer them.



Images, from top: Hughie Lee-Smith, Slum Song, 1944. Oil on Canvas
William E. Pajaud, Seabird in Flight, 1974. Watercolor on paper
Beaulah Woodward, Maudelle circa 1937-1938. Fired terracotta and paint
Betye Saar, Toro Rojo, 1964. Color etching and aquatint.