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Introducing the Collector: Richard Roundtree
Richard Roundtree as Shaft, 1970. Image: Moviestore Collection Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo Ernie Barnes’ Slam Before the Storm comes from Richard Roundtree, the iconic actor best known for his role as John Shaft in the Shaft movie franchise. His breakout performance in the first Shaft film—a 1971 classic that defined the "Blaxploitation" genre—earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
Roundtree was born in 1942 in New Rochelle, New York, and began his career as a model, having been discovered by Eunice W. Johnson, of the Johnson Publishing Company, which published Ebony and Jet magazines. Over his five decades as an actor, he has appeared in some 160 film and television projects—sharing the screen with actors including Clint Eastwood, Peter O’Toole, Laurence Olivier, Samuel L. Jackson, and Brad Pitt—and received numerous awards, such as an MTV Lifetime Achievement Award, a Peabody Award, and a Black Theater Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award.
Roundtree was familiar with Barnes’ football career in the 1960s and learned of his artistic practice when Sammy Davis Jr. and Charlton Heston purchased his works. He discovered that Barnes lived just four blocks away from him in Los Angeles and walked to his home to meet with him. He purchased the two fantastic Barnes paintings that Phillips is offering this season directly from the artist in 1981, and they have been in his possession ever since.
"In the Black community, the athlete was respected as the finest embodiment of one’s African heritage. There were those convinced that the only way to heaven was with a football or a basketball."
—Ernie BarnesSlam Before the Storm is a glorious example of the neo-Mannerist sports-themed tableaux that serve as the backbone of Ernie Barnes’ body of work. The painting turns a neighborhood basketball game into a transcendent display of athletic prowess performed by figures whose elongated proportions enhance the almost balletic quality of the action.
The image’s dynamic style is characteristic of Barnes’ compositions. The artist—who died in 2009 and whose work has seen a surge of curatorial and collector interest in recent years—was a professional football player from 1960 to 1965, before devoting himself to art full-time. He noted that “being an athlete helped me to formulate an analysis of movement, and movement is what I wanted to capture on canvas more than anything else. I can’t stand a static canvas.”¹“Slam before the Storm provides the viewer with more than a snapshot of Black leisure, rather, it forces the viewer to experience Black male bonding. The basketball court was the Black male country club.”
—Clinée Hedspeth, Phillips, Chicago-Midwest, Former Director of Curatorial Services, DuSable Museum of African American Art HistoryThe action in Barnes’ works ranges from lively and exuberant (as in his famous Sugar Shack, 1976, which depicts the scene inside a Black dance hall) to violent and ruthless, with these qualities often combining in his sports paintings—a reflection, perhaps, of his conflicted feelings about athletics. Although playing football had offered Barnes a path to worldly success from his humble beginnings in a Black area of segregated Durham, North Carolina, known as the Bottoms, he resented the game’s brutality and the way it kept him from pursuing his artistic calling.
“[Barnes] grew up to be not only a college and professional gridiron star, but one of the nation’s best sports artists whose canvases capture the strength, terror, tragedy and humor of life in the athletic arena.”
—Louie Robinson
[left] Parmigianino, Madonna with the Long Neck, 1534–1540, Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Image: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY
[right] Rembrandt, The Ascension of Christ, 1636, Alte Pinakothek, Munich. Image: bpk Bildagentur/Alte Pinakothek / Art Resource, NYThis ambivalence provided the great artistic tension in Barnes’ work. Slam Before the Storm, with its backdrop of brooding skies and its intricate layout of contorting figures, has all the drama of Mannerist and Baroque religious paintings. The game takes place in a dusty, desolate landscape, and the ball, positioned at the brightest point in the sky, reads as either a haloed icon or an earthly object blocking the light. One of the players holds an impossibly effortless stance midair that suggests the ascension of Christ. Indeed, he seems disengaged from the game, his right hand shooting up to the heavens. With such paintings, which redress the lack of Black representation in Western art history by recasting canonical imagery with Black protagonists, Barnes serves as a precursor to Contemporary artists such as Kerry James Marshall and Kehinde Wiley.
Charles White, Harvest Talk, 1953, The Art Institute of Chicago. Image: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © The Charles White Archives Coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, Barnes did not identify with the abstract styles that prevailed in the art world at the time. In his 1995 autobiography, From Pads to Palette, he wrote that he found such work to be “cold” and described an artistic awakening he had when looking at a portfolio of Charles White’s drawings in a Harlem bookstore in 1960.² He explained that this was the first time he encountered artwork “reflecting Black lifestyle” and that he believed that “this was what art should be about; expressing the confidence, the pride and hopes of people committed to the struggle for human dignity.”³ It was a noble view, and one that places Barnes in an important artistic lineage that continues to flourish today, when painters including Marshall, Henry Taylor, Jordan Casteel, and Amy Sherald have reinvigorated figurative traditions to produce powerful expressions of Black experience.
¹ Ernie Barnes, interviewed by Dave Price, “Here’s the Story,” TV Land, n.d., online.
² Ernie Barnes, From Pads to Palette (Waco, TX: WRS Publishing, 1995), 30.
³ Ibid.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1981
Property of Richard Roundtree
44
Slam Before the Storm
signed "ERNIE BARNES" lower right; stamped with the artist's copyright stamp on the reverse
acrylic on canvas, in artist's frame
48 3/8 x 24 5/8 in. (122.9 x 62.5 cm)
Painted in 1979.
Please note, Slam Before the Storm is included in the upcoming Ernie Barnes Catalogue Raisonné by the artist’s estate. We wish to thank the Ernie Barnes Estate for their kind assistance with this work.
Estimate
$300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $604,800
Amanda Lo Iacono
Global Managing Director and Specialist, Head of Evening Sale, New York
+1 212 940 1278
ALoiacono@phillips.com
Carolyn Mayer
Associate Specialist, Associate Head of Evening Sale, New York
+1 212 940 1206
CMayer@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 15 November 2022
1
Ilana Savdie
Marimonda Desplegada
Estimate $50,000 - 70,000
Sold for $176,400
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2
Danica Lundy
Miss Fist Kiss
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $189,000
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3
Lauren Quin
Arrow
Estimate $70,000 - 100,000
Sold for $163,800
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4
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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5
Rashid Johnson
Standing Broken Men
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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6
Pablo Picasso
Mousquetaire buste
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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7
Julie Mehretu
Tsunemasa (next to Kaija)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,386,000
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8
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $41,640,000
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9
René Magritte
Le météore
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,265,000
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10
Amy Sherald
Pilgrimage of the Chameleon
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,087,000
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11
Loie Hollowell
Lick, Lick in Purple, maroon-yellow
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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12
Tom Wesselmann
Mouth #14 (Marilyn)
Estimate $3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Sold for $3,236,500
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13
René Magritte
Le coup de grâce
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,966,000
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14
Anna Weyant
Bum
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $390,600
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15
Mark Bradford
He Barked Just Like a Watchdog
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,870,000
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16
Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Circus No. 12 Face 44.30)
Estimate $8,000,000 - 12,000,000
Sold for $9,809,000
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17
Marc Chagall
Le Père
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $7,404,500
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18
Marlene Dumas
Snow White in the Wrong Story
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,781,000
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19
María Berrío
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $1,603,000
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20
Alex Katz
The Grey Dress
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $2,208,000
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21
Yayoi Kusama
All The Eternal Love
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,966,000
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22
Alexander Calder
Plutôt jaune
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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23
Amy Sherald
Madame Noire
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
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24
Jean-Michel Basquiat
To Repel Ghosts
Estimate $7,000,000 - 10,000,000
Sold for $7,862,500
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25
This lot is no longer available.
26
Yayoi Kusama
Nets Blue
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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27
Lucy Bull
Untitled
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $478,800
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28
Willem de Kooning
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,870,000
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29
Milton Avery
Hot Moon
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,208,000
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30
Amoako Boafo
Pink Shorts
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $403,200
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31
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Anxious Collage
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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32
Joan Mitchell
Cobalt
Estimate $3,000,000 - 4,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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33
Andy Warhol
Oxidation
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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34
Alexander Calder
Petite croix
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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35
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36
Willem de Kooning
Event in a Barn
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,055,000
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37
Pablo Picasso
Paysage au pin
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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38
Mickalene Thomas
I Can’t See Me Without You
Estimate $350,000 - 550,000
Sold for $441,000
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39
Balthus
La Sieste
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,058,500
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40
Andy Warhol
Nosepicker I: Why Pick on Me (The Broad Gave Me My Face But I Can Pick My Own Nose)
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $491,400
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41
Andy Warhol
Living Room
Estimate $250,000 - 450,000
Sold for $315,000
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42
Robert Motherwell
Open No. 25: In Blue with Variations
Estimate $900,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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43
Luc Tuymans
Absence
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $453,600
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44
Ernie Barnes
Slam Before the Storm
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $604,800
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45
Carmen Herrera
Noche Verde
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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46
Anne Truitt
Autumn Dryad
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $567,000
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