67048: Ernie Barnes (American, 1938-2009) Quintet, circ

Ernie Barnes (American, 1938-2009) Quintet, circa 1989 Oil on canvas 36 x 60 inches (91.4 x 152.4 cm) Signed lower right: Ernie Barnes PROVENANCE: The artist; Private collection, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, acquired from the above; Thistlethwaite Americana, Middleberg, Virginia; [sale]The Winter Show, New York, January 2020; Private collection, Miami, Florida, acquired from the above. EXHIBITED: Grand Central Art Galleries, Inc., New York, "The Beauty of the Ghetto, Exhibition of Neo-Manneriest Paintings," October 30-November 17, 1990. LITERATURE: Central Art Galleries, Inc., New York, The Beauty of the Ghetto, Exhibition of Neo-Mannerist paintings, exhibition catalogue, 1990, p. 29, illustrated. The present work is housed in an original handmade artist frame and is also accompanied by a copy of the Central Art Galleries, Inc., The Beauty of the Ghetto exhibition catalogue, and Ernie Barnes Liberating Humanity from Within exhibition catalogue. The works of American painter Ernie Barnes are experiencing a comeback like that of no other artist of the last decade. Barnes' circa-1989 painting Quintet – a highlight of Heritage's May 12 American Art Signature Auction – is among the most recognizable pieces by the former pro footballer, who was once fined by the Denver Broncos' head coach for sketching during team meetings. Barnes, perhaps best known for his painting Sugar Shack, used in the credits of the TV show Good Times and on the cover of Marvin Gaye's 1976 album I Want You, is one of the 20th century's most distinctive painters. Last year, Sugar Shack sold for $15.3 million at Christie's – 76 times its high estimate of $200,000. "Almost like a more modern Thomas Hart Benton or El Greco," says Aviva Lehmann, Heritage's Director of American Art. "His works are lyrical, as close to dancing as a painting can get. And Quintet is among the most intimate masterworks of his entire oeuvre." Quintet was exhibited in the fall of 1990 at New York's Grand Central Art Galleries, as part of Barnes' solo exhibition The Beauty of the Ghetto, which was subtitled Exhibition of Neo-Mannerist Paintings – and that "neo-mannerist" is apropos, given that a hallmark of Barnes' work is how elongated and fluid his human figures are; Barnes' background as an athlete granted him a breathtaking interpretation of bodies in motion. And Quintet ranks among Barnes' greatest achievements, a joyful depiction of jazz musicians at work and at play, a piece so alive it echoes with a bebop soundtrack. Their eyes are closed – a hallmark of Barnes' work that dates back to 1971, when he said he first conceived of The Beauty of the Ghetto as an exhibition. "I began to see, observe, how blind we are to one another's humanity," Barnes said. "We don't see into the depths of our interconnection. The gifts, the strength and potential within other human beings." Barnes has long been acknowledged as a master by musicians who often used his works as album covers, among them Curtis Mayfield, BB King and Gaye. His lithe, ecstatic works look almost like sheet music – figures like notes dancing across the staff. Which should come as no surprise: Barnes' father played piano in the family's Durham, North Carolina home, and Barnes was so influenced by dad he framed each painting in distressed wood as a tribute: "Daddy's fence," he once said, "would hug all my paintings in a prestigious New York gallery." The painter, too, was raised listening to church choirs. Listen closely. Quintet, much like Sugar Shack, roars and reverberates like the long Saturday night before the Sunday morning. The painting brings the viewer directly into the fold of five musicians who are in deep connection with the music and one another; the viewer is not only in the room with the protagonists, but is sitting right inside this tight circle of players who lean in as they hit a long, blue note. The jazz club's close darkness is filled up by the men, punctuated and delineated by the musicians' strong diagonal physicality and their burnished and gleaming instruments: piano, two saxophones, a stand-up bass and a trumpet. The pianist's torso sways back from the center, his elegant fingers poised mid-note. There is a delicious tension and harmony between the men, that intimacy of shared flow, as they move through the music. Barnes' golds, black and browns evoke the weight of centuries of painting even as he updates action and venue: here the gathered gods wield brass and strings instead of scepters, and the dusty old Roman plaza gives way to a smoky and celebratory 20th-century Harlem. When the art world talks about updating the canon, it could not do better than Quintet. Barnes was born in 1938 in Durham, N.C. His mother was in charge of the household staff of a lawyer and his father was a tobacco company clerk. Barnes was drawing and painting from a young age, but his athletic scholarship took him to North Carolina College of Durham (now North Carolina Central University), and all along the physicality of his world – the way bodies merge, move, interact and dissolve into one another has informed his pictures. As often as he painted solo figures, Barnes' show-stoppers (like Sugar Shack and Quintet) often feature groups of people in shared and responsive motion. In fact, another significant Barnes work Heritage offers in May is titled Scrum, from 1980, which depicts exactly what the word describes: a mass of faceless rugby players locked together through sheer muscular force. Through the dust kicked up by their cleats, a forest of thigh muscles heave in sinewy explosion; expressive hands grasp, dig, and push. The perspective puts the viewer so close to the action that you can hear the men's grunts and smell the sweat. It is a tour de force of Barnes' incisive take on bodies working in unison and in tension. By the 1980s the artist was known for this territory and was asked to create five official posters for the 1984 summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. In this vein, Heritage also offers a study of Barnes' The Team, which takes us right up to a circle of men discussing their next play. The amateur athletes in this picture – bowed heads and closed eyes – present a vertical stack of long limbs, broad shoulders, and smooth heads. Here they confer with one another in a relaxed and smiling moment, a pause of conjoined focus, just before springing back into electrified action. Barnes died in 2009, but by then his aesthetic was already deeply woven into the American psyche; his presence in popular culture had been radiating outward and resonating through countless imitations of his indelible style. You cannot see a Barnes work without placing it at the center of an era we still look to for ballast in these unsteady times. Barnes' vision of Americans surviving and thriving via community and celebration has claimed (if not reclaimed) its top spot in our understanding of how much art can show us what we most need in order to truly live, what we most value in ourselves and each other, which is presence. We are fundamentally social animals, and like it or not, we are woven together. Barnes was deeply committed to focusing on the Black experience in all of its richness and variety, and his angle observes and honors people going about their daily (and nightly) business while fully engaged in the very evolution of American culture. As Barnes once said: "I am bound by the strongest ties with the organic life of all people. And being an artist had created in me the desire to continually affirm beauty. I am well aware that art has no concrete connection to beauty, but beauty is profoundly interwoven into the fabric of the individual and his environment." Christina Rees, 2023 Christina Rees is a full-time writer in the corporate sector, covering art and the art market, design, entertainment and more. From 2014-2021 she was the Editor of Glasstire, which covers art across Texas. In the past she served as an editor at D Magazine, as a full-time critic and columnist at the Dallas Observer, and contributed art, film, and music criticism to the Village Voice and other national and international publications. She was the owner and director of Road Agent gallery in Dallas and was curator of Fort Worth Contemporary Arts. She's an inaugural recipient of the $50K Rabkin Prize, a national award for arts writing. 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Unlined canvas. Faint lower stretcher line visible in raking light. Three pinpoint sized abrasions along the lower center edge, notable under close inspection. Minor frame rubbing along the extreme lower right edge.
Framed Dimensions 41.5 X 65.5 Inches Heritage Auctions strongly encourages in-person inspection of items by the bidder. Statements by Heritage regarding the condition of objects are for guidance only And should Not be relied upon as statements of fact, And do Not constitute a representation, warranty, Or assumption of liability by Heritage. All lots offered are sold "As Is"

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