By LAUREN FEDORLovers of art and music will unite this week at "Out of the Blue: Modern Art Jazz," a sale at Swann Auction Galleries on East 25th Street. Thursday afternoon's auction will feature 76 pieces by African-American artists who found inspiration in blues and jazz.
The sale, featuring works ranging from the figurative to the abstract, was planned to coincide with the CareFusion Jazz Festival, which rose this year from the ashes of George Wein's defunct New York Jazz Festival. The pieces in the sale will be open for public exhibition through Thursday. Though Swann is not officially affiliated with CareFusion, the auction house has collaborated with the festival to reach out to jazz enthusiasts, according to the director of African-American Fine Art at Swann, Nigel Freeman. For example, the CareFusion web site lists Swann as a New York jazz "hot spot" alongside such landmarks as Birdland and the Village Vanguard; similarly, Swann links to the CareFusion festival on its own site.
"Out of the Blue" will be Swann's seventh sale dedicated to art by African-Americans, a genre still relatively new to auction. Swann, which launched its African-American Fine Art department just three years ago, remains the only major auction house to regularly offer sales devoted to African-American art.
"They really are the first auction house to have the kind of focus they have," said Valerie Mercer, curator of the General Motors Center for African-American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts, about Swann. "For so long, black artists' work was not really appreciated or valued."
Mr. Freeman said he expects works by Romare Bearden to be among the auction's biggest sellers. "Back Porch Serenade" (1977), a collage composed of bright-colored papers with ink and colored pencil, could go for more than $60,000. Mr. Bearden (1911-1988) was best known for his semiabstract collages, which echo Cubist influences and are typically comprised of photographs and painted paper. Themes of jazz and the blues are common in his work. A Harlem-based artist who spent many days and nights with such jazz icons as Duke Ellington, Mr. Bearden even worked in a studio above the Apollo Theatre.
Robert O'Meally, a Columbia University English professor who examined Mr. Bearden's collages in his 2008 book, "Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey," said last week that the art world is "on the verge of recognizing a truly international artist."
In its short history, Swann's biggest winner has been Aaron Douglass, a Harlem Renaissance painter whose 1944 piece, "Building More Stately Mansions," sold in 2008 for $600,000 and is currently housed at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Two years earlier, one of his works sold at auction for $6,600.
Since 2007, Swann has introduced more than 100 black artists to auction. Mr. Freeman said at least eight artists whose works have yet to be offered will be showcased in "Out of the Blue." They include Frank Stewart, the senior staff photographer for Jazz at Lincoln Center.
