‘Yesterday’s price is not today’s price’: Ernie Barnes’ popular painting sells for $15.3 Million
A few days ago, The Sugar Shack by Ernie Barnes was sold at a Christie’s auction in New York. The artwork by the late NFL player—turned artist was estimated to be worth $200,000 and went on to sell for a whopping $15.3 million with 22 eager bidders bidding for only 10 minutes.
The painting depicted in the Neo-mannerist and Black Romantic styles broke records for previous Ernie Barnes art sold. This monumental sale at Christie’s has indefinitely set the bar, dollar-wise, for other artworks done by Barnes. As Rap recording artist Fat Joe said, “yesterday’s price is not today’s price.”
The artwork was sold to Bill Perkins, a hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. According to Bloomberg News, Perkins has been trying to get his hands on this specific artwork for a while, even trying to get in touch with actor Eddy Murphy, who owns the sister painting of The Sugar Shack. Perkins now obtains a collection of six Ernie Barne’s works, Sugar Shack being the only one he has bought from an auction not auctioning off for charity purposes.
The Sugar Shack, done with acrylic on canvas, was completed in 1976. Barnes stated in a 2008 interview that it was created after a childhood recollection of him sneaking into a popular segregated Durham, N.C. venue, where jazz greats like Duke Ellington would perform. It’s dance venues like this where Barnes would be introduced to the “sins of dance,” accompanied by the trancelike experience shared dance and music can have on people.
The Black joy that pulsates through many of Barne’s works is a nod to a story of resistance during an actual time moldered with racism and prejudice. The Sugar Shack illustrates the momentary freedom Black Americans would have through dance and movement in a space dedicated to mental and body autonomy.
The exaggerated gestures and lengthened anatomy of the caricatures in the painting add to the feeling of motion when observing the piece. And whenever dancing, the people in the image tend to have their eyes closed; this is due to Barnes’s notion: “we are all blind to each other’s humanity.”
Barnes was able to infiltrate American culture through sport and art; after retiring from professional football and being a full-time artist, singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye asked him to design the cover art for his “I Want You” album circa ’76. Barnes was also commissioned to have his art as the backdrop to the rolling credits to Good Times, a popular show known for centering the Black experience in a light and relatable way. A range of countless other artists have also drawn inspiration from Barnes’s art since its creation.
The exorbitant auction price that The Sugar Shack sold will almost certainly put the price up for other related works by Ernie Barne. The artist has passed for over a decade, so he will not make any other works, making it even a hotter commodity.
Here is when we question the obscure price of what popular art sells at: does making a symbolic piece of art inaccessible to the masses wrong once sold to a private collector? Especially art that's steeped in such cultural identity and history? For the regular folk that line up at museums to admire such creations, an auctioning of your favorite artwork to a rich person can be tragic.
A piece like The Sugar Shack maybe shouldn’t just hang in some super-rich person’s multi-million dollar mansion. Perhaps some artworks become “the people’s” after some time. It’s only suggestive that the sting of such a great art piece now gone from the hands of museum-goers lessens once one knows its acquisition was by another Black man of wealth and stature (the buyer Bill Perkins.)
The gentrification of art has long been a thing. The sad but actual fact is that yesterday’s price is not the same as the next — once you’re a dead artist, it’s significantly more. The estate becomes this money-making franchise most artists do not get to see in their waking life.
Art auctions will always encourage this pattern based on the consumerist urge to buy the art others deem “worthy,” specifically when there is a rise in interest in its meaning. In the flip of this art gentrification trope, Ernie Barnes, in his own right, was successful and wealthy during the majority of his life — on the field and in his art studio. This idea of him dying a starving artist does not ring true for him.
Whether you despise the art world for pricing such art or understand it, a notable Black artist is getting recognition again. Barnes’s work was always artistically appealing with cultural significance, but now, it’s reached headline-worthy capital significance, which isn’t too bad when you think about it.
If you don’t have the millions to splurge on Barne’s art, consider seeing why others adore his work. While looking at a painting that focuses on dance subjects by him, you are transported to a space with good music playing and rhythm galore and left with a desire only to hope you can experience such action like this yourself the next time you’re out on a dancefloor.
