By Lauren Fedor
New York auction house Swann Galleries brought in $390,000 from its Thursday sale of modern art influenced by jazz — but the sale itself may have given sellers the blues.
Nearly a quarter of Swann’s 76 offerings went unsold, including pieces by Melvin Clark, Ben Jones and Joe Sam. The overall sale also fell short of the house’s pre-sale estimate of $475,000, and paled when compared to its $1.24 million sale of art by African Americans in February.
Norman Lewis’ 1946 oil on canvas, “Bassist,” led this round, selling for $48,000, just shy of its $50,000 low estimate. And on a brighter note, Lewis’ 1949 pen and ink cityscape, “Untitled (Abstract Cityscape),” attracted a wider pool of bidders and sold for $21,600, more than triple its $6,000 low estimate.
Nigel Freeman, director of African-American fine arts at Swann, said Friday he was still satisfied with the sale because it brought in a number of first-time collectors.
The auction house said it had tried to attract the interest of bidders who were in town for the CareFusion Jazz Festival New York, which runs through Saturday.
Swann, which launched its African-American Fine Art department just three years ago, is the only major auction house to regularly offer sales devoted to African-American art.