?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
BEVERLY MCIVER (1962 - ) Pretty is...a Little Black Girl.
Color lithograph on Arches paper, 2002. 965x685 mm; 38x27 inches. Signed, titled, dated and numbered 14/50 in pencil, lower margin. Printed by Segura Art Studios, Notre Dame Center for Arts & Culture, with the blind stamp lower right.
Another impression is in the permanent collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota.
Beverly McIver depicts herself here in blackface make-up, standing alone in an ambiguous setting, gazing pensively at the viewer. Dressed in a maid's uniform (her mother was a domestic worker), she wears a clown's wig and white gloves, cradling a pair of black-skinned dolls in her arm. Her shoes and socks are those of a child. On the wall behind her hangs a portrait of a grinning circus clown. The scene recounts a recurring dream from McIver's childhood. She explained: "As a child, I had dreamed of becoming a clown to escape my black skin, poverty, and the housing project I once called home. In high school, she was a pre-professional clown and considered attending clown college. She says it was her "liberation." For McIver, the self-portrait is a journey in self-revelation in which she confronts black stereotypes while seeking her own identity as a woman and an African American.
