?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
BUCK BROWN (1936-2007) "This is about a dynamic young commodities broker..."
Proposed cartoon for Playboy magazine, 1983, with their stamps and notations in the margins. Acrylic on board with Brown's manuscript caption in the margins. 515x381 mm; 20 1/4x15 inches, board. Signed "Buck Brown" along lower right edge; tipped to backing board with original tissue overlay and a Typed Letter Signed by Playboy's cartoon editor, Michelle Urry, sending the artwork back to Brown with regrets that it was not accepted for publication [by senior editors], 1 8vo page, 9 February 1983. Framed with captioned window matte. The full caption reads: "This is about a dynamic young commodities broker, his speculative ventures, his search for investment opportunities and the heartbreak of an uncertain world money market and runaway inflation. Ain't nothin' but the Blues . . ."
Buck was a prolific African-American painter and cartoonist whose work regularly appeared in Playboy, Ebony, Esquire, and Junior Jet magazines. He often poked gentle fun at white and establishment types, as in this cartoon where a black performer introduces a "Blues" number about the perceived misfortunes of a venture capitalist to an all-white crowd.
