?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
CARRIE MAE WEEMS (1953 - ) Black Man With A Watermelon.
Silver print, with printed text, 1987-1988. 356x279 mm; 20x16 inches (sheet). From the Ain't Jokin' series of six photographs.
Black Man With A Watermelon is a significant and very scarce work from the artist's 1987-1988 series. Kathryn E. Delmez describes this important, early series as examining "humor as a socially acceptable way to promote officially unacceptable ideologies through unflinching pairings of stage photographs with racist jokes, ideas or phrases." Ain't Jokin' is also the first artist's series to incorporate text with her photographs.
Black Man Holding A Watermelon is in the collection of the Smart Museum of Art at The University of Chicago. Delmez fig 2.3; p 65.
