Oct 03, 2024 - Sale 2680

Sale 2680 - Lot 162

Price Realized: $ 6,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
DAVID HAMMONS (1943 - )
The Man Nobody Killed.

Stenciled paint with collage on commercially printed cardboard, 1986. 280x216 mm; 11x8½ inches. Spiral bound in the original publication - as issued.

With--Cobalt Myth Mechanics, 1986/1987, Eye Magazine, #14. Numbered 35/200 in pencil on the title page. Published by Eye Publications, New York.

Provenance: private collection, California.

While from an edition, each printing of The Man Nobody Killed is a unique variation. Each were printed on different found cardboard material, sometimes with additional printed surfaces or collaged material. Another impression is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The subject of the work is Michael Stewart, a New York artist who died as a result of injuries sustained while in police custody following an arrest by the New York City Transit Police.

The artist Michael Stewart and Jean-Michel Basquiat's painting The Death of Michael Stewart (Defacement) were the subject of the recent exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Basquiat's "Defacement": the Untold Story, June 21 - November 6, 2019. The exhibition included The MoMA impression of this print alongside artworks by Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, George Condo and Lyle Ashton Harris. It was organized by guest curator Chaédria LaBouvier - the first African American to be the curator of an exhibition at the museum.