Oct 04, 2018 - Sale 2487

Sale 2487 - Lot 171

Price Realized: $ 65,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
RASHID JOHNSON (1977 - )
Jonathan with Hands.

Van Dyke Brown photo-emulsion print on heavy wove paper, 1997. 972x1264 mm; 38 1/4x49 3/4 inches (sheet). Artist's proof. Signed in pencil, lower right.

Provenance: G. R. N'Namdi Gallery, Chicago; the Dr. Robert H. Derden Collection of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1997).

Exhibited: Freestyle, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, April 28 - June 24, 2001.

This monumental photograph is a significant, early work by Rashid Johnson and one of three works that the Chicago artist made his New York debut with in Freestyle, the seminal exhibition of 28 contemporary artists curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Holland Cotter in his May 11, 2001 New York Times art review describes "three large-format portraits by the 24-year-old photographer Rashid Johnson hang on another. Hand-brushed with mineral pigments to rich old master sheen, their subject is a homeless man the artist met in Chicago." Johnson use of the Van Dyke Brown process, an early photographic technique that dates from the mid-19th century, gives these portraits a unique richness.