SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON (1888 - 1967) The Knot and the Noose.
Terracotta, mounted on a wooden base, circa 1948. Approximately 432x229x76 mm; 17x9x3 inches. Incised signature, lower right recto.
Provenance: private New York collection.
The Knot and the Noose is an outstanding example of Sargent Johnson's rare sculpture from the 1940s. This work is an alternate version of The Knot and the Noose, 1948, in the collection of Melvin Holmes, San Francisco, which was included in the 1998 exhibition Sargent Johnson, African American Modernist at the San Francisco Museum of Art (see LeFalle-Collins/Wilson ill. 25, cat. no. 39.) The Holmes version differs in that it has white painted or glazed highlights in the textured areas. Johnson made different versions of the same work before - recently demonstrated by the discovery of two Standing Woman terracotta sculptures of 1934 - first in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the other recently acquired by the Brooklyn Museum. This sculpture's simplified forms shows Johnson's interest in both modernism and tribal sculpture. Johnson had traveled to Mexico in 1944 and 1949 on an Abraham Rosenberg scholarshp to study the sculpture of its indigenous peoples.
