{"title":"Holding Court","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"ernie-barnes-mentors","title":"Mentors","description":"Among the final paintings Ernie Barnes ever made, Mentors encapsulates the artist’s belief that intergenerational knowledge was the cornerstone of community. A row of obediently seated children in a uniform of blue jeans and white cotton t-shirts gazes upward at a huddled assembly of elders. Some faces are left unfinished, with colorful circles standing in for fully fleshed out visages. A nod to conceptual art strategies, the gesture also reinforces the ideology of valuing the collective over the individual. In an overt demonstration of reverence, the boys tuck their hands between their kneeling knees. By stark contrast with the docile boys, the men strike poses of cool confidence. Feet splayed, hips cocked, arms akimbo––the quintet might be a group of dancers, religious zealots, or athletes cloaked by suits. Indeed, Barnes’s longtime studio assistant recollected that in early iterations of Mentors, the group wore basketball uniforms. Barnes’s formative years were spent playing professional football as an offensive guard in the NFL; before that, he was a star on his college and high school teams. His athletic career cemented the import of listening to coaches and collaborating with teammates about strategy. Citing a gametime huddle, where decisions about the next play or insights into the other team’s strengths and weakness were shared, Barnes recollects a pivotal moment of group cooperation. While he always emphasized that he was an artist first, the ethos of sportsmanship and the bodily attunement encouraged by his years nevertheless informed his paintings. His artistic mentor Ed Wilson, a sculpture instructor at North Carolina Central University gave him lasting advise on how to bridge his athletic cognizance with visual representation: “(Wilson) told me to pay attention to what my body felt like in movement. Within that elongation, there’s a feeling, an attitude and expression. I hate to think had I not played sports what my work would look like.” Barnes’s mastery of physical movement underpinned is on full display in Mentors, where the rhythmic tempo of the mentors is matched by the staid surveillance of a group of aspiring youths––patiently awaiting the sage wisdom, self-possession, and comradery of their cultural guides.","brand":"joopiter22-dev2","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43917872890105,"sku":"","price":150000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0613\/2783\/5385\/products\/ernie_barnes_2_f97f69c9-4502-4105-b17f-d51a669c46de.jpg?v=1689866739"},{"product_id":"ernie-barnes-saxophone-study-1","title":"Saxophone Study #1","description":"Saxophone Study #1 depicts an anonymous musician in profile––engrossed in performance, his body is hunched over to match the angles of his instrument. Barnes’s drawing focuses on the rapturous experience of playing and listening to music. Exclusively centering the musician and instrument a focal point, the artist abstracts the background. Though the backdrop is nondescript––a departure for Barnes who notoriously replicated the details of specific locales with great care––it vibrates with energetic charge. The richly textured background is achieved through a curling vortex of staccato lines, which implies the tempo of musical notes. This same virtuosic precision is applied throughout the drawing (a medium that Barnes habitually used to document attenuated action and rapid physical movement). For instance, the simultaneous pleasure and strain of music-making is captured in the expressionistic lines that burrow into the subject’s skin to produce a furrowed brow and tensile jawline. The variation in line found throughout the composition attests to Barnes’s extraordinary talent as a draughtsman. Sumptuous contour lines and chiaroscuro techniques are combined to enliven the musician’s clothing and replicate the reflective sheen on the saxophone’s metallic surface. Ultimately, Barnes’s fastidious and exacting reproduction unlocks a transportive artistic phenomenon, in which visual arts provides a portal to the sonic. Music was a major source of inspiration for Barnes throughout his life. Among his earliest childhood memories were remembrances of sneaking into music halls in North Carolina like the Durham Armory, where rapturous sound was matched by the ecstasy of rhythmic dancing and collective effervescence. Later in his career, Barnes rose to national fame by collaborating with musicians like Marvin Gaye on art for their album covers. The saxophone player in the drawing is likely a jazz musician, speaking to the indelible position of the Black-originating musical genre in American culture. In the 20 th century, jazz became a radical declaration of racial Blackness that battled civil injustices through its cultural ascendance. In Barnes’s ennobling representation of the saxophonist, he enlarges the subject’s hands––endowing him with a physical monumentality that affirms his cultural import.","brand":"joopiter22-dev2","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43917873053945,"sku":"","price":18000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0613\/2783\/5385\/products\/Ernie_Barnes_4_a408c3e1-2558-4e70-85a6-e28594049a50.jpg?v=1689866958"},{"product_id":"ernie-barnes-holding-court","title":"Holding Court","description":"In Holding Court, a trio of women convene in a living room, clad in fitted dresses, high heels, and accessories, ready for a night out but still occupying an distinctly domestic interior. News of the day seems to be the subject at hand, as the central figure gesticulates with head tilted back, one hand at the hip and the other waving with excitement. As the title suggests, she commands the room as the only body rendered frontally and unobstructed by decorative plants or furniture. Her eyes are also closed, as if engrossed in the inner thoughts she is in the midst of divulging to her confreres. Sightlessness is a signature visual motif of Barnes, who once explained that this device metaphorized “how blind we are to one another’s humanity.” This myopia applied most squarely to racial inequality and stereotyping: “We don’t see into the depths of our interconnection. The gifts, the strength and potential within other human beings. We stop at color quite often.” At the same time, Barnes invites the viewer to look closely, offering a seductive configuration of bodies typical of his representational style. Long limbs pulsate with vital action: backs arched, fingers splayed, toes pointed, chests heaved. What he termed a neo-expressionist approach to the human form, Barnes’s rendition of traditional figuration turned the everyday into the evocative.","brand":"joopiter22-dev2","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43917896909049,"sku":"","price":70000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0613\/2783\/5385\/products\/Ernie_Barnes_1.jpg?v=1689875438"},{"product_id":"ernie-barnes-study-for-brother-to-brother","title":"Study for Brother to Brother","description":"","brand":"joopiter22-dev2","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43917897892089,"sku":"","price":20000.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0613\/2783\/5385\/products\/Ernie_Barnes_3_4b69123d-0b5a-4662-a4f4-729531e3c9a7.jpg?v=1689860462"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.joopiter.com\/en-kr\/collections\/holding-court.oembed","provider":"Joopiter","version":"1.0","type":"link"}