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Lot Essay
Standing Figure's unclothed form is modeled with detail and respect. He points into the distance with his left hand, while his right once held a cylindrical object now long gone. In contrapposto, his uplifted gaze seems hopeful and proud. He reveals classical strength and proportion in pose and form.
Standing Figure was highlighted in the seminal 1976 Folk Sculpture USA exhibition, organized by The Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (fig. 1). The show's catalogue documents this sculpture, which was discovered in New Orleans, as a trade sign for a slave auctioneer thought to be created between 1800 and 1820 (Folk Sculpture USA, p. 21). If this was indeed the figure's original purpose, he is a series of contradictions. There is a paradoxical quality to presenting a slave with such humanity. Rather than removing his personhood, as slavery at its core intended, this sculpture is asserting a man's personality (for more on this concept, see Agnes Lugo-Ortiz and Angela Rosenthal, eds., Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, England, 2013), p. 75). Additionally, the sculptural style used for his stance and pose places the figure in a lineage with Classical and Renaissance art, connecting him with idealized nude forms including Polykleitos's Spear Bearer (440 B.C.) and Michelangelo's David (1501-1504). The visual tie between these mythological heroes and this carving conveys the power of Standing Figure that lives in opposition to the ambitions of the Louisiana slave traders.
Standing Figure was highlighted in the seminal 1976 Folk Sculpture USA exhibition, organized by The Brooklyn Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (fig. 1). The show's catalogue documents this sculpture, which was discovered in New Orleans, as a trade sign for a slave auctioneer thought to be created between 1800 and 1820 (Folk Sculpture USA, p. 21). If this was indeed the figure's original purpose, he is a series of contradictions. There is a paradoxical quality to presenting a slave with such humanity. Rather than removing his personhood, as slavery at its core intended, this sculpture is asserting a man's personality (for more on this concept, see Agnes Lugo-Ortiz and Angela Rosenthal, eds., Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, England, 2013), p. 75). Additionally, the sculptural style used for his stance and pose places the figure in a lineage with Classical and Renaissance art, connecting him with idealized nude forms including Polykleitos's Spear Bearer (440 B.C.) and Michelangelo's David (1501-1504). The visual tie between these mythological heroes and this carving conveys the power of Standing Figure that lives in opposition to the ambitions of the Louisiana slave traders.