When Ernie Barnes’ “Sugar Shack” painting went up for auction at Christie’s in May of 2022 — more than a decade after the artist’s death — the British auction house estimated it would sell for around $200,000. The 1976 painting of a live dance hall scene is his most celebrated work and one of the few that gained national attention in Barnes’ lifetime, famously appearing on the cover of Marvin Gaye’s album “I Want You” and in the credits for the 1970s sitcom “Good Times,” a show that centered on a Black family in Chicago’s housing projects.
At Christie’s, the bidding started below $120,000 but rapidly climbed, with 22 bidders pushing it past the million-dollar mark. Within minutes, the price skyrocketed to an eight-figure range. To the shock of the auctioneers, “Sugar Shack” had a final selling price of $15,275,000, 76 times the pre-auction estimate, and went to African-American hedge fund manager and high-stakes poker player Bill Perkins.
In many ways, Christie’s auction parallels Ernie Barnes’ career as a Black artist. During his lifetime, major museums repeatedly passed over his works. Yet, his images have found a permanent place in the American psyche, and it has been the Black community that has kept his legacy alive.
It turns out there are two original copies of “The Sugar Shack,” and Eddie Murphy owns the other. “I paid fifty grand for that picture. After Marvin Gaye passed away, I bought it from his estate,” Murphy told Jimmy Kimmel with a huge grin on his face on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2023, a clip recently resurfaced on X shows. The painting transports us to a Black club, with dancers and musicians painted in Barnes’ signature style: expressive, elongated, and most with their eyes closed — an allusion to his belief that “We are blind to each other’s humanity.”
Eddie Murphy paid $50k for a painting estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars pic.twitter.com/9QB3eMC3CQ
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) March 17, 2024
Barnes later elaborated: “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. So, one of the things we have to be aware of is who we are in order to have the capacity to like others. But when you cannot visualize the offerings of another human being, you’re obviously not looking at the human being with open eyes. We look upon each other and decide immediately: This person is Black, so he must be… This person lives in poverty, so he must be…”
Barnes described his work as “a pictorial background for an understanding into the aesthetics of Black America.” The former pro football player turned artist grew up in a segregated neighborhood in North Carolina, and according to his memoir “From Pads to Palette,” he used sticks to sketch in the dirt as a child. Sonny Werblin of the New York Jets gave him his first real break, hiring a 27-year-old Barnes at a player’s salary to be the team’s official painter and, a year later, sponsoring his first gallery show.
But it was his national touring exhibition in the ’70s, “The Beauty of the Ghetto,” created in response to the “Black is Beautiful” movement, that garnered Barnes his most powerful champions, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Grant Hill, Sylvester Stallone, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Bill Withers, and notably Marvin Gaye.
Gaye met Barnes through his second wife, Jan Gaye, who revealed in an interview that her mom dated the painter in the ’70s. One day, the couple was in Barnes’ gallery on La Cienega in West Hollywood, and Gaye was so taken by the paintings he asked to use “Sugar Shack” for his album cover, but with some alterations. Barnes added references to Gaye’s album, such as banners hanging from the ceiling to promote the album’s singles. The painting is now reportedly hanging in Eddie Murphy’s bowling alley.
Even after gaining fame for “The Sugar Shack,” Barnes sold reproductions for as little as $20 to make his art accessible to everyone. Today, his original works are finally part of the permanent collections of major museums, including the African American Museum of Philadelphia, the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
As for the $15 million “Sugar Shack” sold at Christie’s to Perkins? It is now on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. One of the greatest talents of his generation is finally getting his due.
