Roberta and I were in the Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day, enjoying an exhibition entitled Epic Abstraction that consisted of large-scale abstract works by important 20th century artists. Among the paintings we admired was Sam Gilliam’s Carousel State, a 22-foot-wide acrylic.
Born in 1933, Gilliam grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. He was encouraged in his artistic leanings by his teachers beginning in grade school and eventually went on to earn a Master’s degree in painting from the University of Louisville. In 1962 he moved to Washington, DC, which has remained his home ever since. Critics have seen him as belonging to the second generation of the Washington Color School, a group of abstract painters who worked there in the 1950’s and 1960’s, many of whom used the technique of pouring or otherwise applying diluted oil paint onto unprimed canvas, allowing the pigment to saturate the support.
Carousel State dates from 1968, a period when Gilliam abandoned the wooden stretcher and created works which drape over their supports or hang like curtains from the wall. It was such works that brought him national recognition, and Carousel State is undoubtedly one of the largest and most important works from this series.
Like any art dealer visiting a museum, I always read a painting’s wall label from the bottom up. That is, I want to see who owns the painting, and this information is usually given in the last line. If the painting is owned by the museum, then I’ll never be able to offer it for sale. But if it’s only on loan to the museum, then I make a note of the collector’s name. He or she just might be willing to sell it one day.
Looking at the label for Carousel State, I was shocked to see that it had been given to the Met by the artist in 2018. The reason I was shocked was that, as an appraiser, I knew the rules governing gifts to museums. A collector giving a painting to a museum can deduct from his or her adjusted gross income the value that an appraiser assigns to the gift. But no deduction can be taken for a gift that is a normal work product of the donor. An artist donating his or her own painting can deduct only the cost of the paint and canvas it took to make it. What did it cost Gilliam to buy those cans of oil and that piece of canvas in 1968 – a couple of hundred bucks? And what’s the painting worth today? From a quick review of auction prices and not doing a lot of research, I’d estimate a fair market value of somewhere between $5,000,000 - $8,000,000. That’s one heck of a payday to pass up.
Of course, there were other considerations. Gilliam was 85 when he gave the painting to the Met. I’m sure that his mortgage is paid off, his kids are grown, and he’s not troubled by financial problems. If you’re in such position, the opportunity to cement your place in art history by having one of your most important works on view at one of the most prestigious museums in the world would be irresistible to any artist.
I used to pose a question to my artist friends back when we were young. Imagine, I told them, that you had to choose one career path as an artist. In the first version, you would make a middle-class living, but that’s all. No luxurious loft filled with designer furniture and no second home in the Hamptons, but your paintings would be exhibited, discussed, and passionately argued over. They would influence other artists. They would find their way into museums and be the subject of scholarly monographs. In the second version, you would sell everything you made for good money. You would become well-to-do, with no financial worries. But your work would not be part of the critical conversation of the contemporary art scene, and none of it would end up in museums. Without exception, my friends said they would go for the first option.
Working with an eye to history is a perilous undertaking, yet few artists can resist doing it. A major work in a major museum is as close as any artist can come to a sure-fire bet in the posterity sweepstakes. Sam Gilliam wanted the eyes of future generations. Visit the Met, and you’ll be glad that he did.
As we walked away from Carousel State, Roberta asked me, “Didn’t you sell a Gilliam once?”
“Not only did I sell it, we owned it!” I replied. It was sometime in 1986 or 1987, when I was working for myself. I had bought the painting at a small auction for two or three hundred dollars, as I recall. It wasn’t one of the works that made Gilliam well known; this was a piece from 1963, when Gilliam was still under the influence of Kenneth Noland, an older artist of the Washington Color School. I don’t have an image of it anymore, but it was about 18 by 18 inches, similar to one that sold a few months back at a small auction near Washington.
It was so unlike the later, unstretched works with which I was familiar that I found Gilliam’s number in the Washington phone book and called him up. He assured me that he had painted the piece.
What happened to the painting? I don’t have any records from 30 years ago, but I know that I sold the within a year, and the price that comes to mind is $1,200. Not a bad return on investment. What would it be worth today? Well, the painting above was estimated at $7,000-9,000, which sounds right to me. But a below-the-radar venue where a buyer/investor might think he can get a steal can lead to a bidding war, and this painting sold for $27,000.
If I had held onto my Gilliam, would I be sitting on $27,000 today? Perhaps. The profit that I made at the time, however, was needed for groceries or kids’ clothes or whatever, and I don’t regret those days, strapped as they sometimes were. It’s just another proof of the old dealers’ saying: You buy and sell art to make a living, but you keep art to make a fortune.
