Purvis Young
“Because of Purvis Young, I have deliberately turned my attention to purpose driven collecting and making sure the acquisition of any artwork serves to financially benefits the lives of living artists.
— Sandra Botnen, curator
Day 21 introduces outsider artist, Purvis Young. I am breaking the rules today, since the criteria of the Thirty Day Gallery is to concentrate of living artists. Purvis Young passed away in 2010, but the reason I am including him is that he is very much part of my collecting journey. Triggered by the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, I fell in love with his work and wanted to have it in my home. His imagery repetitiously depicts slavery, horses, boats, angles, pregnant warriors and city-scapes with trucks. The paintings vernacular is a clear reminder of the hearts, hands and souls that courageously built the country I currently live in.
With little knowledge of the artist himself, I ended up buying four of his pieces at auction. Only afterwards did a start learning about the artist’s life. What I read was a story of terrible artist exploitation, and one that is all too common. Because of my four Purvis Young paintings, I have deliberately turned my attention to purpose driven collecting and making sure the acquisition of any artwork serves to financially benefits the lives of living artists.
During his lifetime Purvis Young was surrounded by fans and recognition. His work is in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and two Smithsonian museums. Lenny Kravitz, David Byrne and Jane Fonda are all professed fans. And now, I too have joined the club. But Purvis Young lived his life essentially penniless, with the exception his artworks. But in a court settlement, his work was valued at $1 a piece and used to pay down his debts. Not long after, Sotheby’s value a gifted collection of his works a $1,000,0000 which would have valued each work at $11,000.
If art is treated like tool for financial investing, Purvis Young would be on the top of my list as both an affordable and exciting investment. But if art is also an investment in nourishing the soul, perhaps there should be some sort of carbon- offsetting equivalent to atone for a market that allows artists to suffer financially even when their labor so richly benefits the rest of us.
To read more about Purvis Young .
An excellent read on the life of Purvis Young is the Washington Post article dated Jan 8, 2020.