Ernie Barnes was an American artist and professional football player known for his expressive paintings of people in motion. He was the first American professional athlete to be recognised as an acclaimed artist. His practice focused on depicting the vitality of the everyday, presenting a diverse range of people standing beside one another to promote racial harmony.
Read MoreErnie Barnes was born in 1938 in Durham, North Carolina. Growing up during the Jim Crow era when racial segregation was enforced throughout the Southern United States, his mother worked on the household staff of a prominent lawyer. When Barnes accompanied his mother to work, that same lawyer would encourage him to take an interest in arts and culture.
At high school, teacher and former athlete Tommy Tucker took an interest in Barnes. He admired his drawings and began a discourse with him about how his own athletic career improved his attitudes and aspirations in life. This was a catalyst for Barnes' participation in sports, eventually leading him to become captain of the football team and state champion in shot put.
After attending North Carolina College on a full athletic scholarship, Barnes went on to become a professional football player in the National Football League between 1959 and 1965 playing for teams like Titans of New York and Denver Broncos.
Barnes credits his college instructor sculptor Ed Wilson for influencing his art practice. Wilson suggested to Barnes he paint from his own life experiences. In particular, he encouraged the footballer to observe the feeling of movement and translate it into his work.
After his career as a football player, Barnes focused on painting. Though he actually disliked the aggressive nature of football when he played, his first-hand experience of the game gave him an insight which was captured in the energetic movement of people in expressive paint application.
Sugar Shack (1971) is Ernie Barnes most well known artwork. The detailed painting depicts Black Americans dancing with vigour at an R&B dance party in his hometown Durham. Captivated by a style of dance he hadn't seen before, Barnes witnessed the energetic rhythm of the dance hall and reflected it onto his canvas.
The painting gained international recognition in 1976 after it was featured on the television series Good Times and used as the album artwork for Marvin Gaye's album I Want You.
The Beauty of the Ghetto Exhibition (1959) was an exhibition of 35 paintings by Ernie Barnes that was concerned with the 1960s Black is Beautiful movement. Barnes said that the exhibition provided 'a pictorial background for an understanding into the aesthetics of Black America.'1
Barnes used his skill as a painter in the hope his work might instigate a change in race relations. His work Growth Through Limits (1992) is a prime example of this. This painting portrays three young men of different race sitting together, looking at a flowering weed growing through the cracks of a pavement. Barnes' painting was used on a billboard in the inner city of Los Angeles for Mayor Tom Bradley's campaign in the aftermath of the LA Riots.
In 1998 a private collector donated Barnes' painting Advocate (1998) to the North Carolina Central University School of Law. In this painting Barnes shows a black man framed by books and the American flag. He wanted to convey his concern for the application of the law and the legal processes the disenfranchised endure.
During the 1984 Olympic games, Ernie Barnes was commissioned to paint five Olympic themed paintings under the title of official Sports Artist. His skilful paintings demonstrated the power and spirit of sports competition. They also depicted the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles and led him to become an official Olympic spokesperson positioned to motivate and inspire inner city youth.
In 1965, weeks before Barnes' first solo art exhibition, the artist was at the family home in Durham, North Carolina as his father lay in the hospital after suffering a stroke. He noticed the usually well-maintained white picket fence had gone untended since his father's illness. Placing a painting against the fence, Barnes decided he would frame his paintings with distressed wood in homage to his father.
Ernie Barnes has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally and nationally. His exhibitions include Works: 1961-1998, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2021); Back to Black: Art, Cinema & Racial Imaginary, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2005); 20th Century Masterworks of African-American Artists, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York (1995); North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina (1978); The Beauty of the Ghetto, Museum of African Art, Washington (1974); Grand Central Art Galleries, New York (1965).
New York gallery Andrew Kreps showed Ernie Barnes artwork in the exhibition Works: 1961-1998 in 2021.
Ernie Barnes website can be found here and his Instagram can be found here.
1Barnes, Ernie, The Beauty of the Ghetto Exhibition https://erniebarnes.com/wpeb/biography/~~
Phoebe Bradford | Ocula | 2021
