SAM MIDDLETON, “Jazz is Free As a Bird,” 1972 (mixed media oil and collage on board). | Courtesy GP Contemporary
LAST FALL, LEAFING THROUGH the catalog for the Oct. 6, 2016, African-American Fine Art sale at Swann Auction Galleries, an abstract painting by Sam Middleton (1927-2015) stood out. Titled “Jazz Is Free As A Bird,” the improvisational composition combines decisive gestures with lighter strokes and fine lines. The image has a syncopated rhythm. Given the name of the painting, perhaps there is a musical reference or maybe it depicts abstracted objects. Defined by a lively palette, a dozen colors are in dialogue against a sea blue background.
Executed in 1972, the dynamic mixed-media collage on board is currently on view at GP Contemporary on the Upper East Side in New York. It is the centerpiece of a survey exhibition featuring more than 30 pieces, mostly works on paper, by Middleton. The late painter died in 2015 in Schagen, Netherlands. Swann’s African-American Fine Art catalogs usually provide extensive background about each lot and its artist. But no details were given about Middleton or the painting, other than it came from a private collection in New York.
Middleton’s story mirrors that of many African American expatriates in Europe. He lived and worked in the Netherlands for more than half a century, but he was born in Harlem in 1927. Growing up at 140th Street and Lexington Avenue, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing and as a young man he took advantage of the vibrant cultural scene, frequenting the Savoy Ballroom. His exposure to 1930s jazz greats including Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, and Count Basie, had a profound influence. Along with classical music, jazz remained a passion throughout his life.
In “Painting in Sound,” a 1985 essay by John A. Williams published in Black American Literature Forum, the professor of English and journalism at Rutgers University writes that Middleton “thought then that the music was so fantastic that it ought to be in color.” Williams quotes Middleton: “For me, improvisation is a galaxy color. When I listen to music I feel like a soloist. I hear Mikes and see color, and I make notes…”
“For me, improvisation is a galaxy color. When I listen to music I feel like a soloist. I hear Mikes and see color, and I make notes…” — Sam Middleton
In 1944, at the height of World War II, Middleton joined the Merchant Marines. He was just 17. He returned to New York in the early 1950s, settling this time in Greenwich Village, another neighborhood wholly defined by its creative culture. There he formed friendships with New York School artists, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline, among them, and on the Lower East Side hung out where jazz legends John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker performed. Meanwhile, he nurtured his own practice.
JUST AS THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT was getting underway in 1955, Middleton sought intellectual and creative freedom beyond America’s shores. Eventually, he settled in Holland in 1961. While he embraced the Netherlands, shedding the burden of race and longing to succeed solely based on the merits of his work, Harlem remained on his mind. His late 1960s and early 1970s figurative abstractions paid tribute to Duke Ellington, James Baldwin, and Nina Simone.
Williams opens his essay about the artist by describing his life and reception abroad two decades hence:
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“Sam Middleton arrived in Holland twenty years ago with one suitcase, after hitches as a waiter and merchant seaman and sojourns in Mexico, Sweden, and Spain, with dreams of becoming one of the greatest black painters in the world. Today, he says he is ‘as good or better than a lot of cats back there or over here, and sooner or later people will find it out.’ Many people already believe that. They have bought and praised his collages and other works, and the commissions come in every day. Now Middleton has several suitcases, a duplex/studio apartment, a plush office near the center of Amsterdam, and a country house thirty-five minutes by car from the city. He also has two sons—Marcus, 20, who lives in Stockholm, and Sidney, 17, who lives with his mother in Amsterdam. There was a marriage and a divorce.”
According to his obituary, Middleton remarried, gained a stepson, and had another child. He is survived by his wife Hansje Kalff of Schagen. Over the course of his career, he taught at Atelier 63 in Haarlem and the Royal Academy of Art in ‘S-Hertogenbosch and exhibited regularly in Holland. The Van Bommel Van Dam Museum in Venlo, Netherlands, organized a retrospective of his work in 1997.
MIDDLETON MAINTAINED CONNECTIONS and a presence in the United States, too. Williams wrote: “He is pleased to be a black American, maintains his passport in good order, travels home to New York, hosts countless Americans, many of them black…”
Early on, in the late 1950s-60s his work was shown in major U.S. museums. He was featured in “An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad” (1983) at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His work can be found in the collections of Fisk, Hampton and Howard Universities. The Whitney Museum of American Art also owns his work. “Out Chorus” (1960) was presented in the Whitney’s 1962 exhibition “Forty Artists Under Forty” and more than 50 years later, appeared in “American is Hard to See,” the 2015 collection exhibition inaugurating the museum’s Renzo Piano-designed building in the Meatpacking District.
“The Sam I am is Collage,” the exhibition at GP Contemporary is advertised as the Middleton’s first U.S. solo exhibition, and therefore his first solo outing in New York. The show is mounted on two floors of the brownstone gallery. There is one work from 1962; The rest of the exhibition spans 1971 to 1999. Rife with energy and spontaneity, clear relationships exist among the abstract watercolors and mixed-media collages on view. The artist’s life experiences are expressed in the works through references to jazz, boats, the sea, and Dutch landscapes.
Rife with energy and spontaneity, clear relationships exist among the abstract watercolors and mixed-media collages on view. The artist’s life experiences are expressed in the works through references to jazz, boats, the sea, and Dutch landscapes.
SAM MIDDLETON, “Progress,” 1971 (mixed media collage). | Courtesy GP Contemporary
Gavin Spanierman is managing director of the gallery. I asked him how the exhibition came about and inquired whether the gallery represents Middleton’s estate. He said it does. He told Culture Type that he learned about the artist from a collector.
“The work was introduced to me by a collector friend of mine who asked me to look up the imagery on Google images. He said he was friendly with Sam’s widow and if I were interested in the work he would set up an appointment for me to go and visit with her in Amsterdam,” Spanierman said.
SINCE THE EXHIBITION OPENED Feb. 1, he said the reception to the work has been “very good.” In talking about Middleton’s work, he points out aesthetic connections with Kline, Motherwell, and Mondrian. Beyond the exhibition, which closes Feb. 25, he said he intends to promote the work at art fairs, include Middleton in group exhibitions, and reach out to museums and scholars.
Almost all of the works on view are from the artist’s estate. Except for two paintings Spanierman said he purchased from Swann in 2016—“Hymn To Democracy” (1962) and “Jazz Is Free As A Bird” (1972).
Upon entering the gallery, “Jazz Is Free As A Bird” is in a visitor’s line of sight, mounted on the wall directly ahead at the far end of the space. At auction, the painting sold for $8,125 including fees. The price was more than twice the estimate of $2,000 to $3,000, which felt like a bargain, based solely on the size and visual quality of the painting, without considering all of the other substantive and mitigating factors that influence value. According to the gallery’s checklist, the price is now $35,000. CT
TOP IMAGE: At right, Sam Middleton. | Photo by Dixie Solleveld, Courtesy GP Contemporary
“Sam Middleton: The Sam I am is Collage” is on view at GP Contemporary in New York (Feb. 1-25, 2017).
WATCH VIDEO, a short film really, featuring Sam Middleton talking candidly about his life and work
SAM MIDDLETON, “Hymn to Democracy,” 1962 (mixed media and collage on illustration board). | Courtesy GP Contemporary
SAM MIDDLETON, “Crescendo,” 1983 (mixed media collage). | Courtesy GP Contemporary
1 comment
Cynthia says:
Feb 22, 2017
Such beautiful work. I was in a group exhibit with a Middleton piece in 70’s at the Bronx City Hall.
Yum!