UTA Artist Space is ready to current Ernie Barnes: Where Music and Soul Live, an essential survey of work by Ernest Eugene “Ernie” Barnes Jr. (1938-2009) that explores the historical past and music scene in Los Angeles, the place the artist lived for a few years.
The artist is widely known for quite a few essential works, most notably the duvet artwork for Marvin Gaye’s groundbreaking 1971 album I Want You. Gaye, who launched an album just about yearly because the Nineteen Sixties, slowed down within the mid-70s. Following his stylistic rebirth firstly of the last decade, the as soon as prolific Gaye more and more started to agonize over new materials. What’s Going On arguably noticed him take himself and his music critically for the primary time; 1973’s Let’s Get It On launched the loverman persona he would largely run with for the rest of his life. After a three-year hole, Gaye emerged in 1976 along with his 14th solo album, releasing it at a time when the golf equipment had been both rumbling to the sounds of punk or shaking below the burden of our bodies on the disco dancefloor.
Not that Gaye cared. Sure, he’d as soon as appeared to the surface world, however I Want You was unapologetically myopic – and intensely carnal. As its cowl artwork, a 1971 portray by Ernie Barnes, entitled Sugar Shack, made abundantly clear, there was no room for maneuver between Gaye’s erotic fantasies and the hardly suppressed calls for of his urges. This was sizzling, sweaty, get-down music.
Notably, the portray lately bought for $15.3 million at Christie’s, making nationwide headlines. Music collectors of Barnes’ works embody Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo, Lou Adler, Ray Parker Jr., and extra.
Works within the exhibition embody outstanding work Barnes made between the Nineteen Seventies and up till 2008, proper earlier than his demise in 2009. It will embody over 30 well-known and likewise never-before-seen works from his property and loans from essential collectors. The exhibition at UTA Artist Space coincides with a co-presentation of Barnes’s work by Ortuzar Projects and Andrew Kreps at Frieze Los Angeles.