Birthday, 1974; acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24 inches, signed, titled, and dated
Estimate: $150,000-250,000
A graduate of Spelman College, Varnette Honeywood began publishing note cards and prints from her original acrylic paintings. In the late 1980’s, a reproduction of Ms. Honeywood’s painting, Birthday appeared in the living room on the set of The Cosby Show across from Senegalese Boy by Archibald John Motley, Jr.
Similarly to Ernie Barnes’, Sugar Shack, which had been featured on the television show, Good Times, Birthday inspired a generation of African-American collectors and art aficionados to display images of Black joy and the beauty of African ancestry on their walls.
Black Art Auction is honored to represent the sale of an iconic image in American popular culture, a painting that was seen weekly in the homes of 35 million Americans on The Cosby Show: Varnette Honeywood’s Birthday. Varnette was a central figure to the art scene in Los Angeles in the latter half of the 20th century, both as an artist and a facilitator of black artists—and especially black women artists—and Birthday, painted in 1974, is arguably her most important work and an image we have all had the pleasure of seeing for many years.
Birthday will be our one and only lot in a special event auction on the evening of April 6. Exclusive “pop-up” previews showcasing the painting in a simulated setting will be held at locations in New York City and Los Angeles in March.
A selection of works presented by Black Lifestyles. Varnette and her sister Stephanie founded the company in the mid-1970’s with the goal of distributing Varnette’s work on posters, prints, and notecards, ultimately bringing positive multicultural images into as many Black homes as possible.
“There’s always a message in my work, whether it is obvious or not...I hope that hundreds of years from now, African-American art will show the slice of the way we live.”
Varnette’s World: A Study of a Young Artist, by filmmaker Carroll Parrott Blue (1943-2019). This film presents the artist years before she became famous for works appearing in The Cosby Show’s Huxtable residence. Blue connects Honeywood’s colorful and inspiring scenes of everyday Black life to her active community involvement, including Rev. James Cleveland’s Cornerstone Baptist Church, arts education projects with local youth and a Black artists collective.