Lot 16: DANIEL LARUE JOHNSON (1938 - ) Past Time.

DANIEL LARUE JOHNSON (1938 - )
Past Time.

Mixed media collage on canvas, 1962. 355x355 mm; 14x14 inches. Signed, titled, dated "Painted May 28, 62," and inscribed "Eichmann 6 million Jews, America ? Negroes" and "250.00" in ink verso.

Illustrated in The Golden State Mutual Afro-American Art Collection, p. 14 (mis-identified, correct description on facing page).

This is an early collage work by a young artist who was tackling issues that reflected the growing Civil Rights struggle. In 1963, Johnson travelled to New York with Melvin Edwards to see if his "ideas about American art and life were relevant to reality." According to Mary Schmidt Campbell, he continued to make assemblage works that year - "Danny Johnson, also a metal sculptor, whose abstract minimalist forms had begun to attract critical attention, crafted a piece entitled Yesterday, a box in which a headless doll drifts next to an American flag, which paid homage to the times. Johnson's assemblage, unlike Edwards's totems, proved to be a diversion from his major aesthetic direction." Campbell, p. 51.