Earl J. Hooks (1927-2005) Man of Sorrows, 1950
cast bronze on wooden base 13 x 7-1/2 x 3-/2 inches 15 x 12 x 11-1/2 inches (with base) signed and dated Provenance: Earl Hooks, Jr.
$80,000-100,000 This is an extremely important and celebrated work by the artist, as well as a significant mid-century sculpture by an African American artist. Man of Sorrows is an iconic devotional image that was addressed by artists throughout history, including versions by Albrecht Duhrer and James Ensor. Hooks’ close friend, Marion Perkins’ Man of Sorrows (1950) is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Perkins said this about his own work: “It shows the Negro peoples’ conception of Christ as a Negro—which is as it should be.” (The Black Chicago Renaissance, Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey, Jr, 2012, p. 191.) The 1931 poem by Langston Hughes, Christ in Alabama conflates the crucifixion of Christ with a lynched black man. James H. Cone draws the same comparison in his book, The Cross and The Lynching Tree:
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The lynched black victim experiences the same fate as the crucified Christ and this became the most potent symbol for understanding the true meaning of the salvation achieved through ‘God on the Cross.’
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Exhibited: A Homecoming: Selected Works of Art by Earl J. Hooks (1927-2005), The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, Sept 12, 2006-Feb 16, 2007. Literature: Two Centuries of Black American Art, David Driskell (catalog accompanying the exhibition, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), p. 202 (marble version)
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