Eddie Murphy purchased one of the most iconic symbols of black culture from Marvin Gaye’s estate worth over $15 million – you won’t believe how much he paid

When Ernie Barnes’ painting “Sugar Shack” went up for auction at Christie’s in May 2022 – greater than a decade after the artist’s death – the British auction house estimated it will sell for around $200,000. The 1976 painting of a live dance scene is his most famous work and one of the few to achieve national attention during Barnes’ lifetime, famously appearing on the cover of Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You” album and in the closing credits to the Seventies sitcom “Good Times,” a show centering on a black family living in Chicago housing projects.

At Christie’s, bidding began below $120,000 but quickly rose, with 22 bidders crossing the $1 million mark. Within minutes, the price rose to the eight-figure range. To the surprise of the auctioneers, the final sale price for the Sugar Shack was $15,275,000, 76 times its pre-auction estimate, and went to African-American hedge fund manager and high-stakes poker player Bill Perkins.

In some ways, Christie’s auction recalls Ernie Barnes’ profession as a black artist. During his lifetime, major museums repeatedly omitted his works. But his paintings found a long-lasting place in the American psyche, and it was the black community that kept his legacy alive.

It seems that there are two original copies of “The Sugar Shack” and Eddie Murphy he owns the other one. “I paid fifty grand for this picture. After Marvin Gaye died, I bought it from his estate,” Murphy told Jimmy Kimmel with a giant smile on his face on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2023 clip recently appeared on X to introduce. The painting takes us to the Black Club, where the dancers and musicians are painted in Barnes’ signature style: expressive, elongated, and most with their eyes closed – an allusion to his belief that “we are blind to the humanity of the other.”

Barnes later developed: “We don’t look deep into our interconnections. The gifts, strength and potential hidden in other people. We often stop at color. So one of the things we need to be aware of is who we are in order to like others. But when you can’t imagine another person’s sacrifices, then you obviously don’t look at the person with open eyes. We look at each other and immediately make a decision: This person is Black, so he must be… This person lives in poverty, so he must be…”

Barnes described his work as “a painterly backdrop to understanding the aesthetics of Black America.” The former skilled football player turned artist grew up in a segregated neighborhood in North Carolina and, in response to his memoir, “From Pads to Palette,” drew on the ground with sticks as a baby. Sonny Werblin of the New York Jets gave him his first real break, hiring the 27-12 months-old Barnes on a player’s salary to be the team’s official painter and, a 12 months later, sponsoring his first gallery exhibition.

But it was his Seventies national traveling exhibition, “Ghetto Beauty,” created in response to the “Black is Beautiful” movement, that brought Barnes to the ranks of his most powerful champions, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Grant Hill, Sylvester Stallone, Diana Ross, Harry Belafonte, Bill Withersand particularly Marvin Gaye.

Gaye met Barnes through his second wife, Jan Gaye, who revealed in an interview that her mother dated a painter in the Seventies. One day the couple was at Barnes’ gallery on La Cienega in West Hollywood, and Gaye was so fascinated by the paintings that he asked to make use of “Sugar Shack” on his album cover, but with some changes. Barnes added references to the Gaye album, akin to banners hanging from the ceiling promoting singles from the album. According to reports, the painting is already hanging on the wall Eddie Murphybowling alley.

Even after gaining fame with “The Sugar Shack,” Barnes sold reproductions for as little as $20 to make his works accessible to everyone. Today, his original works are finally part of the everlasting collections of major museums, including the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

What about the $15 million Sugar Shack sold at Christie’s to Perkins? This is now on display at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. One of the biggest talents of his generation is finally getting his due.