| ART:21: |
Your work has been identified
as being controversial not only for white audiences, but also
for black audiences. Could you talk a little about this and
how you view your own work with respect to this response?
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| CHARLES: |
You know, at a certain point
I was really bothered by that, because I've heard a number
of things, been called the sellout, the "Chris Rock" of the
art world. I like that one by the way. And people accuse me
and question my blackness - they accuse me of making paintings
that deal with these images because "white folks want to see
these images." And I'm saying to myself, "Boy, I don't know,"
in that white folks wanted to see these images to laugh at?
And I'm saying to myself, "Well you know, I don't think somebody's
going to pay ten thousand dollars to say, oh, look at that,
that's black folk on the wall," you know. No, I didn't think
about this component. I didn't envision myself going out on
the road, and talking about my work as much as I have. And
now that I look back, I think a lot of people react to those
images; there's a lot of emotion. They've reacted to these
images based on gut emotions.
I think if people had an opportunity to stand back, as some
of them have had after hearing me speak about the work - really
thinking about it, and looking at it, and thinking about it
in the context
of now, and the context of how they're presented - some people
have managed to see that, okay, this is something that I could
at least think about quite differently than I initially had.
In other words, a lot of blacks have accused me of perpetuating
stereotypes,
and I think there's a fine line between perpetuating something
and questioning something. I like to get as close to it as
possible in order, I guess, to create that tension, to evoke
thought and to have people question how they deal with these
images. I've seen some black folks refer to these images as
black folks. I've seen and heard white folk refer to these
images as black folks. And it's really disturbing. They don't
say images, they don't say representations,
whether grotesque or accurate or abstracted.
No, it's always that little boy or that little girl, and that
little black girl and that little black boy. That's bothersome.
That's troublesome because I've said this in the past - they're
images that are constructed, they're both black and white,
conceived in a white mind and believed in the black mind.
Therefore it became human, in a sense.
And I think that these images are just as much white as they
are black. They've been projected and internalized. I think
people have accepted them to be, you know, representational,
an accurate representation.
Some black folks really see the images and say, "That's us,
but at the same time that's not us." So they're caught right
in between it. Some white folks see the images and smile and
laugh, and some are really concerned and disturbed. And some
are quite confused, just as confused as blacks are, about
my use and my angle and all.
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| ART:21: |
Why do you think people have
such a visceral and personal response to these images and
to your work?
|
| CHARLES: |
Well, first of all, you've got
to think of how these images were used in American culture.
I mean for the most part, they were everywhere and they were
used to market anything from oils to ink, from food products
to clothing, and so forth and so on. So I think, again, people
operate from an emotional place when they see these images
because they think of the past as being something that happened
and that the concepts don't linger. But these concepts continue
to affect us in many ways, in modern
concepts of advertising as well as in contemporary
advertisements. These concepts are re-appropriated and re-presented,
so we're not very far from them.
I'm still not sure if I'm answering your question, but I just
think that it's the history involved with the images. I met
one white woman, an older woman at an exhibition of mine,
who said, "Don't make the Sambo ugly, I remember the Sambo
as a little girl." And then she says, "I taught in elementary
school. I taught black kids." And she said, "Please don't
make the Sambo ugly." And she started to cradle - she just
started to move in this manner here. And I was like, wow.
But then, it's totally different for a black person. You know,
I've heard the full gamut, older people, you know, "That's
how they used to make us look". Or "That looked like the hair,"
the reference to the hair, "that looked like Bobby" or "that
looked like Julius," or something like that. So I just have
to say that the concepts continue to linger and that, in my
mind, allow people to place, to see these things and say,
"Boy," or "girl," you know... Um, I didn't answer that question
correctly. (LAUGHS)
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| ART:21: |
So people have taken these images
from Pop
culture and internalized them? They treat them as if they
were part of their own family or themselves?
|
| CHARLES: |
Well, I believe they have. The
notions of blackness linked to humor, blackness linked to
the entertainer, blackness linked to the body - all of those
things are embodied in or have been packaged with the caricature
of the Sambo, the darkie, the pickaninnies, and products throughout
early advertising, in the 19th century and well into the 20th
century. So blackness, I think, is linked to those things.
You know, I did a painting, it was about the image of Oprah
Winfrey, right? And it was titled "WWW.READAMERICA,"
I believe. I juxtaposed
the image of Oprah with the mammy image, it was a mammy cookie
jar-type image, and I replaced the bowl with a book. Of course,
it had a particular play on some contemporary images, like
the concept of "Big Mama" in Martin Lawrence's most recent
film. Or, there was a movie made recently and it's now a sitcom,
not a sitcom but - "Soul Food?" The big mama fixture in that
particular film was very much like the mammy image, the caretaker,
the one that took care of the family in a sense. I think those
notions can be linked to Oprah's image, and I don't mean that
in a demeaning way. My grandmother cleaned white folks' homes.
I have bells in my collection - dinner bells - that people
would ring for her to come and do whatever, you know. So,
I don't mean it in a malicious way, but I think these images
are very much a part of who we are as blacks, and very much
a part of who we are as Americans.
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| ART:21: |
Do you think people knew what
they were doing when they associated these sorts of figures,
like the mammy, with products or in advertising?
|
| CHARLES: |
I don't think that early advertisers
truly envisioned altering blackness with all of these representations
that were being put out there, in the sense that these images,
the concepts surrounding these images, would linger as long
as they have in the American public. I think it was linked
to early marketing practices, early advertising - linking
a product to romance, a romantic notion, the Old South - stereotypes,
caricatures that came out of minstrel performances, or perhaps
were influenced by minstrel performances, and linking those
products, early 19th century products, early 20th century,
well into the first half of the 20th century, with sort of
an idea of how things were, you know, therefore providing
the masses with the notion of being comfortable with the old
way. Things...things that were a certain way - you were comfortable
with them. So I don't think that those early advertisers or
the illustrators who illustrated the products, or designed
the products and the marketing and the packaging - I don't
think that they had this notion that they wanted to, you know,
alter what blackness meant forever in American culture. That
gives them too much credit. It makes them godlike, in a sense.
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| ART:21: |
Is there a "but" in that sentence?
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| CHARLES: |
But it happened...
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| ART:21: |
The way that advertisers altered
our thinking of race and blackness.
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| CHARLES: |
As they continued, as advertisers continue to do, they've altered our way of thinking. One could think about notions of blackness and how they're linked to entertainment, athleticism, sports (which has become another form of entertainment) but never intellectualism for the most part. And if that is the case, it's very rare. But for the most part, collectively, I would say that blackness continues to hover around this comfort zone of entertainment - providers of entertainment. You know, I think those areas are pretty comfortable for whites to see blacks in, as opposed to someone like Henry Gates or Cornell West, for example, or prominent CEOs of companies. That's what I think. |
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