| ART:21: |
How and why did you start collecting
black memorabilia?
|
| CHARLES: |
I was in graduate school at the
University of Houston and I think everything that I did while
there led up to what I'm doing now, and,of course, led up
to, or led me to, the use of this particular image and images
like it. There were a number of things that occurred, one
of which was I was sort of stigmatized as a political artist,
a black political artist - and, at the time, I didn't see
myself as that. It was based on the fact that I was painting
images of the flag. I was in search of an image that could
best articulate Americanism, could sum up what is happening,
or what has happened, or what was happening with blackness,
and a friend, Sean Thorton, actually - we were studio
mates, a door down from mine - handed me this and said his
mom picked it up. And I didn't question it, said "Thanks,"
and sort of tossed it in the corner, and I continued to search
for that sense of Americanism. One day I'm cleaning, sweeping
out the studio,
and I picked this up and began to really look at it.
One thing led to another and I began to do research on minstrelsy
and blackface performances in the 19th century. This led to
a series of pieces. Actually, it was the first piece which
was included in an exhibition in the Houston Public Library
and for which I made fifty little carriages, like, sort of
like baby carriages of clay. And I made a mold of this little
figurine here. I made fifty or so of these, and I displayed
these, arranged these carriages, as if they were stars on
the flag in a similar manner. These little figures were looking
inside, standing on top, inside of - arranged in a very rhythmatic
way. I didn't document it, but it was the first time I got
a sense of not only the seriousness involved with the use
of these images, but also the emotion, the emotional presence
of the past. People began to knock over the glass case and,
on many occasions, condemned the presence of such imagery.
|
| ART:21: |
Do you still have any of the
carriages or cast
figurines?
|
| CHARLES: |
Well, this piece is really destroyed.
I gave many of the carriages and the little figurines away.
Oops. I only kept a few with the idea that one day I would
recreate the piece.
|
| ART:21: |
Did the figurine strike you as
a particularly painful image at the time? As something that
you would eventually make work with and about?
|
| CHARLES: |
No it didn't, it didn't. It was
just something that I didn't need and I tossed it in the corner.
And when I picked it up and looked at it again, I was intrigued
by how simple it was. There was a bit of anger, I think, initially:
I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to do something
about it so much that I created this piece called "Sam," which
was based on the image of Burt Williams, a 19th century African-American
comedian minstrel performer in a chicken costume, and in blackface.
I wanted so badly to do something about this, to rewrite this
wrong that I reversed a mask. I made a white mask, and I was
drawing at the same time as I was applying paint. When I finished
this piece and looked at it, there was a stare that came from
behind that white mask that just, you know, opened up the
floodgates.
That's another piece I wish I had kept. It was my wife's favorite,
actually, and she's been trying to get me to do a larger one
for this show that's coming up. But that particular piece,
"Sam," embodied a lot of what I do now in my work today. It
didn't have any text. There was a lot of mark-making. There
was an emphasis on layering and exposing layers underneath,
drawing, exposing my drawing ability, and meshing the drawing
process
with the painting process. From there, like I mentioned, the
floodgates opened. I came up with this concept
of juxtaposing
powerful images, of powerful females - the image of the mammy
image and the Statue of Liberty. And when I did that, I came
up with the "Liberty Perm." Then shortly after that I began
to look at products on the shelves in stores and think about
how these ideas were consumed and through what medium. And
having to rely upon my background and studying advertising
and design,
I began to utilize the things that were the vocabulary that
I had already discovered to make my art. I signed my name
with pennies as a cool logo, as a seal that this is a Michael
Ray Charles. |
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