Michael Ray Charles, an Archaeologist of Black Stereotypes

Having withdrawn from the art scene and

the media spotlight for 20 years, the African-American painter Michael Ray

Charles made a major comeback at the Galerie Templon in Paris in 2022, and then

in New York this spring. In light of a political and social context redefined by

the Black Lives Matter movement, his radical paintings reveal his commitment to the representation of black figures

since the 1990s.

Michael Ray Charles is one of those artists with an atypical trajectory, initially misunderstood, often because they were ahead of their time, before the evolution of society ended up giving renewed meaning to their work. He nevertheless made quite a dramatic entrance into the art world in the early 1990s, first in Houston, where he studied and exhibited at the Moody Gallery, and then when he was represented by Tony Shafrazi in New York from 1993. Europe also opened its doors to him, with exhibitions in Belgium and Spain at the Cotthem Gallery, and in Germany at the Hans Mayer Gallery. Yet his painting, which focuses on depicting the stereotypes that have shaped the image of blackface in American culture, quickly polarised opinions. His art was labelled shocking, and people shunned the visual objects that he was criticised for bringing to light when it was now preferable to sweep them under the carpet. “The subject matter that I was dealing with was tough subject matter, so it wasn't getting to what I was after. I really take pride in what I do, and I really hated it when people would say that I was a wild child from the South, or question my ability to paint. They never talked about the paintings, they talked about racism, they talked about other things,” he confided, continuing, “and whilst those things were interesting, and important, and thought-provoking, that wasn’t totally what my work was about. My work has always been about desperation, differences, through the representation of blackface.” This misunderstanding of his paintings eventually led the artist to withdraw from the scene for two decades, until the Templon gallery decided to show him, first in Paris in 2022 with an exhibition entitled In the Presence of Light, consisting

(Forever Free) Playgirl. 2003. Latex acrylique et penny de cuivre sur panneau acrylic latex and copper penny on board. 250 × 153 cm

mainly of black and white works, and then in NewYork in April 2023, in the gallery’s brandnew space in Chelsea, with the exhibition Veni Vidi. A State of Mind. This was a major comeback for the artist, who showed works fresh from the studio as well as a number of older pieces dating back to the early 2000s, revealing the evolution of his aesthetics towards a more narrative and complex approach, moving away from the poster and advertising inspirations of his beginnings, and now strongly imbued with the idea of theatricality and scenography, or even of decorum, since he himself goes so far as to speak of “performance” to describe the tragi-comic atmosphere that pervades his paintings. Even when he was no longer exhibiting, the artist never stopped creating within the walls of his two studios in Austin (Texas) and Sint-Lievens-Houtem (Belgium).

VISUAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Through the use of advertising imagery, Michael Ray Charles does not hesitate to paint Sambo and Aunt Jemima with formidable formal effectiveness, using the synthetic grotesque to re-stage the enduring visual humiliation of African Americans that has become part of America’s collective memory. The aim? To carry out a visual archaeology in order to help the viewer understand the extent to which these images have left their mark on society right up to the present day, placing the black body in a given place, namely in a nauseating graphic ghetto since the nineteenth century. For the artist, who was born in Lafayette in 1967, in the heart of Louisiana, there was only one solution: to become a painter so as to have the power and freedom to deconstruct and challenge this racial graphic construction. “I had a professor when I was studying advertising and design, and he would always ask me: ‘Who are you talking to? Who is your target audience?’ And when I began to paint, I always thought of that, and it became difficult at times. My experience in graduate school was an interesting one because there was this attempt to make me into this black person who did this. And at that point in my life I couldn’t find work, I was hungry... Making art was something I could do, and I knew I could do it and I wasn’t going to let anybody take it from me.” Even now, when asked if his artistic commitment is a struggle, the answer is a resounding yes.

In the heart of the New York gallery, his silhouette moves around, eager to explain his pictorial compositions to the guests who have come to the opening, often intrigued by these apparently simple, even caricatured scenes, whose clean, smooth colours defy any approach that might be considered too intellectual. The use of acrylic latex paint reinforces the matte, slightly vintage look.

And yet, behind this theatrical artificiality, the message is much harsher, compounded by assemblies of deliberately anachronistic symbols that work like a relentless machine for crisscrossing eras and ideologies. Michael Ray Charles makes no secret of his delight in the idea of confronting images through the use of transvestism. Behind this cabaret dancer with the legs of a black woman and the bust of a white man, the décor of the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles appears in very light blue, like wallpaper, whilst the white face is masked by a black face. We recognise the lopsided posture of the Sun King painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud, but there is also a reference to the clothes worn by the black servants, similar to the English three-piece suit, betraying a flamboyant dandyism that the house slave, dressed in this way, had to reflect for the prestige of the owners. This ironic, radical work, entitled (Forever Free) My Long Tail Butterfly (2022) refers directly to My Long Tail Blue (1827), one of the first popular songs from the minstrel shows in which the first blackface performer was George Washington Dixon, as we learn from the catalogue text signed by Hedwig Van Impe. Drama beneath the glitter. Against a backdrop of harlequinades—as evidenced by the colours of certain canvases—and masquerades—masks, curtains and carnivalesque attitudes invade a glossy décor borrowed from French Grand Siècle gilding—Michael Ray Charles re-enacts centuries of denigrating, stereotyped popular imagery, not without a dose of malice, combining it with the issue of gender, with the minstrel of yesteryear becoming a transvestite and the pin-up girl a bondage goddess, echoing current sexual and identity politics. The art of combining images that have never been brought together, the art of elevating the black figure to places it has never been able to occupy. Further on, there is a Roman marble bust of a black man topped by a moccasin and observed by a white mask—a substitute for a skull?—placed on a table. The work, in the form of a subverted vanity, is called (Forever Free) You Are Because I Am (2023) and highlights the artist’s interest in putting things into historical perspective, beyond the era of slavery, since he is particularly interested in the representation of black people in ancient Egypt and Rome. “So much about the black experience has been suppressed.There’s this belief that we didn’t create anything. The presence of black people in Antiquity is not taught at school. I hate to generalise, but I think it’s safe to say that most people think black history began with slavery,” he said. Beyond stereotypes, the artist weaves a historical thread about the erroneous beliefs surrounding black identity. Kara Walker, whose work has also been hotly contested, uses caricature in the same way. This is reflected in the paper cut-outs in the form of shadow plays by the artist, who was born in 1969, as well as her monumental sculpture A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (2014), at the former Domino Sugar factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, depicting a sphinx with the face of a black woman. Despite the weight of images from the past, Michael Ray Charles says he has noticed a shift in focus, especially thanks to the connected world and to young artists. “We get to a point now where we see the presence of blackness existing on a global level,” he said, recalling how the representation of the black figure has evolved since the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, citing Jacob Lawrence, William H. Johnson and Archibald Motley as the first to represent African-American culture in painting. “Why do so many black artists refer to the black body? I question that.” Like the filmmakers Spike Lee, with whom he has collaborated, or Jordan Peele, African-American painters are now more adept at creating a self-image, having been embraced by the art market for barely two years. “In this generation, people have the ability to say with a sense of authority and certainty who they are, and I’m proud of that, but the fight is still to be seen as an artist and not just a black artist.” All the more so as the pendulum of history can be ferocious, as suggested by the painting (Forever Free) Veni Vidi (2022): “A reflection on the forces of discrimination, the long road to emancipation and how every step forward is potentially a source of ‘backlash,’” said Anne-Claudie Coric, the director of the Templon gallery, when she showed this work at the last Basel art fair. In the bottom right-hand corner of his canvases, beneath his signature, a penny recalls “the constant questioning of what freedom is,” the artist confided. n

Translation: Juliet Powys

Julie Chaizemartin is a journalist and art critic.

Michael Ray Charles

Né en born in 1967 à in Lafayette Vit et travaille à lives and works in Austin et and Gand Expositions personnelles (sélection) Solo shows: 2023 Veni Vidi, Templon, New York

2022 In the Presence of Light, Templon, Paris

2004 Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

2003 Cotthem Gallery, Barcelone

2002 Cotthem Gallery, Bruxelles

1999 Face Off: Michael Ray Charles /Jean-Michel Basquiat, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe ; Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York

1998 Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsseldorf

Expositions collectives (sélection) Group shows:

2023 De leur temps (7), un regard sur les collections privées, Frac Grand Large, Dunkerque 2022 Black Indians, Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris