On View
An Artist’s Unflinching Exploration of American Minstrelsy
An Artist’s Unflinching Exploration of American Minstrelsy
Michael Ray Charles’s latest show of paintings, about race, gender and sexuality — and his first in New York in more than 20 years — opened recently at New York’s Templon gallery.
I talked to him about some of the featured works for T Magazine’s On View series →
“I’ve always gotten questions about the representation of Blackness and women in my paintings. This one is an attempt to show the masculine and feminine forms together with regards to desire and other ideas.”
“All of this for me is rooted in American minstrelsy — this country’s first creative contribution to the world.”
“The figure hovers above a pendulum that swings between Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson — between emancipation and civil rights. I think the contemporary Black experience is framed between those particular presidential brackets.”
“I’ll tell you a story: My wife and I were trying to sell our home in Austin years ago. For the life of me, we couldn’t sell it. One real estate agent said we needed to change every image we had in the house — all the photographs we had of ourselves, our family. Nothing could exist that suggested who we were as people. Within two weeks, the house sold.
“I hate to limit it to racism, because it’s a deeply embedded form of ignorance, but it intrigued me so much that I started to look at architectural features that reflected ideas of power — from types of windows and wall molding to columns that hark back to a certain time. The past is still with us.”
“I think my earlier work was much more confrontational. I wanted to make paintings that were unapologetic about the presence of the past.”
Those pieces were often styled as posters or advertisements, with pointed text and vibrant colors.
“I’m still painting about minstrelsy. Certain characteristics are similar to my early work, but my understanding of its intersections in history and culture is more complex.”
On View highlights works by Black artists, who have traditionally faced a disproportionately uphill battle in having their work exhibited by mainstream institutions. This interview has been edited and condensed.
