Charles White: A LITTLE HIGHER
March 18, 2023 - July 30, 2023
Coe Gallery
Best remembered for meticulously rendered paintings and drawings of his fellow African Americans, Charles White [1918–1979] committed himself to creating “images of dignity,” which elevated and ennobled his subjects without shying away from the realities of systemic racism and oppression. White’s work bears witness to his lived experience as a Black man who experienced racialized poverty, discrimination, denigration, and violence in America. It also reflects his deep admiration for Social Realists, American Regionalists, and the Mexican Muralists as well as his steadfast belief in a better tomorrow. This same spirit of gracious activism resonated in his devotion to teaching: White touched the lives of an entire generation of students at Otis College of Art and Design, including Kerry James Marshall and David Hammons.
White‘s body of work is marked by consummate skills of observation and powerful social critique tempered by a genuine love for humanity. This exhibition weaves together the complex threads of White’s compelling life and work, providing a thorough overview of his oeuvre, including the twelve paintings commissioned by the Johnson Publishing Company to illustrate Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s The Shaping of Black America (1975); a suite that has not been publicly exhibited in our region before.
My whole purpose in art is to make a positive statement about mankind, all mankind, an affirmation of humanity...This doesn’t mean that I am a man without angers—I’ve had my work in museums where I wasn’t allowed to see it—but what I pour into my work is the challenge of how beautiful life can be.
Charles White, 1964
Exhibition support provided by: City of Hickory; Sandra Pait Clay & George Clay III; Dixon Endowment Fund for Lifelong Learning; Spark the Arts; United Arts Council of Catawba County with funding from the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts; Linda & John Greenwell; Lynn & Leroy Lail; Kenneth K. Millholland & Suzanne G. Millholland Endowment Fund — a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation; Resource Partners, LLC; Carolina Anesthesia Associates, PA; and annual sponsors Shurtape Techologies and Alex Lee.