Overview

Smithsonian American Art Museum's 2021 Charles C. Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art Michael Ray Charles is the most comprehensive presentation yet of the work of an artist who rose to prominence in the 1990s for works that engaged American stereotypes of African Americans. With a background in advertising and an archivist's inquisitiveness, Charles developed an artistic practice that made startling use of found images and offered critiques of the narratives they fostered. Immersing readers in the imagination of this daring painter, Michael Ray Charles celebrates and contextualizes a singular, major figure in the art world. Art historian Cherise Smith collaborated with the artist to curate nearly one hundred color plates documenting nearly thirty years of visual art. These plates are framed by an interview with the artist and by Smith's own deep interpretive essay on Charles's work. Smith explores topics ranging from the controversy resulting from Charles's provocative appropriations of stereotypical racial material to his techniques of sampling from popular culture, and from his commentaries on African American men and sports to his work with director Spike Lee on Bamboozled. Both clear-eyed and complex, this retrospective demonstrates the significant role that Michael Ray Charles's work has played in defining what art is today.

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9781477319178

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Reviews

Addressing many facets of Charles's career, Smith's monograph is a welcome addition to [the] renewed recognition of Charles's significant standing in contemporary American art. Her scholarship reveals the complexity of his engagement with images and symbols of antiblack racism and helps readers gain a greater appreciation of his controversial body of work as it relates to a range of art historical, social, and political contexts...We are fortunate to have Smith's monograph as a guide for thinking through Charles's incredibly powerful body of work. * caa.reviews * Both clear-eyed and complex, this retrospective demonstrates the significant role that Michael Ray Charles's work has played in defining what art is today. * Prairie View AM's TIPHC Newsletter * [Michael Ray Charles] documents 30 years of Charles' output and provides both an historical and contemporary context for his development. It further brings us up to the present both in terms of his work and the so-called post-racial America many hoped would truly exist with the election of Barack Obama. * Print Magazine * [The] cogent, expansive essay by art historian Cherise Smith contextualizes Charles's provocative appropriation of stereotypical racial material. * Sightlines Magazine *

[The] cogent, expansive essay by art historian Cherise Smith contextualizes Charles's provocative appropriation of stereotypical racial material. * Sightlines Magazine *

[The] cogent, expansive essay by art historian Cherise Smith contextualizes Charles's provocative appropriation of stereotypical racial material. * Sightlines Magazine * [Michael Ray Charles] documents 30 years of Charles' output and provides both an historical and contemporary context for his development. It further brings us up to the present both in terms of his work and the so-called post-racial America many hoped would truly exist with the election of Barack Obama. * Print Magazine * Both clear-eyed and complex, this retrospective demonstrates the significant role that Michael Ray Charles's work has played in defining what art is today. * Prairie View AM's TIPHC Newsletter * Addressing many facets of Charles's career, Smith's monograph is a welcome addition to [the] renewed recognition of Charles's significant standing in contemporary American art. Her scholarship reveals the complexity of his engagement with images and symbols of antiblack racism and helps readers gain a greater appreciation of his controversial body of work as it relates to a range of art historical, social, and political contexts...We are fortunate to have Smith's monograph as a guide for thinking through Charles's incredibly powerful body of work. * caa.reviews *

Author Information

A curator and art historian, Cherise Smith is the Founding Executive Director of the Art Galleries at Black Studies, Chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department (AADS), and a professor in the Departments of AADS and Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Enacting Others: Politics of Identity in Eleanor Antin, Nikki S. Lee, Adrian Piper, and Anna Deavere Smith.

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