Charles White
About Charles White
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Charles Wilbert White, Jr. (1918–1979) was a prominent twentieth-century artist and educator. His artistic practice spanned painting, drawing, lithography, and muralism and focused on subjects related to African American history, socio-economic struggles, and human relationships. His best-known work is The Contribution of the Negro to American Democracy, a mural at Hampton University in Virginia.
Born and raised in Chicago, White began painting early on in his life. He went on to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Following his graduation, he worked as a muralist for the WPA-sponsored Illinois Federal Arts Project, a Julius Rosenwald Foundation fellow, an elementary school teacher, and an artist-in-residence.
White joined the faculty at Otis College of Art and Design (then known as Otis Art Institute) in 1964. Eventually, he became the Chair of the Drawing Department. While teaching at Otis, he was a beacon for young African American artists who came to study with him, among them Alonzo Davis, David Hammons, and Kerry James Marshall. White taught at Otis up until his passing in 1979.
While living in California, White was represented by Benjamin Horowitz's Heritage Gallery, and in 1972, he was the third African American artist to be elected a full member of the National Academy of Design. During his lifetime and after his passing, has received numerous awards and honors. His work has been exhibited at LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Newark Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and elsewhere. In 2018, the centenary year of his birth, the first major retrospective exhibition of White's work was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.
In 2004, the Charles White Elementary School, named in his honor, was opened in the LAUSD. The school is located at Otis' former MacArthur Park campus and houses an art gallery in collaboration with LACMA.
Books (and More)
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Charles White: A Retrospective
A revelatory reassessment of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century Charles White (1918-1979) is best known for bold, large-scale paintings and drawings of African Americans, meticulously executed works that depict human relationships and socioeconomic struggles with a remarkable sensitivity. This comprehensive study offers a much-needed reexamination of the artist's career and legacy. With handsome reproductions of White's finest paintings, drawings, and prints, the volume introduces his work to contemporary audiences, reclaims his place in the art-historical narrative, and stresses the continuing relevance of his insistent dedication to producing positive social change through art. Tracing White's career from his emergence in Chicago to his mature practice as an artist, activist, and educator in New York and Los Angeles, leading experts provide insights into White's creative process, his work as a photographer, his political activism and interest in history, the relationship between his art and his teaching, and the importance of feminism in his work. A preface by Kerry James Marshall addresses White's significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners and underlines the importance of this largely overlooked artist.
Call Number: N6537 W44 A4 2018ISBN: 9780300232981Publication Date: 2018 -
Charles White
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One of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, Charles White (1918-1979) --with amazing spirit, vision, and brilliance--devoted both his life and work to portraying the African American community. With pencil and brush, in black and white or in color, he captured not only the poverty, strife, and despair of the black people but their strength of community, the joy of enlightenment, and the tenderness of kinship as well, rejecting the usual stereotypes of black people as inferior. His canvases, woodcuts, monumental drawings, and murals convey his strong social consciousness and impart the inherent dignity of his subjects.Andrea Barnwell chronicles the highlights of White's career, discusses several of the artist's famous works, and introduces many works from private collections that never before have been examined. Although White's works are in the collections of major museums and libraries, including Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Flint Institute of Art, his place in the annals of art history has never been fully realized.
Call Number: N6537 W44 B37 2002ISBN: 9780764921292Publication Date: 2002 -
Charles White: Black Pope
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Charles White (1918-1979) was an artist, a teacher and an activist. Widely celebrated during his lifetime for what his contemporaries termed 'images of dignity', his depictions of African American men, women and children continue to resonate today. White's commitment to figuration, to directly addressing the social and political concerns of his time through his work, and to mastering mediums that allowed for wide circulation of his art established him as a major figure, and one with significant influence on his peers and followers. Through a close examination of White's late masterwork Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man) in The Museum of Modern Art's collection, this book considers White's artistic practice and strategies. Beginning with his earliest days as an artist in Chicago in the 1940s, to time spent developing his craft in New York in the 1950s, and ending with his final decades as a revered figure in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope explores the artist's career through a focused consideration of key works. By creating visually compelling, ideologically complex works that engage audiences on many levels, White established himself as a key figure of his time, one whose work continues to resonate today.
Call Number: N6537 W44 A53 2017ISBN: 9781633450271Publication Date: 2017 -
Grandpa and the Library
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Every day, young Charles White's mother takes him the Chicago Public Library, where the librarians look after him until she picks him up again after work, at six o'clock. At the library Charles looks carefully at the picture books the librarians give him and also at the people around him, later drawing what he sees on scraps of paper at home. He learns to be patient and observant--and, by watching art students painting in the park, how to mix and use oil paints. As he grows into an artist, he paints the people he sees and admires. Ultimately, Charles becomes a great artist whose works now hang in museums throughout the United States. Written and illustrated by White's son, C. Ian White, and featuring full-color reproductions of Charles White's artworks, this deeply personal story traces the childhood influences that inspired young Charles to become an artist and a teacher.
Call Number: NC965 W55 G73 2018ISBN: 9781633450653Publication Date: 2018-09-04
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More items by & about Charles White in OwlCat Addtional books and materials about Charles While in the Millard Sheets Library
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Charles White in the OtisDID Access lmited to the Otis community. Search results for his paintings.Expand the search to find his photographs, sculptures, and more.
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