Untitled

A true virtuoso of drawing, Charles White produced sincere and powerful portraits of his African-American subjects, creating an image of strength and producing a voice of freedom for the black community over his four-decade career. As White explained, “art must be an integral part of the struggle. It can’t simply mirror what’s taking place…it must ally itself with the forces of liberation” (C. White quoted in J. Elliot, “Charles White: Portrait of an Artist,” Negro History Bulletin 41, no. 3 (May–June 1978), p. 828). In the present lot, a tender visage executed exquisitely in graphite emerges from a shaded background. The tondo shape of the image deliberately places the portrait in a long history of religious imagery, shown in similar formats throughout art history. In this dialogue, White pushes the viewer to re-examine our histories and our icons. White was also a skilled teacher and was extremely influential, with students from David Hammons to Kerry James Marshall. As Marshall reflects, “under Charles White’s influence I always knew that I wanted to make work that was about something: history, culture, politics, social issues…It was just a matter of mastering the skills to actually do it” (K. J. Marshall quoted in “An Argument for Something Else: Dieter Roelstraete in Conversation with Kerry James Marshall, Chicago 2012,” in Kerry James Marshall: Painting and Other Stuff, exh. cat., Antwerp, 2013, p. 21.) Currently, a major retrospective of the artist’s work is touring the United States, originating at the Museum of Modern Art and traveling to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.