Michael Ray Charles: Caricatures to Catharsis

It’s ugly, but it’s in cartoons, plastered on pancake mix and not so sneakily thrown into advertisements. American painter Michael Ray Charles did not create these stereotypical depictions of the Black community, he’s decoding them.

TIANI NELSON: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up in Louisiana?

MICHAEL RAY CHARLES: When I look back at my youth, of course it’s a state of unknowing. Because of that, I sort of had this rosy perspective of Southern Louisiana. I knew it was a special place, but for me it was Rockwell-esque.

It was a protected space, although it did not come without its challenges. It was a small town where on any given Friday night, everybody was at the football game cheering on the Tigers, and every day after school, White students got on one bus that went one direction and Black students got on the other bus that went the opposite direction. So the presence of difference and otherness was all around me as a kid.

TN: Were you already exploring race when you first began art?

MRC: I think both directly and indirectly, I was asking questions. As a kid, I spent a lot of time reading poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. My dad was also quite involved in making sure that the Black community got things that it did not have. He was a director of a Head Start program and taught people in small towns how to swim. Both Black and White kids. So I had some kind of direct presence of what I would read as a kid about the Black experience coupled with what you're seeing on television.

TN: When creating your art, I know that you’ve pulled a lot from older American advertisements and billboards. You've also taken inspiration from Greco-Roman sculptures and those ideas of iconography. What is your research process like now?

MRC: I'm still dealing with similar variations of the same source material. One of the things I've been really intrigued with is trying to understand the origins of the stereotypical representations of Blacks in American culture. What I discovered is that there are strands of it that exist within antiquity, and they change over time. Scholars would argue that prejudice did not exist in Rome. Well, I know that difference was clear, and it was articulated in pottery from the fourth century forward. What moves forward in terms of Western visual representations of Blacks, particularly in America as it became more of a visual culture in the 19th-century, is that they became more stereotypical.

So where I'm at now is trying my best to understand the presence of the past. How do we continue to utilize certain concepts, whether it's out of ignorance or intentionally, and how are we then reintroducing them to each new generation. I don't think that entertainment in America is ever void of the strands of minstrelsy or vaudeville.

TN: Your art reflects on the past of minstrelsy. What forms of modern day minstrelsy are you noticing?

MRC: Cross-dressing, for example. That practice was staple in minstrel performances. White actors would at times adorn a dress and the sooted mask, and acted out fantasies or ideas about the Black female other, oftentimes accentuating the differences in terms of body makeup, movements, or how one speaks.

I often equate that as an extension of what I saw early on in ‘70s television such as Three's Company. Jack Tripper was a character who lived with these two women. It wasn't explicit that he was gay, but he would wear the dress, and for me, that was an extension of minstrelsy. If I followed that forward, Will and Grace, where the gay character plays comic relief. Over the top. Not every gay person is that flamboyant, but in the context of entertainment, it is turned up. It's not the Black face, but it's a version of minstrelsy.

TN: You attended McNeese State for undergrad, then went and got your Masters at the University of Houston, and now you live in Austin and have held both teaching and administrative positions at the University of Texas. Do you see a change in your process or inspiration while living in these different Southern cities?

MRC: Yeah, you get older and you either abandon earlier thoughts or pursue something else that appears to be more fruitful. Somehow I doubled down. What I mean by that is I am committed to producing a body of work forever that is a reflection on the challenges of Black representation. I'm also someone who's trying my best to remove myself in a way where I can take an objective gaze over how society is evolving continually, how popular culture in America was constructed and what were these dominant ideas that continue to grow in many ways, even with technology. My work is about the exploration of otherness, and that's not going anywhere.

TN: Your work has been deemed controversial by a lot of people and you've said before that people have questioned your Blackness and if you are perpetuating stereotypes. What are those conversations like? How do you explain your art?

MRC: I stopped trying to explain, especially in those situations because it comes across as being defensive. If you have differing perspectives, I'm perfectly fine. Early on, I was led by the pursuit of the truth, as if it was a singular truth. In my travels and my intellectual journeys I've been more attracted to great thinkers, and great thinkers are not limited by the color of one's skin or one's gender. I'm at a point where there's no need for me to defend what's available readily throughout our society. I think it's easy for people to get a quick read and say what something is minus the complexities, and I think I understand that pretty well.

Walt Whitman talked about stereotypes in that way, that they're based on some truth. However, what happens when there's a power dynamic that comes into play? Who's constructing the image of otherness and for what purpose? So often in American culture, Blacks have not had that power.

TN: The United States has an ongoing conversation about race and the context in which we know it. Are those conversations as prevalent when your art is shown overseas? Or is it interpreted differently because they lack that context?

MRC: It varies. What's interesting is that various countries have had their own depictions. Germany has the Coburg Moor, the British have the Golliwog and the Spanish have Conguitos. I've come to realize that any new language created must be grounded in the past. If there's a disruption in the link that binds us to the past, that's an area for exploration. I'm interested in sharing ideas through the courses I teach or through my art. It's all open for interpretation and I'm confident that when it's all said and done, my body of work will be substantial enough to talk about how I've thought about both past, present and in the future.