Description
Book SynopsisFeaturing more than one hundred-and-fifty color images, this is the first in-depth examination of the work of Michael Ray Charles, whose provocative paintings recast images of racism in consumer culture.
Trade Review[The] cogent, expansive essay by art historian Cherise Smith contextualizes Charles's provocative appropriation of stereotypical racial material. * Sightlines Magazine *
Michael Ray Charles: A Retrospective was published in 2020. It’s a gorgeous book, with nearly a hundred full color plates of Charles’s work. In it, Smith lays out Charles’s biography, closely tracks the development and evolution of his ongoing exploration of the history of stereotypical representations of Black people in America, and situates him within the larger realm of American and African American art. * Life & Letters *
[
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 A&M'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 *
Table of Contents
- Interview with Michael Ray Charles by Cherise Smith
- Plates
- Michael Ray Charles: A History by Cherise Smith
- Acknowledgments
- Curriculum Vitae by Kara Carmack
- Bibliography by Katherine Gregory Field
- Index
