When walking into the Charles White exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, I was immediately captured by the figures that he depicted in the majority of his artworks. I could tell that he was a prominent advocate during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, but as I walked around, it was fascinating to see how he was able to depict African-American life during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. It seems that we see those time period from such a constant lens, so we fail to recognize how other people perceived these situations from their own perspective.
One piece that resonated with me was entitled, “Black Sorrow.” The picture depicted the time when White and his wife visited Mexico, which seemed out of the ordinary for me, but I learned that he was influenced by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. From the title, the lithograph conveys a mood of bleakness and despair. The black and white tones illustrate a lack of variety and spontaneity in their lives. It was nice to know that they had each other, shown by their intimate embrace, but overall, it represents the subordinate status African-Americans were enduring. The couple had already moved to New York, so on their pilgrimage to Mexico, no doubt they saw the heinous treatment of blacks in the South for themselves.
Another that I was drawn to was entitled, “Frederick Douglass Lives Again.” Douglass was famous for escaping from slavery and founding the newspaper, The North Star. He remains such a prominent figure in African-American history and I truly admired how White was able to reincarnate him in 1949. In the illustration, Douglass is shown in prominence, leading a group of people that are bonded together by a rope. In a sense, this represents how his legacy is able to generate unity within the community. When reading more about it, I discovered that the citizens drawn were representations of supporters of the Communist leader of Harlem. It’s interesting to see people supporting the Communist party, but we must remember that its principles involve treating everybody equally. Thus, this serves as an example of seeing a historical event from a different perspective, as maybe blacks saw the political movement as a way to finally gain an adequate reputation in society.
What stood out to me about White was how he advocated for equal rights through his usage of art. It stood in line with Martin Luther King Jr.’s principle of civil disobedience.
