It is tempting to focus, one more time, on
Michael Ray Charles' use of racial stereotypes and whether his work
leads to productive discourse on social issues or perpetuates the
underlying hatred and ugliness that spawns those images in the first
place. In interviews, the artist admits that his latest installation
at dberman gallery in Austin, which explores the status of black
athletes and includes a faux basketball court, backboard (actually
an old window), and players' jerseys made of burlap coffee sacks,
has been timed to coincide with the college basketball playoffs
to maximize impact. His concerns have to do with the "com-modification"
of young sports figures, a travesty he links to the bad old days
of slavery by stuffing those jersey-shaped sacks with raw cotton,
and accentuates with a few familiar Sambo silhouettes for good measure.
Critics and other visitors tend to get so caught up speculating
whether Charles is deconstructing stereotypes or playing the system
for personal gain they tend to overlook the artfulness (or lack
thereof) inherent in the work. I've been there a time or two myself,
feeling my knee jerk all the way to my chin as I attempt to explain
Charles' work based as much on interviews-he is both articulate
and approachable-as on the art itself. I have also written about
his considerable ability as a draftsman, his painterly technique,
his inquiring mind, and his professional good fortune.
My problem with this particular exhibition and its focus on the
world of sports is that I don't care sufficiently about most of
the questions it poses to ponder the answers. Like the personable
young woman who works for d berman gallery and admits she thought
"March Madness" referred to the end-of-season retail sales
rather than basketball playoffs, I have little more than passing
knowledge of life on and off the courts. And I can't say I reserve
much sympathy for college players, black or white, who grow up to
be professional athletes making enough money every year to support
a small town school district, but without the inclination to do
so. Therefore I am left to focus here on the art itself, the aesthetic
appeal of the installation as a whole and the individual objects
within it. Does the work have visual impact? What a novel predicament!
Inside the gallery, a red velvet curtain drapes from ceiling to
floor, pulled to one side so visitors can enter the exhibition.
This makes the place look a bit like a Louisiana whore house when
viewed from outside the gallery windows. It also creates the illusion
that visitors to the exhibit are passing through a proscenium arch
onto a stage set. Rather than viewing a work of art by Michael Ray
Charles, visitors actually enter into his pictorial plane and are
themselves framed by a the border that Charles often creates around
a primary image. For this exhibition, Charles eschews his familiar,
colorful paintings styled to look like circus posters in favor of
this curtained entrance and marks on burlap coffee sacks cut the
size and shape of basketball jerseys. He has partially installed
a wood floor atop the gallery's concrete floor in the larger of
two exhibition areas. The distressed boards and faded paint lines
remind visitors of the way Charles has torn and aged paper to achieve
a similar effect in his paintings. A shiny black baby grand piano
stands polished and perfect in contrast to the worn floor, raggedy
burlap shirts-some stuffed and hanging from the ceiling with white
cotton billowing out armholes and others thumb tacked to gallery
walls. They are a sensory treat, these rough, muted burlap bags
with slashes of black and red ink and a bit of white paint, set
off by soft red velvet curtains, a shiny black piano, the scuffed
floor. The bags/shirts, which hang from the ceiling, dangle high
so visitors imagine phantom basketball players towering over them.
The placements are effective. In several cases, sacks are stitched
together and stuffed so their presence is particularly formidable.
On them we see stripes, circles, numbers and a provocative assortment
of words and images such as "profit/surplus/common stock"
and unpaid/benefit/assets." "NCAA" appears here and
there, as you might expect along with black face stereotypes. They
have names like (Forever Free) Jersey #15 (Bars and Stripes) and
(Forever Free) Jersey #23 (God/Dog) and are clearly out to push
the racially sensitive buttons of black and white visitors alike.
Jersey #5 (Music) and the omnipresent music in the gallery-CDs by
singers such as Etta James and Billie Holiday-expand the artist's
proposed dialogue beyond the world of sports.
The installation is also impacted by every visitor who enters into
it. The opening reception was so crowded that throngs of guests
clustered along the sidewalk outside the gallery, while inside a
lovely local singer crooned in close proximity to the piano and
members of the local art mob, most of whom mingled easily with Team
Michael Ray Charles. It was a lively club scene. Conversely, on
quiet afternoons, the sight of one or two average-height white guys
meandering near the implied bodies of stately black athletes appears
more strained, revealing a clear divide between the ghostly figures
and those who point and stare. (I imagine David Berman as the team
manager hunched forward, growling encouragement from time to time.)
All in all, there is a quiet magic in the way those empty shirts,
flat or stuffed make their presence felt in the room as visitors
take time to read and ponder the wordplay and symbols, and to observe
the subtle variations in the texture and tone of each object.
The success of the installation as a whole is perhaps why I find
it somehow odd that the "players" (jerseys) are sold separately
to willing collectors. In fact several folks have already paid a
great deal of money for stringy, empty, sculpted, hanging burlap
coffee sacks with Michael Ray Charles' provocative shorthand inked
on them. How might they look, I wonder, hanging and dangling in
a home environment next to the Ralph Lauren curtains or the Pottery
Barn barware or the big flat panel TV tuned to the sports network?
Now that's an installation I would very much like to see, jerseys
#9 and #10 -White Privilege and Cultural Value-suspended near an
Italian sofa and Barcelona chair.
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