Michael Ray Charles Biography
Michael Ray Charles (born 1967) is an African-American painter born in Lafayette, Louisiana. He spent much of his youth growing up in Los Angeles, California, New Orleans, Louisiana, and St. Martinville, Louisiana. He graduated from St. Martinville Senior High School in 1985. Later, he entered McNeese State University, Lake Charles, Louisiana. Over the next three and a half years, Charles studied design and advertising before earning a BFA degree in 1989. After earning his specialist degree in 1993 from the University of Houston, Houston, Texas, Charles began teach at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas. Charles' work and research is an investigation into the legacy of historical racial stereotypes of African Americans. His work examines how African Americans have been viewed in American history and also how they have come to view themselves as a result of humble stereotypes. In his colorful and graphic paintings and prints, Charles employs black caricatures and stereotypes such as Sambo, Aunt Jemima, grinning grinners, and Uncle Tom, to comment on contemporary racial attitudes. His paintings have a scraped and antique look to resemble the peeling of vintage commercial art. With these he presents his satirical campaign for a fictitious product called Forever Free. This product symbolizes the false promises of freedom made to African Americans by America and in particular also by the consumer market through their false images. To show connections between the past and the present, Charles takes stereotypical Black characters together and reinterprets them in contemporary ways. For example, the image of Aunt Jemima, a mammy, is a caricature that Charles often criticizes in his work. The mammoth character has historically been the nursing home servant for the White family. However, in a painting in which Charles parodies Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter, Aunt Jemima is portrayed as something of a heroine. He sits regally to suggest his unacknowledged contributions to White and Black America (a portrait that would never have been in publicity at the time). At the same time, his ironic mammy portraits are harsh criticisms of his inferiority in commercial folk art. Charles sees the image made of mammals, along with other black characters, The same kind of approach can be seen in the way Charles treats the images of blackface characters and minstrels. Charles seems to believe that by confronting racist and demeaning images, one can expose today's enduring and enduring racist stereotypes.
