Charles White

A revelatory reassessment of one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century Charles White (1918–1979) is best known for bold, large-scale paintings and drawings of African Americans, meticulously executed works that depict human relationships and socioeconomic struggles with a remarkable sensitivity. This comprehensive study offers a much-needed reexamination of the artist’s career and legacy. With handsome reproductions of White’s finest paintings, drawings, and prints, the volume introduces his work to contemporary audiences, reclaims his place in the art-historical narrative, and stresses the continuing relevance of his insistent dedication to producing positive social change through art. Tracing White’s career from his emergence in Chicago to his mature practice as an artist, activist, and educator in New York and Los Angeles, leading experts provide insights into White’s creative process, his work as a photographer, his political activism and interest in history, the relationship between his art and his teaching, and the importance of feminism in his work. A preface by Kerry James Marshall addresses White’s significance as a mentor to an entire generation of practitioners and underlines the importance of this largely overlooked artist.

One of the greatest American artists of the twentieth century, Charles White (1918-1979) --with amazing spirit, vision, and brilliance--devoted both his life and work to portraying the African American community. With pencil and brush, in black and white or in color, he captured not only the poverty, strife, and despair of the black people but their strength of community, the joy of enlightenment, and the tenderness of kinship as well, rejecting the usual stereotypes of black people as inferior. His canvases, woodcuts, monumental drawings, and murals convey his strong social consciousness and impart the inherent dignity of his subjects.Andrea Barnwell chronicles the highlights of White's career, discusses several of the artist's famous works, and introduces many works from private collections that never before have been examined. Although White's works are in the collections of major museums and libraries, including Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Flint Institute of Art, his place in the annals of art history has never been fully realized.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Horses, friends, ragtime music, and steer roping-those were the interests of the youthful Will Rogers as he came of age in the Indian Territory and traveled to the Southern Hemisphere in this first of six definitive volumes of The Papers of Will Rogers. By separating fact from legend and unveiling new knowledge via extensive archival research, this documentary history represents a unique contribution to Rogers scholarship and to studies of the Cherokee Nation West. Using many previously unpublished letters and photographs-together with introductions, notes, and biographies of his friends and relatives-volume one illuminates Rogers’s complex relationship with his father, his Cherokee heritage, his early education, first encounters with his future wife, Betty Blake, his voyage to Argentina, and his fledging years in Wild West shows and circuses in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Coorespondence, performance reviews, and rare newspaper documents spotlight the singular experiences that shaped the young Rogers within the context of his family, his ethnic background, and historical events. No other book describes so provocatively and authentically the genesis of America’s most beloved and influential humorist.