Notes from the Catalogue: Charles White, inside the artist’s life in Pasadena, CA

The renowned artist Charles White was known for murals and large drawings inspired by African-American history and culture. Featured in our Printed & Manuscript African Americana sale on March 28 is a remarkable archive of letters by the famed artist and his wife.

 

 

The extraordinary letters were written by White and his wife, Frances Barrett White, to Melvin and Lorraine Williamson, who like the Whites, were an interracial couple. Mel Williamson was an art director for Viking Press who shared the artist’s Chicago background. The letters begin in October 1956, shortly after the Whites arrived in California, and continue with regularly through June 1960.

 

On Charles’s Art

Almost all of the letters discuss Charles’s art, from the moment they agreed to buy a house in Pasadena, which has “a large dormer type room which we are going to use as studio till the garage can be done over,” as noted on October 29, 1956. Many of the early letters seek assistance in getting a shipment of White’s prints shipped out from ACA Galleries in New York: “I beg of him, to run as many as he can and send them as fast as possible. I could have sold a couple hundred by now.” The May 5, 1957 letter tells the harrowing saga of transporting a 40 x 60-inch drawing on the roof of their compact car in a rainstorm.

 

 

Fran notes on July 24, 1959, that “Charles has been working on several new projects a la Calif. culture–one with an outstanding landscape artist, designing patio and pool designs, actually screen dividers . . . experimenting with brightly colored African folk-art themes.” She also announces his upcoming “one man show at the Pacific Town Club, leading men ‘folks’ private club in LA.” On September 17, Charles reported on this show, which was “sponsored by and presented by ‘folks.’ And man, it was a real gasser. A real high-light in my career.”

 

Their Fashionable Inner Circle

Even if in some alternate universe White was completely forgotten as an artist today, these letters would still be important and interesting–for White’s leftist politics, their documentation of an interracial marriage, and for their first-name-basis discussion of White’s many famous friends, such as Sidney Poitier, Lorraine Hansberry, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis and Langston Hughes.

 

 

In keeping with the spirit of the 1950s, a mind-boggling number of martinis are consumed. On January 18, 1959, Charles discusses a new play in production, having possibly never seen its name in writing: “Sidney bought one of my drawings. . . Sidney is doing, as you probably know, Lorraine Hansberry’s play Rising in the Sun. I truly hope it’s a smash hit because of the people involved.” He added on April 29, 1959, that “It must all seem a little unreal and fantastic to Lorraine to be almost overnight thrown into the glamorous spotlight of a national celebrity. We sent a letter of congratulations to her and Sidney.”

 

 

The rest of the letter is quite a masterpiece, not only for its early “Black Panther” sighting: “When the academy chickened out on giving the acting award to Sidney, I immediately secured a black hair from a monkey tail, a black snake’s left eye tooth, and the juice of a black gaiter breast, wrapped in the skin of a black goat that had been soaked for 40 days and 40 nights in the urine of a three-toed cross-eyed black panther, then chanted the sacred words known only to the seventh son of a seventh son of a black-blooded descendant of a Waturi chief, and rushed over to the academy and buried it under their front door step. The Black Pox is on them, their days are numbered. And come 1963 the black folks of the world will bestow on Sidney & Ruby Dee the Black Oscars.” 

 

The Whites on Politics

More seriously, the Whites were deeply interested in American and world politics. On February 25, 1957, he wrote: “Well, folks are still moving with the power of de Lord. How about So. Africa putting down a fine bus strike? And Rev. King on the cover of Time Magazine. . . . I never felt so excited and enthusiastic about just being alive. And I think this feeling is being carried over into my work.”

 

 

He expressed delight with The Book of Negro Folklore by Langston Hughes, ranking it as among “my most cherished books” alongside “the volumes of Fred Douglas, Mao Se Tung, and the letters of Kathe Kolwitz.” The February 15, 1959 letter is headed “HAPPY NEGRO HISTORY WEEK, FOLKS.” On March 25, 1960, ten days after the Atlanta Student Movement launched its sit-in campaign, he writes sarcastically “Mister Charlie is much perplexed and vexed, trying to find some way to deal with these ‘crazy’ Negroes. They don’t seem to be afraid of jail, clubs, guns, or nothing. They must be crazy to face all this just for civil rights, freedom, and human dignity.” 

 

Photographs

Giving visual focus to this collection are 53 snapshot photographs sent by the Whites, 1957-61 and some undated, along with 3 sleeves of negatives. Several show White’s studio or his most recent works in progress; many are captioned on verso with notes such as “Drawing on the board is part of three I’m doing for Max Youngstein.” Others simply document their new suburban life in Pasadena.

 

 

Also included are 4 brochures for White’s 1958 ACA Gallery exhibition, and a box of 12 color slides dated December 1960. One of the slides shows White on his knees in his home studio, inking the linoleum block for his print Solid as a Rock, which was recently sold in our African-American Fine Art sale on October 4, 2018.

Additional material from the Melvin and Lorraine Williamson family includes Lorraine Hansberry‘s A Raisin in the Sun, the first play by an African-American woman and African-American director on Broadway. The draft, signed “Lorraine’s Copy,” (which Lorraine it refers to is unclear) in the author’s hand, and with manuscript notes throughout, comes from early in the script’s production–either late 1958 or early 1959–as the copyright date of 1959 has not yet been added, and permission for the title from Langston Hughes was still pending.

 

 

For more in our March 28 sale, browse the full catalogue or download the Swann Galleries app.

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