BLACK CATS GO OFF! (FFO OG STAC KCALB)
Artist/Culture
Michael Ray Charles
(American, born 1967)
Date1994
Mediumlithograph, etching, aquatint, spit bite, stencil, linocut and hand coloring on white Rives BFK wove paper
Dimensionsplate: 52.3 x 30.2 cm (20 9/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
sheet: 61 x 49.5 cm (24 x 19 1/2 in.)
sheet: 61 x 49.5 cm (24 x 19 1/2 in.)
ClassificationsPrints
MarkingsPartial watermark: tops of letters of BFK RIVES; unidentified chopmark, l.r.
Credit LineAustin S. Garver Fund
Object number1998.185
Label TextCharles is an interdisciplinary artist best known for appropriating 19th- and 20th-century racist caricatures of Blackness from American popular culture including advertisements, billboards, and TV commercials. As is common in his practice, he reverses the text in an attempt to subvert derogatory stereotypes. According to Charles, reversal creates an empty, backward icon that no longer holds true.
Early in his career, Charles started placing a penny heads-up and upside-down into each of his works. For Charles, flipping the coin’s portrait upends President Abraham Lincoln’s standing as the sole emancipator of the enslaved in the United States. Here, a penny was embossed into the paper beside the jester’s leg.ProvenancePurchased from Gottheiner, Ltd.On View
Not on view
