FOR ART'S SAKE | GALLERY | CHARLES BROWNING | DONNE TEMPO

Remembering to Forget: Paintings by Charles Browning

by Terre Jenkins

At first glance something feels all too familiar about Charles Browning’s paintings. Indeed, Browning, whose first solo show with the Schroeder Romero Gallery that opens Thursday, draws on a rich resource of iconic and popular 18th and 19th century American artists: Currier and Ives, George Caleb Bingham, Benjamin West and the painters of the Hudson River School. While Browning has given a nod to these chroniclers of American history through his use of style and composition, it doesn’t take much to see how he challenges their romanticized, idyllic interpretations of our past. His work may be reminiscent but it is anything but nostalgic.

Mine by Charles Browning
Browning began developing this style back to the mid 1990’s. At that time Browning was struggling to redefine his work and searching for new inspiration. He found the art produced by minority artists like Manuel Ocampo and Kerry James Marshal to be powerful and exciting. Browning was struck by how their work drew on historical subject matter and techniques to challenge racist and stereotypic ideas. As a white male, Browning wondered how he could approach the same challenging subjects. Browning, who teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, hit upon the genre of American history paintings. These idealistic paintings attempted to tell the story of the evolution of our nation, but they told only a part of the story. By reusing familiar iconic images Browning hoped to provide a different perspective.

In Browning’s hands and through the use of parody, these beloved images are rendered anachronistic. The notion of Manifest Destiny, for example, is given a modern ironic twist. In “Dumb Ass”, a pioneer, looking much like Davy Crockett, gazes triumphantly over a vast landscape as he walks off a cliff. He appears self righteously noble and ridiculous at the same time. When viewing Browning’s paintings you may be unsure whether you want to laugh, cry or shake your head in disbelief. In “Black Face”, a woman wearing a satin gown and jewels sits for her portrait in black face. Browning’s choice of images is meant to challenge. And while they may not be as shocking as say, a portrait of George Washington drawing back a curtain to reveal a Congressmen having sex with his maid (or butler), his images prod us to question what part of the American story was left untold?

Fluid Allegory by Charles Browning
Browning’s most recent works feel less derivative and are imprinted more with his own style. “Fluid Allegory” is a perfect example. It is beautifully rendered in a classic style. And while the composition is no doubt historically referential it is unique and the overall image is compelling. Browning guides your eye from the dark skinned Native woman exuding milk from her breast to the pale, no doubt European, baby on her knee peeing into a stream of blood coming from a slaughtered deer. You will be left to answer the question of how these images relate based on your own cultural and historical references.

In the eight new works you will see at the Schroeder Romero Gallery the finger poking humor is not gone from Browning’s work. You will probably burst out laughing when you see “Sometimes You Just Have to Kill Everything”. A smug hunter rests on the fruits of his labor. Grinning from ear to ear with a sense of pride he welcomes the viewer as a friend. But if you look closely you may realize that the title may not refer to the hunter but rather the Indian in the bushes. This subtly is an evolving element in Browning’s most current works. “Mine” is a wonderful example of the way Browning has managed to blend subtly and complexity with his beautiful style of painting. In the piece a knot of animals and humans compete against and struggle for something, but for what we are not certain. The choice of animals is symbolic, each having a story of their own in folklore. There is a wheel, which can be viewed as a symbol of progress or as a symbol of time. The whole tangled mess of wings and antlers and heads and arms twists itself into a composition that resembles a Celtic knot. Like a Mobius strip we cannot figure where it begins or ends. The title itself “Mine” can be considered on several levels. It can be an exclamation, a place of exploration and exploitation and it can be an explosive device. Browning explains that all three interpretations can be applied to history as well, “We can claim history as our own, we can dig in to it, and it can be an incendiary topic with hidden dangers.”

Sometimes You Just Have to Kill Everything by Charles Browning

Browning’s show promises to be thought provoking and enjoyable both on an intellectual and an aesthetic level. The show at Schroeder Gallery opens May 16 and runs through June 21, 2008. The Schroeder Romero Gallery is located at 637 West 27th Street - Ground Floor, New York, NY 1000 (212) 630-0722.

Charles Browning biography

Charles Browning received his BFA in Drawing and Illustration from The California College of the Arts in 1987. In 2001 he returned to school and completed his MFA in Studio Art at New York University in 2004. Browning now teaches drawing and painting at The University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA, and at Bucks County Community College. He also does private art sessions with brain injured clients at Success Rehabilitation, Quakertown, PA. He has previously taught at New York University and Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Since fall of 2006, Charles Browning’s paintings have appeared in several group shows including “Don’t Know Much About History” at Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut, curated by Denise Markonish from Mass MoCA, and “Promised Land” at Morgan Lehman Gallery, Manhattan, curated by Elizabeth Grady of the Whitney Museum. Charles Browning is represented by Schroeder Romero Gallery, Manhattan. His paintings may be seen at http://www.foundrysite.com/browning/

Remembering to Forget: Strategies of Propaganda and Mythology

“Three Indians come today to take Christmas with us, I gave them a bottle of whiskey . . . one informed me that an Englishman 16 miles from here told him that the Americans had the Countrey and no one was allowed to trade & etc. I explained to him the Intention of Government and the Caus of Possession.”
— William Clark, Journals, December 25, 1803

"Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence."
— George Santayana

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
— William Faulkner

Battle of the Indians by Charles Browning

We live in funny times. We live in unfunny times. The Divine Right of Kings transmutates into Manifest destiny. Now it is the people who dictate the course of Empire. The legalese of “Intention” and “Caus” are the new props to establish their rights. A confluence of Nationalism and Romanticism provide an image of “our” nation, an image that expands across the continent, feeding the nostalgia for the already vanished wilderness of the eastern states. Use it or lose it! “We The People” shall decide who shall be included in “The People.” All others will serve or be destroyed, absorbed, or forgotten. Head west shooting and drinking, and before you know it, you’ve conquered a continent. Are we closer to the self-evident truths and inalienable rights laid out at the founding of the nation or have we just eliminated inconvenient claimants. And they will keep popping up!

Like the politician or the prostitute, the painter manipulates. Artifice makes slaves of our eyes. Do you see what I see? With each mark the painter says, “This is True!” At least here anyway. But it’s really about love and compromise: the caress of the brush, the slippery surface. A mix of sincerity and jesting suspends absolute meaning, but there’s the paint, a game to play. What’s wrong with this picture?

When my Aunt Eleanor was nine she lived next door to the author Carl Sandberg. One day he showed El a book about Native Americans he was working on. Pointing at the text, the illustration, and a blank page between, he said, “El, the words here are what the white man knows. And the picture is what the red man knows. But here in between, that’s what nobody knows”

Charles Browning, 2008