Charles White’s extraordinary figuration materializes with remarkable dexterity in Solid as a Rock (My God is Rock). Executed in 1960, the present work was painted during a pivotal period of the Civil Rights Movement, and an exceptionally important time for Black artists in the United States. Both as an artist and a teacher, Charles White committed his career to documenting and uplifting Black subjects and culture, a motif that is evident in the present work. As the title of the work suggests, the central figure of Solid as a Rock (My God is Rock) seemingly embodies a pillar of unwavering strength in the face of injustice. Staunch and solemn, yet brimming with a hopeful radiance, White’s subject in the present work is a paradigmatic example of the artist’s iconic, socially committed output.
“When in the presence of Mr. White’s work, his people take on a reality all their own. You feel that somewhere, sometime, some place you have known these people before… You are enriched by the experience of having known Charles White’s people, who are like characters from a great novel that remain with you long after the pages of the book have been closed.”
Undulating with dazzling color, the present work showcases a single standing, reverent figure among a kaleidoscopic sea of cool blues and purples. Much like the meticulous cross-hatching that distinguishes White’s drawings and prints, the artist renders heavy lines of indentation within the brilliant sunset-orange and magenta of the figure, generating a rippling surface within the thickly layered impasto. Creating an effect reminiscent of stone carving, the tight lines sculpted within the paint provide a tactile materiality to the work, one that further underscores the meaning of the title, Solid as a Rock. As with much of White’s work, the title of the present painting invokes religious and musical references, both in its allusion to the Bible verse, “The Lord is my Rock” (Psalm 18:2), and to Paul Robeson’s 1954 Gospel album, Solid as a Rock.
As a Black artist working at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, elements of Black American culture are a fundamental thread within White’s artistic practice. “White’s work,” writes art historian Kellie Jones, is “built on folk or traditional American form. White’s art, like [Harry] Belafonte’s, was activist, and White used music in many ways during this time to signal the championing of working-class life and culture” (Kellie Jones, “Charles White, Feminist at Midcentury," in Charles White: A Retrospective, Chicago, 2018, p. 70). Using Gospel music as a central theme, the present work takes up these themes of Black American folk that were central to White’s larger oeuvre.
Within White’s extraordinary oeuvre, Solid as a Rock (My God is Rock) is a poignant embodiment of the artist’s championing of civil rights causes and career-long subversion of the Black body within Western art historical archetypes. The Black figure in the present work draws allusions to the broader art historical cannon of portraiture, and in doing so challenges preconceived notions of Blackness within modes of painting. Reminiscent of El Greco’s Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist (fig 1.), the rippling fabric and elongated forms of the present work elevates the subject to a regal and almost celestial being. Indeed, White’s portraiture is deeply rooted in a recognition of the glaring absence of Black figures throughout the history of Western painting. Specifically, White intended to create what he called ‘Images of Dignity,’ where Black Americans are rendered in a noble fashion, contradicting established notions of the Black experience in the visual culture of the United States. The present work serves as a reminder of White’s enduring championing of equal rights, a fight that he understood as being an intersectional one.
