September 18, 2018

Charles McGee,  untitled figure, 1970. Mixed media drawing. 

Today, the art of long-time Detroiter and nationally recognized artist, Charles McGee, is predominantly abstract. When thinking of the ninety-three-year-old artist, one might conjure up images of his organic abstract forms in both his painting and sculpture. But McGee wasn’t always abstract, and he still isn’t only that. 

This untitled work by the Detroit artist portrays a figure. Whether this person is a man or a woman is unidentifiable, but also irrelevant because still what is clearly presented is humane as the emphasis is placed on expression. The figure sits in a chair, legs and arms crossed with their head buried in hand, bowed low enough for their hair to drape over. Their posture is introverted, a body language that translates to the emotions of tired, sad, frustrated, or disappointed. Two colors make up the drawing: black and a light red. The brisk strokes of material suggest McGee used a marker, perhaps one that is at the end of its use. 

In 1968, McGee went to live and study in Barcelona, Spain. Having been completed a couple years after, this drawing may suggest insight into McGee’s time abroad. The contours of the figure here are seemingly rapid, but they are executed well enough to clearly outline the intimate scene of someone taking a moment to recuperate. It was figure paintings and drawings like this one that first brought McGee success in the onset of his career. 

McGee is originally from South Carolina, where he worked in the cotton fields at a very young age while living with his grandparents. At ten-years-old, he moved to Detroit to live with his mother, thus implanting the seed of whom the Kresge Foundation called “the essence of Detroit.” McGee worked in factories and also as a cartographer, or map-maker, for the government. He studied at the Society of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies) and in 1968 and took advantage of his travels abroad to continue his studies. McGee attributes much of his flowering into the artist he today to his life experience. He is a staunch believer that the greatest art of an artist is his or her latest, a doctrine supported by the philosophy that art matures with the growth of an artist through their continuing education and experience. When McGee moved back to Detroit after Spain, he opened Gallery 7, which he kept running for almost a decade. He also founded the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit in 1978 and taught for eighteen years at Eastern Michigan University. His work is still displayed in a variety of settings, from public to institution, such as Wayne State University and the Detroit Institute of Art. McGee was honored with the Kresge Foundation's first ever Eminent Artist Award in 2008. 

Written by Danielle Cervera Bidigare

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