Charles White American, 1918-1979
I Have a Dream was commissioned by the Graphic Arts Council of the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA) to celebrate, Two Centuries of Black American Art, a major exhibition organized for the USA bicentennial. Charles White served as an advisor to the exhibit and was asked to create a lithograph to be sold to benefit LACMA. All 125 copies sold out quickly, and no surprise as the image is Charles White at his best. The subject of mother and child has been a constant theme in Western art since the 14th Century. Charles White gives us his take with references to Mannerist paintings of the Madonna and Child with his handling of the sleeping child cradled in the woman’s arms. Her draped head looks skyward as if in prayer. The title comes from Martin Luther King Jr.’s best-known speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial and a high point of the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington DC.
