Charles Gaines (artist) facts for kids

Charles Gaines (born 1944) is an American artist. He creates art that makes people think about ideas like beauty, politics, and how we understand the world. His art often uses drawings, photos, and video installations. He frequently uses systems, especially grids, combined with photography.

Gaines's art is part of a style called conceptual art. This means the idea behind the artwork is more important than the finished piece itself. He was one of the few African-American conceptual artists in the 1970s. At that time, many Black artists focused on political messages. But Gaines chose to explore abstract ideas and didn't always directly talk about race or politics in his art. Music is also a big part of his work. He often uses musical scores and explores ideas about chance, similar to musicians like John Cage. Charles Gaines lives in Los Angeles, California.

Early Life and Schooling

Charles Gaines was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He grew up in Newark, New Jersey. He went to Newark Arts High School and then earned his first college degree from Jersey City State College in 1966. In 1967, he became the first African American to join the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program at the School of Art and Design at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Teaching Art to Young Artists

From 1967 to 1990, Charles Gaines was an art professor at California State University, Fresno. Since 1989, he has taught at the California Institute of the Arts. He has inspired many young artists who studied with him. Some of his famous students include Mark Bradford and Laura Owens. In 2008, Gaines also taught at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Charles Gaines's Art Career

Charles Gaines is known for his unique way of making art. He often combines photography with mathematical ideas and grids.

Exploring Movement and Grids

In his 1981 artwork, Motion: Trisha Brown Dance, Gaines took photos of dancer Trisha Brown. He then drew grids over the photos, numbering the spaces to show how her body moved. This helped him capture movement in a way that a simple photo couldn't. It also made the dancer's specific features less important, focusing more on the idea of movement itself.

Using Photos and Math

Gaines started using photographs in his art with the series Walnut Tree Orchard. He combined these photos with mathematical formulas and his signature grid paper.

Key Artworks

Some of Charles Gaines's important artworks include:

• Explosions
• History of Stars
• NIGHT/CRIMES
• Shadows
• Walnut Tree Orchard (created between 1975 and 2014)
• String Theory
• Manifestos
• Sound Text (from 2015)

Besides making his own art, Gaines has also been on the advisory board of the Hauser & Wirth Institute since 2018.

Art Shows and Exhibitions

Charles Gaines has shown his art in many important places. His first show in New York City was in 1972. He was also part of the 1975 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In the 1980s, he had solo shows at famous galleries like Leo Castelli Gallery in New York.

He has also shown his work at:

• Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles
• Young Hoffman in Chicago
• Richard Heller Gallery in San Francisco
• Galerie Lavignes-Bastille in Paris

Since 2006, Gaines has exhibited with Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. In 2014, he began working with Paula Cooper Gallery in New York.

Major Group Exhibitions

Gaines's art has been featured in many big group shows. In 2015, he was part of the 56th Venice Biennale, a very important international art exhibition. He was also in the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Other notable group shows include:

• "Blues for Smoke" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2012)
• Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960 – 1980 at the Hammer Museum
• Under the Big Black Sun: 1974–1981 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Recent Exhibitions

In 2012, the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer Art Gallery in Claremont, California, held a show called In The Shadow of Numbers, Charles Gaines Selected Works from 1975 to 2012. This show included a musical performance with artist Terry Adkins.

His first big overview exhibition, Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974–1999, was organized by The Studio Museum in Harlem in July 2014.

From September to December 2019, the SculptureCenter in Queens, New York, showed Searching the Sky for Rain. This exhibition featured works by many artists, including two pieces by Charles Gaines: "Numbers and Trees: Central Park Series II: Tree #7" (2016) and "Face 1: Identity Politics, #10, Edward Said" (2018).

Most recently, from November 2023 to March 2024, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami had a large show of his work. It even included new versions of some of his most important pieces.

Awards and Honors

Charles Gaines has received many awards for his art:

• He got a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Grant in 1977.
• He received a California Community Foundation (CCF) award in 2011.
• He was given a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013.
• In 2018, Gaines received the CalArts REDCAT Award.
• He was honored with the 60th annual Edward MacDowell Medal in 2019.
• In 2023, his old school, Rochester Institute of Technology, gave him an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.

Writing and Books

Charles Gaines has also written several academic texts and essays about art. Some of his writings include:

• Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism (1993)
• "Art, Post History and the Paradox of Black Pluralism" (2004)
• "Reconsidering Metaphor/Metonymy: Art and the Suppression of Thought" (2009)
• An essay for an exhibition about Ben Patterson (2010)
• A book about artist Kerry James Marshall (2017)

Art in Public Collections

Charles Gaines's artworks are held in many important public art collections around the world. This means his art is owned by museums and institutions for everyone to see. Some of these places include:

• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
• Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin
• Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore
• Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC
• Lentos Museum, Linz
• Marciano Collection, Los Angeles
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (which owns his work "Explosion #25" from 2008)