At 8 o`clock on a recent evening, painter William C. Carter`s day has just begun. Surrounded by the clutter of his apartment/studio, Carter sits in a corner chair next to his easel and explains the routine.
”I didn`t go to bed `til 9 this morning. Usually, this part of the evening there`ll be people coming in and out, so I wouldn`t do too much `cause I`d be entertaining the guests; around 1 or 2 they go home, and I`ll sit here and take a little nod, you know, then I wake up and start drawing. I stay up all night and I paint and I draw, and I read my books and I look at TV.
”See, at that time nobody can annoy me. I will start painting around 3 or 4 o clock until I go to bed. So that`s that.”
Carter, 80, has been keeping to the routine for most of his life, and the results of his nocturnal sessions will be on display at Hyde Park`s Artwerks gallery during the entire month of April. Much of Carter`s show consists of a series of vividly colored oil portraits of women that are a far cry from the material he was pressured to produce in his early years as an artist working for the WPA.
”They didn`t tell us what to do, but most of us painted things pertaining to the hard times, which, of course, was propoganda,” says Carter about the government-funded arts program started during the depths of the depression. ”But I don`t like to paint propoganda.”
Although Carter to this day appreciates the opportunities offered by the WPA-artists were exhibited in the WPA`s Michigan Avenue gallery, featured in an annual review published by the Art Institute, and paid a then-tidy sum of $92 a month-he reminds a visitor ”It was not heaven. They didn`t want you to get entrenched, so you had to do labor projects, too, which paid only $52 a month. I made mattresses and dug ditches.”
Even now, Carter says, there`s a subtle expectation that, as a black artist, his paintings should document oppressive conditions.
”Why should I paint about having to get on welfare and living in a poor neighborhood? Why should I let that reflect in my art?” he asks ”But that`s what they expect you to do, even now, as far removed as we are from the poverty of the WPA era, even now they want that to reflect in your work. I say `Oh no, no, no!`
”Think about John Singer Seargent, Dante Gabrielle Rosetti,” Carter continues. ”They made such lovely portraits. So I thought, with this series, I can do the same thing with the Afro-American woman.”
Indeed, much of Carter`s recent work evokes the exotic glamor that could be found in one of his early influences: the silent movies. ”When I was a child growing up in St. Louis, my main interests were the library, going to school, the museum, church-and I loved the movies. Loved them. Polo Negri, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford.”
Speaking in a musical voice, Carter`s hands are in constant motion, either twiddling his thumbs or gesturing dramatically to make a point. Despite recent cateract and kidney operations, the rotund Carter possesses a thoroughly delightful joi de vivre.
He began drawing in grade school and moved to Chicago in 1930 to attend the Art Institute because art schools in Missouri wouldn`t accept black students. After a year Carter left the Institute when he ran out of money, and worked as a live-in janitor at the Palette and Chisel Club (he was made an honorary member there in 1986) and other various odd jobs until he was hired for the WPA in 1939.
His years at the Art Institute and later at the University of Illinois, where he finally received a B.A. in fine arts in 1958, gave Carter a grounding in art history, although he resisted any one `school` of discipline.
”My own painting, that`s entirely private, but I exposed myself to Picasso, Bracque, VanGogh, all the different periods. Naturally you`re influenced by all of those lovely things, that`s the way you build up . . . I guess they would call me eclectic, whatever that means.”
Proof of Carter`s diverse interests can be seen in graceful disarray throughout his apartment. On the wall is a primitive African mask, next to a key to the city of Savannah, Ga. A bookcase holds a jewel encrusted treasure chest, books on the South Pacific by Jacques Cousteau and a videocassette of
”Gigi.”
Dozens of Carter`s own pieces lean against the wall: several abstracts and a black-and-white sketch of a boy with a hoop sit alongside ”Cocktails For Two,” a slightly surreal depiction of an old southside club that pulsates with bawdy nightlife energy.
Besides his own work, Carter points out pieces painted by old friends.
”That one there is by John Hardrick: he`s dead now. So is that one. In fact, most of these were painted by people who have died.”
In a booming voice, Carter pauses before adding with a laugh: ”I have the audacity to go on living!”
