id:			162113
accession number:	2001.50
share license status:	Copyrighted
url:			https://clevelandart.org/art/2001.50
updated:		2023-03-15 15:46:43.492000

We Have Been Believers, 1949. Charles White (American, 1918–1979). Lithograph; sheet: 40.5 x 30.2 cm (15 15/16 x 11 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund 2001.50

title:				We Have Been Believers
title in original language:	
series:				
series in original language:	
creation date:			1949
creation date earliest:		1949
creation date latest:		1949
current location:		
creditline:			John L. Severance Fund
copyright:			

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culture:	America, 20th century
technique:	lithograph
department:	Prints
collection:	PR - Lithograph
type:		Print
find spot:	
catalogue raisonne: 

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CREATORS

* Charles White (American, 1918–1979)  - artist

* Robert Blackburn (American, 1920–2003)  - printer

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measurements: Sheet: 40.5 x 30.2 cm (15 15/16 x 11 7/8 in.)
state of the work:	
edition of the work: 	30

support materials:

	description:	wove paper
	watermarks:	

inscriptions:

	inscription:	signed, inscribed, and dated, in graphite, below image: WE HAVE BEEN BELIEVERS" 30/PRINTS CHARLES WHITE '49
	translation:	
	remark:		

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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS

* <em>Our Stories: African American Prints and Drawings</em>. Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 26 - May 18, 2014).

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PROVENANCE

	(Paramour Fine Arts, Franklin, MI, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH)
	date: ?-2001
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


	Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
	date: 2001-
	footnotes: 	
	citations: 	


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fun fact:
For over a decade beginning in 1965, Charles White taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he instructed the next generation of African American contemporary artists including Kerry James Marshall and David Hammons.

digital description:
This print's title is taken from a poem by Margaret Walker, published in an 1939 issue of <em>Poetry</em>, which described the struggles and strength of African Americans since the advent of slavery. Like Charles White, Walker worked in Chicago during the 1930s and '40s, a period that came to be known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. In this lithograph, published a decade after the poem, White interpreted Walker's words visually through the overlapping profiles of a couple who both look slightly upward with expressions that suggest both anxiety and resilience. In such images, White aimed to create a new art that was created both about and for Black Americans.

wall description:
The lithograph's title and the anxious expressions of the couple communicate a loss of faith and a pessimistic outlook while the angular, chiseled features of the figures reflect the influence of African sculpture. In 1925 the African American philosopher Alain Locke published <em>The Legacy of Ancestral Arts</em>, which encouraged artists of color to look at the rich African sculptural tradition—which, he noted, had already influenced European modernism—in order "to create an art that would add a new dimension to Black America's cultural identity." Raised in Chicago, White visited his parents' native South in 1942–43. The trip was "one of the most stirring and educational experiences of his life since in the South he learned to understand the beauty of the Negro's speech, his folklore and poetry, his dances and music."
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RELATED WORKS

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CITATIONS

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IMAGES