CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/14/2018

Mystery is the point in Charles White's 'Black Pope'

The centerpiece of MoMA's heroic current Charles White retrospective, "Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man)" (1973) is also the subject of this concise monograph from the Museum. Inspired by a 1960s Leonard Freed photograph of a street preacher, White's pope exemplifies a mixture of 70s cool and civil rights outrage. "Although you can interpret individual details of the image—a reference to White’s birth place, to mortality, to a black identity that embraces militancy, spirituality and righteousness—its full meaning is elusive, and maybe that’s the point," Holland Cotter writes in the New York Times. "Mystery is the point… Grace, passion, coolness, toughness, beauty—like its creator, it has them all."