Living Color

But being a Renaissance man, several curators say, may not be a wise business move in an age when contemporary art is a commodity and art investors can be twitchy and afflicted with short attention spans. Churning out many different kinds of works can dilute an artist's impact and confuse the curators who assemble corporate art collections. Through the 1980s, Carter was the subject of glowing reviews in the Washington and New York press. Carter's paintings "suggest boundless, uncontrollable freedom . . . a complex world of reality, dream and art," wrote the New York Times in a review of a 1990 group show in North Carolina of African American artists. Because he often includes untraditional materials in his paintings -- shoe brushes, violins, popsicle sticks -- and because he is African American, Carter occasionally is mistaken for a folk artist. But he is not. Rather, say curators, he is a fine artist, highly trained and highly conscious of the history of art, Western art in particular. And he also is something of a hybrid -- a modernist, concerned with abstract matters of color and line; a postmodernist, using his paintings to talk about racism, injustice, hypocrisy of all kinds, and what it means to be black in America. He is also a traditionalist, freely dropping human figures and faces and other recognizable things into his work, the creator of fine and sensitive portraits and drawings. And he is an Expressionist and expert with color, using exuberant streaks and streams of finely calibrated pigments to communicate feeling.

Over the years, his work has been more often acquired by white collectors than African American, his former dealer Gail Enns says. And his challenging style and subject matter, say Enns and others, probably have never been an easy fit with the conservative taste of Washington's monied collectors.

"Allen Carter's work -- it's powerful, it's visceral, and it evokes an emotional response -- it draws on certain folk art traditions," says Leslie King-Hammond, an art historian, artist and dean of Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. "People can't help but look and think: 'How do I relate to this art? What is it saying about my life?' What you get are images that challenge you to think hard. And when people have to think hard, they get scared, and that's when they shut down."

There is a challenging nature to Carter's subject matter, agrees Enns. "Al's work asks big questions. His paintings are confrontational. And, in some ways, they're scary."

IN A NARROW AND ELEGANT DINING ROOM in Georgetown, decorated with crystal candelabra and a banister carved in the shape of deer antlers, Mary Swift, a longtime collector and admirer of Carter's art, has given one of his paintings pride of place. Now in her late seventies, Swift, a photographer, art historian and a longtime editor of the now defunct Washington Review, spends most of her time at her farm in Upperville, Va., but in the 1980s, she was at the center of Washington's contemporary art scene, and she remembers Carter well.

"Howdy Doody," an oil painting bigger than the gleaming dining room table, hangs directly opposite an Andy Warhol silkscreen of Chairman Mao. Strong as they are, the deep, drenched blues and tropical greens of the Warhol portrait do not overwhelm the Carter on the opposite wall. In fact, the two paintings, one by a 20th-century art superstar and one by a relative unknown, seem to joust across the dining room table with equal strength. The vigorous swattings of candy-apple red, orange and yellow paint seem to dance on the canvas of the Carter piece.

"It was because of the [Vietnam] war -- Al went with someone to the airport, and the caskets were coming in, and he was very affected by that," Swift says. "What he was saying is [soldiers] were all puppets of the people in power. That's where Howdy Doody comes in."

Despite its playful forms and strong colors, the painting's underlying message is fierce and uncompromising. On one half of the canvas, nine small Howdy Doody faces are laid out in a tic-tac-toe-like grid, three across. Each face is in some state of obliteration. One is stamped with an X, one has a giant land-mine button clamped over it, another has an eye mask through which a pair of eyes, with a faintly Asian cast, peer out. In another face, the features have been wiped off in a violent smear of paint. Behind each face there is the suggestion of a flag. Only the center face is not maimed, but its right cheek bristles with hairs that seem animal-like, and its jowl and jaw are held in place by a pin. Above the grid of faces, the words "Veteran" and "Paralyzed" float in white letters against a dark background, and near them, in darker paint, much fainter, other words, including "Employment."

The other half of the painting is dominated by one large Howdy Doody face that fills the frame. On that face, the hands of a clock hang limply from the tip of Howdy's nose, giving him the look of a hapless and doomed puppet. The time is 6:30, but the clock is broken. In a 1983 interview with D.C. painter Michael Clark, Carter said that he had been moved by sympathy for the recruits and returning soldiers, and by the knowledge that one of the caskets on the runway could have been his own. The clock hands, he said, represent "being manipulated; kids being told to 'Go jump in that ditch and shoot people.'"

"I thought it was a major piece of Al's," says Swift. "I bought it for $1,200," in the early 1980s. "I tried to give it to the Corcoran, but they didn't have room." "Howdy Doody" was displayed with a lot of other artists' work, until a team of top New York decorators who specialize in placing art sifted through dozens of works in Swift's collection and decided, very quickly, on the Carter and the Warhol.

Carter's relationship with Swift goes back to the early 1980s, when Washington's contemporary arts scene was being electrified by the force of nature that was curator and renowned art scout Walter Hopps. He arrived in Washington from California and took a succession of curatorial jobs at the Smithsonian and Corcoran. Hopps, who died last year, was by all accounts brilliant, unconventional, fearless and, above all, passionate in his tastes. He also was distracted, often behind schedule and was eventually fired from his curating jobs for failing to observe deadlines and other bureaucratic necessities. He decamped to Houston, where he led the Menil Collection to great acclaim, and his proteges are now in positions of power at art museums across the country.

One of Hopps's most legendary exploits was a 1978 show called "36 Hours," an art happening that he dreamed up after an artist friend criticized him and all major museum curators for being entirely inaccessible to ordinary artists. In reply, Hopps borrowed a downtown Washington gallery space and declared that he would display one work from any artist who showed up. The line of exhibitors filed around the block, and each artist could legitimately claim on his or her résumé to have been in a show curated by Walter Hopps. It gave many local artists their first big-name show. It was Carter's second, and Hopps became a vocal fan of Carter's work.

Swift speaks of Carter with a mixture of respect, fondness and slight exasperation for the way in which he has kept himself at arm's length from the commercial art world and failed to play the self-promotion game that is almost always necessary for a commercially and critically successful art career.

"Al is a little cranky -- he can't stand heights, he won't fly," Swift says. "Some artists stay here and wait for someone to tap them on the shoulder -- they are not going to go to New York and slog around from gallery to gallery. I think Al is very hard to help."

After the "36 Hours" show, Swift remembers, she wrote an article for the Washington Review describing Carter's contribution to the exhibit as "Rauschenberg-esque," an admiring reference to the way Carter, like Robert Rauschenberg, had included sculptural elements -- objects like Rauschenberg's ladder or goat's head -- in his paintings. "He was furious," Swift recalled. "I thought it was a compliment."

Carter hears such comparisons as an implication that his work is less than original. He himself expresses ambivalence about seeing the work go out in the world as a commodity, something to decorate a room, and he talks darkly about the high percentage of the sales price that dealers take. Similarly, he's resisting the entreaties of Gail Enns, who relocated to Northern California, to join her new gallery out there.

"She still calls me, but I want to handle myself, because it's getting to the time where -- uh-uh, I'm tired," Carter says. "You got to give up too big a percentage. I say, yeah, I can handle it myself. It's true that artists are so involved in creating, their minds are not really on selling, so they get a little lost with it. It's a little like that with me."

Carter says he has sold "two or three paintings" in the four years since Enns's Anton Gallery closed its doors in Washington. He is realistic about the downside to representing himself. "You don't want to [sell your work] like the Hub Furniture Warehouse," he says. "And then there are the people who say, 'Gimme a deal!'" referring to bargain hunters. Still, he can't get past the 50 percent commission that gallery representatives charge. His dream, instead, is that Washington artists might organize and demand that dealers halve their commissions. "But that will never happen," he says.

He is unmoved by the argument of Swift and others that dealers make a long-term and relatively high-risk investment in any artist they take on, and shoulder the cost of years of promotion, and so might be entitled to a reasonable return if the artist becomes successful.

"People say to me, 'Why don't you do this, why don't you do that?'" Carter says. "But I think about what my father used to say: 'If your art speaks, people will run toward it. They will hear it all over the world.'"

IT WILL BE A DAY OF DISCOVERY at Allen Carter's house today. The curator from the North Carolina museum has arrived to choose the paintings for her show. Two of Carter's nephews -- one a high school shop teacher, the other a computer consultant -- are here, too, to help move canvases around.

The curator, Deborah Velders, is a slim, stylish woman with a warm manner. She is dressed head to toe in black. One of the first things she does is show Carter the design for the invitation to the show.

"Oooh, that's nice!" he says.

The card's design is an American flag, but instead of red, white and blue, its colors are gray, black and gold, giving the flag a vaguely African look. The five artists are African American, but the words African American do not appear. The title of the show is simply "Five American Artists."

Velders first saw Carter's art 20 years ago, when she worked in Washington as one of Hopps's acolytes. (She is now the sister-in-law of this magazine's editor.) She remembered Carter and put him on her short list for this show. After a brief visit to Carter's house and studio over the winter, Velders thought she would choose works that showcased Carter's love of unusual surfaces -- the paintings on screens and lampshades, the fishing scene on the retractable movie screen. But this morning, she also finds herself drawn again to Carter's large oil paintings, enormous canvases, five feet high and six feet across. First, however, she stops near the front door.

"Hi Yo Silver," Velders says, speaking aloud the title of a work painted on a folding screen. It depicts the images of two horse heads and a woman's face. "It looks like it was painted on bamboo . . ."

"Yes it is," Carter says. "It's mixed media -- house paint and acrylic."

"And when did you paint it?" Velders asks.

"I don't know," Carter says. "I just do things."

"So . . . when?"

"I don't know -- three or four years ago," Carter says.

"What about this one?" Velders says, moving into the kitchen.

"That one is 'Crazy Horse at War,'" he says. The painting includes an American Indian in tall feather headdress. It is half drawing, half painting, more delicate than the screen painting, which drips with bright primary colors.

"I like it. Your palette's changing a little bit with this one." She moves on to another painting, "Black Man in Maxton, North Carolina."

"When did you do that?" she asks.

Carter does not answer.

"Big," Velders says patiently, "I've got to get you to start putting dates on things."

This dance about dates will go on throughout the morning. Velders suspects that Carter knows more about dates than he is willing to let on, a common concern of older, so-called mid-career artists, who may worry about dating themselves and their work.

Another large work, "Cowboy Sam." Another: "Nude in a Small Boat." She peers on the back of the canvas. Undated. "You are funny about dates, Al, you really are," she says.

Velders inspects two large brightly colored canvases that will eventually be included in the small cache of works that will make the truck ride to Wilmington: one called "Rain Mist," a large canvas in blue, red and green; and one called "Nude 24," a fierce yellow painting of three nudes who may also be saints, standing sideways. "That was house paint, acrylic and oil paint," Carter says.

"Now, any recollection of approximately when?" Velders asks.

"Nah," Carter replies, "because you know what happens -- a lot of my paintings, I change 'em up."

She selects another work, a smaller one, called "Nude in a Boat," that shows a nude female figure standing in a rowboat in the middle of a stream, her back to the viewer and, in the distance, a low stone bridge, tall cypresses and a small house.

Carter explains the setting, saying: "Here in Alexandria, they used to have a place where they kept the slaves locked up -- and that was my interpretation."

"So you're re-creating. Do you remember hearing about William Blake, from long ago?" Velders says.

"You mean the artist William Blake?"

"Yes," Velders says. "The artist and poet. Did you ever look at him? You should. He believed in drawing from memory, too."

"I don't know," Carter says, shrugging. "Maybe I'm just different. I just knock 'em out. I could look at you today, and a month from now, I could draw your entire skeleton."

Velders borrows a tape measure and begins measuring and calculating. "Big, you really need better studio space; some of these paintings are getting dirty, and some of these are really terrific paintings."

Velders keeps moving through the corridors of art. "Here's one that's got a whole violin in it!"

"I Made a Step" is a large, chaotic canvas, flooded with color and feeling, and it depicts two worlds. On the right side, a real violin, rows of shoeshine brushes and the weary but dignified face of an elderly woman suggest the sober, workaday realm of shoeshine men and street musicians, its objects hearkening to physical labor and limited horizons. But on the left side of the painting, this grim tableau has exploded into a riot of sunny peach and green. There are tool-like shapes and forms that suggest steel girders. It is a world bursting with vitality, possibilities and the chance of happiness.

"I Made a Step," says Velders, reading the words painted along the bottom of the picture.

"Yeah," says Carter. "That means, 'I made a step unto the Lord.' That was for when my dad died."

"When did your father die?"

"Eight or nine years ago."

"What?" Carter's nephew Brady Chestnut exclaims on hearing this. "He died when I was 3! If I was 3, that means he died in 1978-79." Which means the date of Carter's father's death is more like 30 years ago. Dates, it seems clear, are not Carter's strong point, or interest.

But he is focused on explaining the painting and gives no sign of having heard. "It's about church, and people clapping," he says, eagerly. "If you go see someone polishing shoes, they clap the brushes. We had a church, and in some black churches, they clap."

Velders nods. "Well, in honor of your father, we're gonna take 'I Made a Step,'" she says. She chooses one more painting, another large canvas, called "Not for Rent," which Carter says he painted after he answered a classified ad for rental housing and was told by the landlady that she did not rent to "blacks or Spanish," he says.

The culling goes on for a few hours longer, but by late afternoon, Velders is winding up. "I think what we've captured with these works is Al's compassion, his sense of social responsibility, for family and community," she says. "And also his technical ability."

And the work will fit the show's greater theme, that these African American artists have something valid and important to say to the wider culture. "That's why we started with the idea of an African activist flag on the invitation," Velders says. "Asking is there something that constitutes African American art? Is there such a thing as a national art? A national anything?"

With the work done, Velders takes Carter and his nephews to lunch at a pizzeria. Everyone piles into Carter's van. Sitting in the front passenger seat, with Carter at the wheel, Velders is explaining that some curators believe the rise of the Internet may be weakening the stranglehold of New York as gatekeeper of contemporary art. Already, she says, the United States is no longer the only place to find important work. The art world now has many centers: Venice, Sao Paolo. So the idea, and the era, of "regional" art, of "regional artists" waiting for a visit from a godlike curator or critic from Manhattan, has begun to seem outdated. Artists can display their work online. "We're in a global art economy now," she says.

Carter, at the wheel and humming happily, seems to be only half-listening. "I like looking at my work," he replies. "It gives me other ideas."

Mary Battiata is a staff writer for the Magazine. She will be fielding questions and comments about this article at noon Monday at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.