This title was digitized by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA).
About Art papers. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1981-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1981)
Betye Saar, Autographs: Distant Lands, mixed media collage on paper, 10" X 9V>", 1978 (photo: Lezley Saar, courtesy of Baum-Silverman Gallery). INTERVIEW: BETYE SAAR Although Betye Saar has been exhibiting since 1968, her first solo exhibition was in 1972 with the Multi-Cul Gallery in Los Angeles. Three years later, the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art presented a solo exhibition of her work. Since that time, a wide variety of community institutions, galleries and museums have exhibited her work, among them the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art, the Smithsonian ■ Institute, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Selma Burke Arts Center in Penn sylvania. In 1978, as part of the WNET series, The Originals: Women in Art, the film, Spirit Catcher: The Art of Betye Saar, was aired nationally on public television. Saar, a native ofLos Angeles, is currently on the faculty of the Parsons School ofDesign of the Otis Art Institute. In June, the first southeastern exhibit of Saar’s work was presented by A tlanta’s Chi Wara Gallery. The exhibition of mixed media collages and wall and box assemblages included work from the Nostalgic Series (1975-1977), the Ritual Pieces (1977,1979) and the Autograph Series (1978). The following is an edited version of an interview conducted by Crystal Britton, director of Chi Wara Gallery, for Access Altanta’s cable television series, Black Arts Atlanta. Betye Saar: The works exhibited at Chi Wara are from a certain period, 1974-1975 to 1979. With the exception of the Autographs, which are collage, the pieces are all assemblages. My art con sists of working with objects that I find or that are given to me. The majority of the work in the gallery is from the Nostalgic Series which began when my great aunt, Hattie Keys, passed away at 95 in 1975. Among her things was a drawerful of old gloves and handker chiefs, scraps of fabric, old dance cards and miscellaneous photographs. Because these were such an integral part of her personal life, I felt it was impor tant to recycle them in my work. More than anything else, recycling these objects is a direct connection with my African heritage. I selected the gloves, some old picture frames and different materials—photographs, bits of lace, dried flowers—to assemble into the Nostalgic Series. In one piece called Keep for Old Memoirs, there were dance cards, a packet of letters, an autograph book and a piece of paper with “keep for old memoirs” written on it in her handwriting. 1 wanted to use those per sonal things. Sometimes I use bits of lace, like a lace collar and cuffs from a maid’s uniform because she was a maid at one time. I selected pale, faded colors because I wanted a sense of the work moving back into the past. I like the gloves because she had worn them and they have the stretch marks of her hands. It is as if her spirit were holding the works and looking at the past. Crystal Britton: By attaching the gloves on the outside of the frames, you create a situation where the viewer could also very well be the person with the hands represented by the gloves holding the frames. It is almost as if there is a union between the physical present and the spiritual presence, a point where they merge. You pull us into the past, but we’re in it, not of it, because the work is clearly about your aunt. BS: I like that dichotomy. The work could be either pulling toward or away from you. CB: It’s very interesting that you use various objects from your own im mediate family resources to make a statement, which, although specific to Art Papers September-October 1981 your aunt, becomes universal for the viewer. How has that evolved in your work? BS: In the late sixties and early seven ties, a lot of Black art was angry—and my work was, too, but maybe not quite so bitter. I dealt with derogatory Black images, such as Aunt Jemimah, Little Black Sambo and Sambo’s Banjo. Once that anger was spent in my work, I wanted to present a softer, more posi tive side of Black history. Since I had certain materials from my aunt’s pass ing, the work naturally evolved into using those. In The Last Dance from the Nostalgic Series, the box has a double meaning. First of all, it’s a box that would be found on a woman’s vanity and would contain sentimental objects like a dance program, a bit of a corsage or a com pact. Because its color is black like a cof fin, it also symbolizes these objects as belonging to a dead woman or to a dead part of a woman’s life, her youth. In the box itself, the materials were selected for their darkness, a connotation of death. Inside the compact in the box is a small black skeleton, and on the com pact’s outside a cloak. Then there is a crescent moon, a symbol of hope or new life, and a star which is one of the symbols I use a lot in my work because it is a metaphysical or mystical symbol as well as a symbol for the new moon or a new phase of life. The dichotomy in the work is of a part of life that is lively and of a part of life that is death. For me, the box symbolizes some thing that can be opened or closed. When old people open a box and look at old letters, they see memories. In Rendezvous, the box deals with a roman tic interlude. There is a photograph of a hotel in the back and of a man and a woman. The woman is my great aunt in the twenties or maybe the thirties. Again I included the crescent and the star to represent a new phase. There is also a single die from a set of dice, which for me symbolizes destiny. There are cufflinks and a little pearl necklace (objects that might have been left in a dresser or lost in a hotel room), a small bouquet of roses, and some feminine objects, things that might have been kept by a woman to remember a particular incident or event in her life. Although my images are Black, the feelings, as you say, are universal. For me, that is even more revolutionary. Actually, my work is about evolution because I am concerned with univer sal feelings. CB: How are those universalities translated in your mystical pieces? In the past, critics have referred to your work as being drawn from the occult. Is that an accurate label or does the work come from some other source? BS: Critics usually like to have some kind of label. It makes dealing with the work a little bit easier, I guess. I prefer the term, “metaphysical,” although sometimes my work does delve into the occult. The word, “oc cult,” conjures feelings of Black and White magic or of something very evil, very negative, but my work isn’t about that at all. Sometimes I include materials that are used in fetishes like fur, teeth or snakeskins. In African, Australian and New Zealand cultures, strange combinations of things are used to pull a certain kind of feeling together. I call those pieces “power pieces” because they have a certain kind of energy. For the average mind trained in the European school of culture, my work might be considered to be occult, but it’s more about the metaphysical, about the energy that certain materials contain and the power that energy evokes. The Ritual Pieces come from that more metaphysical concern, that attitude of materials having certain kinds of power. Vendanta with the circle in the center has a kind of East Indian quality with its little dark spiritual figure at its center. These pieces have a certain kind of ornate ness of materials, of texture and pat tern piled one upon the other. The thought behind the work is a little more abstract and not as narrative as some of my other pieces. There is more of a feeling of articles that might be used to decorate a home altar, things that glitter and sparkle, objects that could be part of a ritual. For example, in another of the Ritual Pieces, there are four bracelets which could symbolize the patter of some strange ritual from an unknown civil ization. Actually when I am working I don’t think about that, I think more about color, pattern and shape, more formal concerns, rather than about telling a story of where the materials come from. Every once in a while I combine elements from the past with others from modern technology. In Samandi, the background contains a printed computer circuit. The dichotomy is interesting to me, because both elements are like hieroglyphics, secret codes or secret messages—and the combination does have to do with time. CB: What is the relationship of your three-dimensional work with the two- dimensional works on paper? BS: I really prefer working with materials. I like materials, the tactile feeling, the shape and the dimen sional quality, but I like flatness, too. It’s a challenge to get a feeling of dimension in a flat surface. Some times you can do that through layer ing paint or fabrics. Layering is an im portant part of my work. The flattest works I have in the collages are in the Autograph Series. That series is more formal than some of the other work. The Autographs all have the same size background paper with an autograph placed at the same angle in each piece. There is another image in each lower left corner which relates to the title of each piece, for example, Distant Lands. The little markings across the top surfaces are the beginning of what I call “visualized energy.” Some of the markings are placed rather for mally, and others are scattered as if they had been tossed up and then glued down wherever they landed. The markings are actually little fragments of glittering, metallic paper, but for me they look like what energy would look like if you could visualize it. Those surface markings are where the idea of Using energy as an image began in my work. In later works, I use other markings and other small pieces of materials to contrast the energy of an idea with physical energy or emotional energy. Now my work is moving from the Ritual Pieces and the Nostalgic Series to an even more personal level which has to do with my feelings about being a woman right now in this society. As the work moves toward that, inter estingly enough it becomes more abstract. The objects and images I used previously symbolized a direct connection with a feeling or an idea. Now it’s a little more abstract because it is more personal. The more per sonal it becomes the less I want to reveal all of my information. Maybe I don’t really understand this work or can’t interpret it all that way. The ele ment of mystery has always been important to me and in my work. CB: Earlier you were talking about your work in the sixties. In that work, you took a derogatory image such as Aunt Jemimah and actually made that negative image reflect something very positive. Your Aunt Jemimah symbol not only indicated strength, but also that she was a Bearer, a Giver. While that work was very focused, very political, it was also per sonal, a different kind of personal than what you are talking about now. Now you’re discussing issues involved with, as you say, your being a woman artist in these times. What is her experience like? Are those feelings what we see in the abstraction of your current work? There are secrets everywhere and everywhere revelations. My work is about both. —Betye Saar
