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
