Betye Saar

Assemblage—an art form of three-dimensional objects made out of various materials—is a medium with deep roots in Africa. Thus it is no surprise that it is the preferred medium for Betye Saar (born 1926), who calls herself a “conjure woman” for her ability to extract new meanings from miscellaneous materials. Saar, whose heritage is an amalgam of African American, Native American, and Irish, is not unlike what she creates. She explains, “There’s power in the changing uses of material, another kind of energy that is released. I am attracted to things because they have multiple meanings. Dreams are like that, full of puns, double meanings.” [1]

Saar was born in Los Angeles and is very much the product of California. As a child she was considered clairvoyant, with an early interest in voodoo, magic, and the occult. Her first introduction to art was not in a museum, but rather Watts Tower, Simon Rodia’s large-scale steel, glass, and ceramic tile installation, which she saw on her way to visit her grandmother. Saar earned her bachelor’s degree in 1949 from the University of California, Los Angeles, became a social worker, and did small interior design projects and designed posters. From 1958 to 1962 she studied printmaking as a graduate student at California State University, Long Beach.

At an exhibition held at the Pasadena Museum of Art during 1966–1967, Saar discovered the work of Joseph Cornell, known for his mixed media constructions contained within boxes. For her, the experience was a revelation. In addition to the box form, Saar was moved by his personal and, at times, mystical imagery. Another great influence of the period was the Civil Rights Movement, which came to an explosive head with the Watts riots of 1965; they raged for six days and resulted in forty million dollars worth of damage and thirty-five deaths. The rise of the women’s movement in the late 1960s and 1970s, coupled with a countrywide interest in African American art, further impacted Saar’s development. Nevertheless, she acknowledges, “The feminist movement has given me more professional exposure. But I resist that now, just like I resist exhibiting in African American artists’ shows. I’ve always worked the same way and haven’t done anything I would consider ‘feminist art.’”[2]

The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,1972, Berkeley Art Museum, is literally an iconic work. Contained within a shrine-like box, a rifle-toting, very black figure of the famous pancake maker glares out at the viewer. This seminal work initiated a new era in Saar’s work in which she incorporated derogatory images into her pieces, sometimes integrating washboards, another harsh symbol of African American servitude. “I felt these images were important as documentation of how Whites have historically perceived African Americans and how we have been portrayed as caricatures, as objects, as less than human. These manufactured images and objects often were, in many cases, the only source of how we saw ourselves. The Civil Rights Movement and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., motivated me to use these images in my art. I began to recycle and transform Sambos, Toms, and Mammies in my assemblages.” [3]

Saar is inspired by materials she finds at the dump, flea markets, and at stores that sell sewing supplies. From nature she gathers shells, feathers, and small bones. In 1975, she was the recipient of a tremendous windfall in the form of a trunk full of family treasures from Hattie Parsons Keys, her great-aunt who had raised the artist’s mother. When the artist’s father died, Keys welcomed his widow and her three children into her home. “The letters, autographs, hankies, scraps of lace, and fabric are fragments from the past, a sort of sentimental journey back when time moved slower and people collected memories.” [4] These cherished items became the component parts of future assemblages, many with an autobiographical point of view.

Saar has achieved widespread success with her work; she has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the country and examples of her work are in many prestigious museum collections. Two of her three daughters, Lezley and Alison, are artists who have established significant careers of their own and, from time to time, have exhibited with their mother. Although all three address the plight of African Americans, Betye Saar envisions her work as transcending race. “I feel that my work has always had an element that deals with a universal spirit, with an integration of different cultures, with different religions, with different peoples; and I feel that as the planet moves closer to the new age, that as consciousnesses are raised, my work will be more and more accepted.” [5]

To affirm her feelings about racial identity she crafted a poem to accompany a 1998 installation of her work entitled Tangled Roots:

My roots are tangled

My unknown ancestors from

Africa, Ireland and America

A blend of black and white and red

I am labeled Creole, mulatto, mixed-

Colored in every sense

Enslaved by the “one drop” rule

But liberated by the truth

That all blood is red. [6]

Notes:

[1] Saar quoted in Lucy Lippard, “Sapphire and Ruby in the Indigo Gardens,” in Shepherd, Elizabeth, ed., The Art of Betye and Alison Saar: Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations (Los Angeles, CA: Wight Art Gallery, University of California, 1990), 11.

[2] Saar quoted in Carey Lovelace, “Weighing in on Feminism,” Art News 96 (May 1997), 145 quoted in Jessica Dallow, “Reclaiming Histories: Betye and Alison Saar, Feminism, and the Representation of Black Womanhood,” Feminist Studies 30, no. 1, (Spring 2004), 75.

[3] Saar quoted in Betye Saar: The Visual Journal, exhibition brochure (Des Moines, IA: Des Moines Art Center, 1996), quoted in Richard Candida Smith, “Reverencing the Mortal: Assemblage Art as Prophetic Protest in Post-World War II California,” in James Steward, et al., Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2005), 46.

[4] Saar quoted in Betye Saar: Collages, exhibition catalogue (New York: Gallery 62, National Urban League, 1979), quoted in Betye Saar: Extending the Frozen Moment, 134.

[5] Saar quoted in an interview with Sally S. Swenson in Lynn F. Miller and Sally S. Swenson, eds., Lives and Works: Talks with Women Artists (Metuchen, NJ and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1981), 184.

[6] Saar, Tangled Roots, quoted in Jessica Dallow, “Reclaiming Histories: Betye and Alison Saar, Feminism, and the Representation of Black Womanhood,” Feminist Studies 30, no. 1, (Spring 2004), 84.