Description
L.A. Sky with Spinning Hearts
by Betye Saar
Offset Lithograph and Collage with Thread
(Irregular): 25″ × 29 1/2″ Approx
Limited Edition / Signed by Artist
Working in assemblage, installation, and printmaking, Betye Saar has spent much of her life transforming discarded objects. Her work combines a shamanistic sensibility and social conscience with the lineage of Dada and Surrealist collage. A 1967 exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s assemblage boxes had a profound impact on Saar, conveying the idea that a new context for an object could alter its meaning. This transformative ability of assemblage surfaces in Saar’s political sculptures from the late 1960s and early 1970s, which make use of objects and photographs portraying degrading stereotypes of African Americans. Saar used images of pervasive cultural constructs such as Aunt Jemima and Little Black Sambo in order to access a painful but still relevant part of history, while at the same time reclaiming and re-empowering these iconic figures.
