I fooled around with all kinds of techniques." Betye Saar quote: It is my goal as an artist to create works that expose injustice and reveal beauty. This is like the word 'nigger,' you know? During their summer trips back to Watts, she and her siblings would "treasure-hunt" in her grandmother's backyard, gathering bottle caps, feathers, buttons, and other items, which Saar would then turn into dolls, puppets, and other gifts for her family members. It's a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. And we are so far from that now.". This site uses the cookies. We were then told to bring the same collage back the next week, but with changes, and we kept changing the collage over and over and over, throughout the semester. After these encounters, Saar began to replace the Western symbols in her art with African ones. Bio: Betye Irene Saar is an American artist, known for her work in the field of assemblage but is also an accomplished print maker. Of course, I had learned about Africa at school, but I had never thought of how people there used twigs or leather, unrefined materials, natural materials. In a way, it's like, slavery was over, but they will keep you a slave by making you a salt-shaker.

Saar asserted that Walker's art was made "for the amusement and the investment of the white art establishment," and reinforced racism and racist stereotypes of African-Americans. ", Saar then undertook graduate studies at California State University, Long Beach, as well as the University of Southern California, California State University, Northridge, and the American Film Institute. Alison and Lezley would go on to become artists, and Tracye became a writer. Saar was exposed to religion and spirituality from a young age.

Her mother was Episcopalian, and her father was a Methodist Sunday school teacher. In the late 1970s, Saar began teaching courses at Cal State Long Beach, and at the Otis College of Art and Design. with a major in Design (a common career path pushed upon women of color at the time) and a minor in Sociology. © Citatis, 2017-2020. Saar had clairvoyant abilities as a child. ", Moreover, in regards to her articulation of a visual language of Black identity, Tani notes that "Saar articulated a radically different artistic and revolutionary potential for visual culture and Black Power: rather than produce empowering representations of Black people through heroic or realistic means, she sought to reclaim the power of the derogatory racial stereotype through its material transformation. There was water and a figure swimming. She remembers being able to predict events like her father missing the trolley. But I could tell people how to buy curtains. Art historian Jessica Dallow understands Allison and Lezley's artistic trajectories as complexly indebted to their mother's "negotiations within the feminist and black consciousness movements", noting that, like Betye's oeuvre, Allisons's large-scale nudes reveal "a conscious knowledge of art and art historical debates surrounding essentialism and a feminine aesthetic," as well as of "African mythology and imagery systems," and stress "spirituality, ancestry, and multiracial identities. It was as if we were invisible. In 1967, Saar visited an exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum of assemblage works by found object sculptor Joseph Cornell, curated by Walter Hopps. She originally began graduate school with the goal of teaching design.

The Scottsdale Museum says “There is a touch of alchemy to Betye Saar’s artwork: transforming the simple and mundane into powerful art.” Saar’s art tackles issues of spirituality, race, equality, family relationships and autobiography. [...] Cannabis plants were growing all over the canyon [...] We were as hippie-ish as hippie could be, while still being responsible."

", Saar gained further inspiration from a 1970 field trip with fellow Los Angeles artist David Hammons to the National Conference of Artists in Chicago, during which they visited the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The following year, she and fellow African-American artist Samella Lewis organized a collective show of Black women artists at Womanspace called Black Mirror.