Betye Saar, “Takin’ A Chance on Luv”, 1984, pigment on cotton sateen, created in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Los Angeles artist Betye Saar passed away on Sunday, July 26th, at 99 years old, just a few days before her 100th birthday. Saar is best known for her assemblage pieces that confronted racism and sexism, often incorporating spiritual and mystical elements into the work as well.
Takin’ A Chance on Luv, pictured above, was part of the group exhibition Some American Dreams at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, which closed in June.
The short documentary below, created by Christine Turner for LACMA‘s Art+Film Initiative, features the artist at 93 discussing her work.
Happy Birthday to Los Angeles-based artist Betye Saar who turned 99 today! Pictured above is her work The Locksmith, 2018, which was part of the 2019 group exhibition Behind Face at Los Angeles gallery Roberts Projects.
Her biography from the Roberts Projects website-
As one of the artists who ushered in the development of Assemblage art, Betye Saar’s practice reflects on African American identity, spirituality and the connectedness between different cultures. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists.
For over six decades, Saar has created assemblage works that explore the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory. She began her career at the age of 35 producing work that dealt with mysticism, nature and family. Saar’s art became political in the 1970’s namely with the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima in 1972. As did many of the women who came to consciousness in the 1960’s, Saar takes on the feminist mantra “the personal is political” as a fundamental principle in her assemblage works. Her appropriation of black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion, and yet given her status as a pioneer of the Assemblage movement, the impact of Saar’s oeuvre on contemporary art has yet to be fully acknowledged or critically assessed. Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach and continues to both actively produce work and inspire countless others.
In recent news, Saar has assembled a group of curators to form the Betye Saar Legacy Group, whose purpose will be to “help ensure that museums, art historians, and critics wanting to know more about the artist can continue to do so in the decades to come.” More information here.
Happy Birthday to Betye Saar who turned 94 today! This work Still Ticking, (2005), was part of LACMA’s exhibition Betye Saar: Call and Response which opened at the museum in September of 2019.
From the wall description of the work-
Made shortly before Saar’s seventy-eighth birthday, the assemblage includes years and astrological glyphs on the inner left side that correlate to various important dates in her life. The work’s title wittily refers both to the timepieces in the sculpture- which, of course, are not ticking; indeed they are either frozen in time or missing their hands- and to the artist herself, who is alive and well, still ticking, now at age ninety-three.
As part of MoMA’s Opening Season, they are showing Betye Saar’s 1969 work, Black Girl’s Window, along with several of her works on paper.
The exhibition “explores the relation between her experimental print practice and the new artistic language debuted in that famous work, tracing themes of family, history, and mysticism, which have been at the core of Saar’s work from its earliest days.”
Things to do in Los Angeles this weekend (1/11-1/14/18)-
Thursday
Shannon Lay is opening for Ablebody and So Many Wizards at The Hi Hat
MOCA Grand Avenue and LA Film Forum are hosting the film screening- Estrellas de Ayer: Latin Camp– “a new constellation of Latina/o American fascination with Hollywood starlets: José Rodríguez Soltero’s classic Lupe (1966); the celebration of decadentism in the Colombian film Pasión y Muerte de Margarita Gautier (1964), by Enrique Grau & Luís Ernesto Arocha; and other films that pay homage to Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Lupe Vélez, replete with campy nods to the star system” ($15)
The LA Art Show opened yesterday and continues today until Sunday
The LA Launch Party for Oral History Project’s Women of Rock is tonight at Zebulon with live performances and discussion panels with artists that include Phranc, Neon Music, Alice Bag, Patty Schemel and more
Poet Srikanth Reddy will be giving a free reading and book signing at Hammer Museum
Luna are playing at the Moroccan Lounge with Big Mother Gig opening
Friday
Artist Carolina Caycedo will be speaking as part of a participatory book launch/event at LACMA that begins in the exhibition A Universal History of Infamy, and includes performances by Marina Magalhães, Isis Avalos, and Samad Raheem Guerra (free)
Sextile are playing at The Hi Hat with Flat Worms and Warm Drag opening
The Egyptian Theatre is showing a double feature of The Florida Project and Shadow of the Vampire with a discussion in between the films with Willem Dafoe
Emily Wells is playing at the Bootleg Theater with Haunted Summer opening
Red Aunts are playing with The Lamps and Des Roar at The Echo
Saturday
Sadly, gallery and event space Machine Project is closing its doors- for their final event they are having a print sale from 2-6pm, followed by a closing party with beer and surprise performances
The Bookstore at MAF is hosting a reading with writers Alissa Bennett and John Marr- Bennett will share two of her essays about dead celebrities and Marr will read from his work chronicling tragic accidents (both will be signing their respective zines after)
Neon Indian and Holy Ghost! are playing DJ sets with Gigamesh at Exchange LA
American Culture are playing with Plague Survivor at Zebulon
Sunday
The California African American Museum is hosting an all day symposium to mark the closing of the exhibition We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85- with opening remarks by Alison Saar honoring her mother Betye Saar and Samella Lewis, Faith Ringgold in conversation with her daughter Michele Wallace, a workshop, a performance, a closing reception and more (free but register)
White Magic are opening for Linda Perhacs at Zebulon
Lord Huron with Superhumanoids playing at The Fonda (also Saturday)
Scotch tasting and reception with Manfred Müller ($40 through Eventbrite) or just attend his public conversation (free) afterwards, discussing his current show at LAMAG
From Betye Saar’s :The Alpha & Omega-The Beginning & The End
Betye Saar’s installation at Roberts & Tilton contains many objects all coming together to contemplate time, identity, nature and the world around us. Unlike her previous show at the gallery, Red Time, which challenged the viewer with both its imagery and the power of the color itself; The Alpha and Omega, creates a feeling of calm, both in its color palette of blues and grays but also in the objects chosen like clocks and ships. In both shows, history is an important theme. This can be seen most clearly in The Challenges of Fate, a sculpture within the work, made up of a black bird perched on a cage housing a ship, which is above a globe resting on a glass box of bones, all set upon a stack of books.
Also at the gallery is Projections Part II: Film As Painting, curated by Aaron Rose. Multiple films by various artists are presented through different projections and monitor displays. The films are very different in content but work together to present the concept of film as not just film, but moving painting. There are thirteen films within the show and their creation dates range from the earliest, Len Lye’s A Colour Box (1935) to Rose’s own The Dress (2013). One standout is Marie Menken’s Go! Go! Go! (1962-4) a frantic speeding up of footage of life in the 1960’s in New York.
