Betye Saar "Red Time"
10 September - 17 December 2011
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| Betye Saar, Sock it to 'Em, 2011, Mixed media assemblage, 17.75 x 8 x 5 in (45.1 x 20.3 x 12.7 cm) |
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Opening Reception Saturday, September 10th, 6-8pm
Roberts & Tilton is pleased to announce, Red Time, a site-specific
retrospective installation by pioneering Los Angeles artist, Betye Saar
(b. 1926, Los Angeles). An amalgamation of found, created, borrowed and
recycled objects, the installation will examine Saar’s past, present
and future. Red Time is set to divide Saar’s practice into three
categories: "In the Beginning,” "Migration and Transformation” and
"Beyond Memory.”
"In the Beginning” includes works from 1960-1970, exhibiting Saar’s
interest in metaphysics, the occult and magic. These works incorporate
Euro-centric concepts of palmistry, phrenology and astrology in addition
to Afro-centric concepts of voodoo and shamanism. Works from this
period take form in print, drawing, as well as Assemblage windows, boxes
and alters. During this time, while mother to three, Saar became a
respected member of Los Angeles art community with peers that include
David Hammons, John Outterbridge, Ed Kienholz and George Herms. Many of
the works Saar created during 1960-1970 begin to bridge the unknown and
the uncomfortable, with allusions to such artists as Romare Bearden,
Jacob Lawrence and Joseph Cornell.
Spanning from 1970-2010, "Migration and Transformation” focuses on works
of strong social and political content. Subjects such as the Diaspora,
slavery, racism, revolution and feminism are explored in varying mixed
media Assemblages—boxes, washboards, trays and cages—each paradigmatic
of Saar’s comprehensive body of work. Saar’s use of borderline
hazardous, racially charged imagery has resulted in an extraordinarily
significant body of work created in the United States’ Post-Civil Rights
era. In his 2011 publication, How Racism Takes Place, George Lipsitz
writes:
"Saar also recognized… that struggles against racism could be undermined
by uncritical absorption of sexist hierarchies, that Black women’s
experiences gave them especially important things to say about race and
space. Saar responded by changing the scale of space, by burrowing in,
constructing works of art from material items, images and ideas grounded
in everyday life, emphasizing connections between the physical places
of the city and the discursive and political spaces that shaped Black
consciousness and culture… ”
Works from "Migration and Transformation” are combative— these works are
Saar’s own forceful yet thoughtful counter attack on racism in
America—past and present. The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972) is the
exemplary, if not best known, manifestation of Saar’s enlistment and
transposition of "hazardous” imagery. And while similar content and
visual imagery continue to be present in her most recent work, Saar
persists in pushing boundaries. "Beyond Memory,” a selection of recent
work from 2010-2011, highlights Saar’s quest for a new creative
expression through the reinterpretation of language, objects and
materials.
Widely recognized as a seminal Los Angeles artist, Betye Saar received
her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949, with
graduate studies at California State University at Long Beach, the
University of Southern California, and California State University at
Northridge. Saar’s work is found in the permanent collections of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York; the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Philadelphia; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the
Museum of Fine Art, Boston; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the California African American
Museum, Los Angeles. Saar has been the subject of solo exhibitions at
the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in
Harlem, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; the
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; List Visual Arts Center at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and the Santa Monica
Museum of Art, Santa Monica.
Saar has been recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowships (1974, 1984), a J. Paul Getty Fund for the Visual Arts
Fellowship (1990), and a Flintridge Foundation Visual Artists Award
(1998). In 1994, she and artist John Outterbridge represented the United
States at the 22nd São Paulo Biennial in Brazil.
Betye Saar will be featured in seven Pacific Standard Time exhibitions:
Now Dig This! at the Hammer Museum, Under the Big Black Sun at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Cross Currents in L.A. Painting
and Sculpture, 1950-1970 at the Getty Museum, Civic Virtue: The Impact
of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Art Center
at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Art
Center, Artistic Evolution: California Artists at Natural History
Museum, 1945-1963 at the Natural History Museum, L.A. Raw: Abject
Expressionism in Los Angeles, 1945-1980: From Rico Lebrun to Paul
McCarthy at Pasadena Museum for California Art and Place of Validation:
Art and Progression California African American Museum. Red Time will
be Betye Saar’s first solo gallery show in Los Angeles since 1998 and
her first show at Roberts & Tilton. Special thanks to Michael
Rosenfeld Gallery.
Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00am – 6:00pm.
For additional information, please contact Lauren Kabakoff at lauren@robertsandtilton.com or 323.549.0223.
Roberts & Tilton is a Participating Gallery of Pacific Standard
Time. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings
together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern
California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of
the birth of the L.A. art scene. For further details, please visit
pacificstandardtime.org
www.robertsandtilton.com
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