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  Posted By:
  anna at 07/16/2008 1:09:16 PM
  Comment:
  I viewed Walker's latest installation in Minneapolis at the Walker Art Center, but had ben to exposed to Walker initially at MOMA Queens, where tears unexplicably streamed down my face as I drank in the panoramic view of "Gone". Her work leaves no stone unturned and no one is exempt from brutal examination. That's why I can appreciate it, it holds us all complicit in the horrific history of slavery. However it is clear to me that Black women, Black Children and Black men were surviving ( and I have say thank God, thay did what they did).
  Art has to "move the crowd" as the hip hop generation has realized, Walker's skilled silhouettes definitely fit that description. There is a very complicated relationship between Blacks and Whites in this country and in the world for that matter, and Walker attempts to express "her" understanding of it. It doesn't mean that it has to be mine, though we definitely relate on many levels, and it certainly isn't representative of the entire Black community. It is one artist interpretation of race relations in America.
  There is something erie about the Obama Campaign, "Do you like Cream in Coffee", on one hand there are a number of whites who support him, and based on recent polls there is a very sizable group that say "no way to a Black candidate for President", no surprise there. But many of the supporters are young white women, (there goes that complicated sexual political dynamic again), but even deeper still is the generation gap that Bettye Saar exemplify's. So I say, for the true Art Historian, dig in there is so much to mine from Walker's work, that we will be writing articles, essays, plays and poems for years to come, and for that I say thanks, Kara.
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  Posted By:
  falseprophet at 04/17/2008 7:37:06 AM
  Comment:
  I think part of the debate we need to have is "Why should her art be redemptive?" and "What is that redemption supposed to look like?" Her art is not only based on the historical, but also the personal -- and I don't mean in a Collective Unconscious kind of way. In a New Yorker article, she discussed her experiences in a relationship with a white man and how she realized it was both destructive and addictive, which informs some of the complex sexual politics she depicts in her work. Both black men and women complain about the other gender's "trespasses" into interracial relationships with white, sometimes even arguing that there is no such thing as a healthy interracial relationship between white and black. I find the attitude to be repugnant, but I do not expect Walker's art to reflect my attitudes about race, sex, and love just because she and I are both black. If she, in fact, sees no route to some concept of "redemption," I see no reason to criticize her work on that grounds. In fact, I am wondering just what this "redemption" is supposed to look like. A moratorium on all white-black relationships? I doubt it.
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  Posted By:
  irene at 04/16/2008 8:43:19 AM
  Comment:
  The "artistry" of Walker's work is subjective - and I have long agreed with Saar on the nature of how "well" her work has been receieved. As a Gen-Xer and historian of the Black female experience I find nothing redemptive in her work. There is angst and speculation that could have existed, however, we "average" citizen have not evolved to that level of intellectual liberation and responsibility for the vile and degenerate nature that enslavement caused all humanity to experience.
  I think being critical of her does not require an entire "witchhunt" locking her out of museums, however, there needs to be some interdisciplinary discussion by historians, psychologists, artists and others to deconstruct the meaning and message of her work - and please since this is America let her continue to create from whatever source is driving her - and since this is America, let me whet my tongue and speak out against such atrocious monstrocities.
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  Posted By:
  irene at 04/16/2008 7:28:41 AM
  Comment:
  The "artistry" of Walker's work is subjective - and I have long agreed with Saar on the nature of how "well" her work has been receieved. As a Gen-Xer and historian of the Black female experience I find nothing redemptive in her work. There is angst and speculation that could have existed, however, we "average" citizen have not evolved to that level of intellectual liberation and responsibility for the vile and degenerate nature that enslavement caused all humanity to experience.
  I think being critical of her does not require an entire "witchhunt" locking her out of museums, however, there needs to be some interdisciplinary discussion by historians, psychologists, artists and others to deconstruct the meaning and message of her work - and please since this is America let her continue to create from whatever source is driving her - and since this is America, let me whet my tongue and speak out against such atrocious monstrocities.
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    Posted By:
    falseprophet at 04/17/2008 7:24:07 AM
    Comment:
    I think part of that debate has to be "Why must her art be redemptive?" In interviews she has mentioned that much of the complex sexual politics he depicts in her art are also directly autobiographical -- and I don't mean in a 'collective unconscious' kind of way. In a New Yorker article she discussed a relationship she had with a white man which she came to realize was destructive, yet addictive. And with complaints from both black men and women about the other gender's "trespasses" into relationships with whites, which doesn't seem to see an end, where is the redemption? What does it look like? Perhaps there won't be any "redemption" until all black-white interracial relationships have ceased, since there is always a way to read into them some kind of oppression by the white partner upon the black partner. There seems to be a sense these days that there's no such thing as a healthy interracial relationship between black and white, which is an attitude I find repugnant, if only for the gross generalization that founds its premise. So I wonder if asking for her art to be "redemptive" is asking it to show something that we have not found yet, which we haven't found yet partially because we've not defined it. Walker's art appears to be personal as well as historical, and in so far as she personally has not found "redemption" that she can put in her art I see no reason for depict it, even if some of her detractors seem to believe that they have.