Betye Saar Showcases Six-Decade-Long Career
The Betye Saar: Still Tickin’ retrospective, on view at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) through May 1, 2016, includes multimedia collages, assemblages, sculpture, works on paper, installations and brings together work representing Betye Saar’s six-decade career.
It is divided into three sections that explore the development of specific themes across time in her work: nostalgia and memory, mysticism and ritual, and political and racial. Surveying both historical and contemporary work, the exhibition continues the discourse of Saar’s unwavering charge to create works of strong social and political content.
Betye Saar, To the Manor Born, 2011. Mixed media assemblage, 11 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 2 ¼ in.
Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles, 1926, began as a graphic artist and costume designer while raising three daughters, two of whom – Alison and Lezley – are now successful artists in their own right.
Betye Saar, Still Ticking, 2005. Mixed media assemblage, 29 1/2 x 19 x 16 in.
Saar is known as one of the most important artists of her generation. She played a seminal role in the development of Assemblage art. Since the 1960s, her work has reflected on African-American identity, spirituality and the connectedness between different cultures.
The emotionally charged 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. introduced the social and political themes that have come to dominate Saar’s work today. In the 1970s, she began to collect “black collectibles,” as a way to engage, empower and visually respond to the legacy of America’s slavery past, the segregation of Jim Crow laws and the duality of the African-American Civil Rights movement and the feminist movement. The incorporation of racially charged reference materials simultaneously paid tribute to her multi-faceted heritage while forming the dialogue around her political, racial, religious and gender concerns within her aesthetic practice.
SMoCA Director and Chief Curator Dr. Sara Cochran says: “We are delighted and honored to be working with Betye Saar and Roel Arkesteijn, curator of contemporary art at De Domijnen, in order to bring Betye’s relevant and important work to Arizona. SMoCA is a laboratory of ideas and a platform for discussion. We are excited to add to this conversation in our community at this crucial historical juncture in American history.”
The retrospective takes its title from a sculpture eulogizing Saar’s late ex-husband, Richard W. Saar. Colloquially used as ‘. . . my heart is still beating,’ Betye Saar: Still Tickin’ reminds us that, on the eve of her 90th birthday, Saar is in no danger of slowing down.
Betye Saar: Still Tickin’
Jan. 30 – May 1, 2016
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
7374 E. Second St., Scottsdale
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