Kara Walker: Memory and Meaning
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Kara Walker. Occupation of Alexandria, 2005. Offset Lithography/Silkscreen, 39x53in (paper size), Carrier: Somerset Textured, ed: 35, Portfolio of 15. From The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies web site; click here to visit.
Kara Walker. Occupation of Alexandria, 2005. Offset Lithography/Silkscreen, 39x53in (paper size), Carrier: Somerset Textured, ed: 35, Portfolio of 15. From The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies web site; click here to visit.
Kara Walker is a polemical figure in the world of contemporary art. Few artists of the past quarter century have polarized the art world, and the black community, as much as she. Her 2005 portfolio of prints Harper's Pictorial History Of the Civil War (Annotated) on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum is an extension of the aggressive, challenging, and sometimes mystifying work that has made her renowned in contemporary art circles. By using enlarged photo reproductions drawn directly from the 19th. century book (also on view) of the same name, Walker places us in the visual and factual description of the landscape in which the narratives in her imagination occur.
Because the responses to Kara Walker are often intense, discussions of her work infrequently revolve around the formal characteristics themselves. If they were to, they likely would not be lengthy conversations. Kara Walker has succeeded in creating an inimitable style for herself that is actually based on little formal growth and innovation. Though an excellent draftsman in her own right, Walker is most closely associated with the stark silhouettes that comprise the bulk of her oeuvre, and it is this work with variations that have comprised the majority of her creative output for the past 12 years. Her brand is now so distinct and instantly recognizable, that to deviate from it would probably spell critical or commercial suicide.
Though already five years old, Walker's Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) at the Cincinnati Art Museum mostly reads as the last gasps of an artistic concept that is slowly and inevitable running out of steam. The visceral and conceptual force of the installations that Walker is known for are, for the most part, emptied out of this series of prints. By simply superimposing her trademark images over unaltered reproductions of the 19th century originals, Walker signals that formally, she doesn't have much left to offer that we haven't seen before. In some cases the silkscreened images of Walker's figures interact with their 19th century counterparts very tentatively, or not at all.
In Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, one of the more successful prints on display, a crowd of people loyal to the Union are portrayed as rushing to the banks of the river, made ecstatic by the presence of the Union ships that have arrived to liberate them. Superimposed into this crowd is one of Walker's female slave figures. The figure engages the space and she too appears to be rushing to greet the oncoming Union ships. Yet with a historical perspective the viewer is keenly aware that the liberation received by the loyalists is still at least a century away for the former slave. This sentiment is conveyed in a visual manner that is perhaps as subtle as Walker has ever been, and as a result it is a profoundly affective piece.
Kara Walker. Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats, 2005. Offset Lithography/Silkscreen, 39x53in (paper size), Carrier: Somerset Textured, ed: 35, Portfolio of 15. From The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies web site; click here to visit
Regarding the series on view, Walker stated that she "wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn't walk away" no doubt referring to her installations, which can and do disgust some viewers. Unfortunately with this body of prints the majority of them have been so "toned down" that they scarcely hold together, formally and conceptually. The subtlety that makes a print like Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats so great is completely lost on an image like Occupation of Alexandria, where Walker's figures are all but invisible in the lower right hand corner of the piece. Like all artists who rise to prominence on issues of political, cultural, and social concern, Walker's work runs the risk of becoming stale and less relevant as time moves on and public attitudes change.
The youngest recipient of the MacArthur "genius" award, Kara Walker came to the foreground of contemporary art in the late 1990s with large scale, panoramic silhouettes of cut paper depicting all manner of violence, abuse, and degradation visited upon the African slave, some by the hand of the slave master, and some self-inflicted. A gut wrenching reimagining of the antebellum South that cuts with both sides of the knife and leaves none indifferent to the experience, it is Walker's portrayal of this pre civil war and Jim Crow era black stereotype, reviving the vile imagery of the mammy, toms, and all manner of other foul relics of the past that have caused the most controversy, notably among fellow African American artists.
Condemned by Betye Saar and Howardena Pindell (both African American artists and intellectuals) as reinvigorating, revitalizing, and capitalizing upon the negative portrayals of the past, and defended by others such as Harvard professor and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. who said that in regards to Walker's images "only the visually illiterate could mistake their post-modern critique as realistic portrayal, and it is the difference between the racist original and the post-modern, anti-racist parody that characterized this genre."
Betye Saar. The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, 1972.Mixed media assemblage, 11.75x8x 2.75in.Kara Walker's rise to prominence in the late 90's was felt by many as being constructed on the exploitation of racial stereotypes that generations of African American activist had fought so long to overcome. Walker's work was perceived as undercutting the efforts of those who sought to move beyond simplistic, hateful portrayals, and present three dimensional, positive images of blacks in popular culture. Artists such as Betye Saar in particular had been appropriating and re-contextualizing black stereotypes (Aunt Jemima for example) to present a clearly positive narrative of African Americans for some time.
That Walker's rise was so rapid, she so young, and her images so brutal and confrontational, seemed proof to many of the inherently racist attitudes of the white art establishment. By letting only those who fit within the preconceived narrative of race relations ascend to the heights of the Whitney, MOMA, and numerous other centers of supposed cultural excellence, the New York art world appeared to be validating the charge that to be accepted, artists of color must make work that engages with their ethnicity. To put it in clearer terms; black artists must, in some way, make work about the black experience to have any credibility, and depicting positive images of the African American body does not generally fit into this narrative.
This is a compelling argument and a difficult one to refute. In a 1997 paper, Howardena Pindell noted that of all of the white owned New York galleries, just over 4% carried any work by black artists at all, and these galleries "seem to prefer to represent work that has a clear indication of the artists race, depicts the African American body or in recent years depicts negative racial stereotypes of African Americans." The preference of the art world to have an artist of color make work that explicitly engages his or her ethnicity is real and understood by many, as a local artist noted in a recent conversation: "it's possible that if I just made work that is obviously about any kind of identity politics, you know, it might really take off". He continued by saying that "I don't have any issue with that kind of work, but it seems like it's easier to get noticed that way, and it's just not what I do." The challenge becomes how to maintain a sincere dedication to art and the life of an artist when the art world at large seems to have a clear preference for "black" art from African American artists. In this regard, it could be argued that by dealing with explicitly negative, stereotypical, identity driven images, Kara Walker's work exerts a strong downward pressure on black artists who want to be regarded for being artists first and artists of color second. Far from opening the doors of success to other African American artists, Walker narrows the point of entry by giving the establishment exactly what it seeks: a black artist who makes work about being black, and not in a "good" way.
From Servant to C.E.O., even an aesthetic makeover cannot completely disguise the origins of the central figure image. Taken from the Uncle Ben's web site; visit it by clicking here.The other side of this argument maintains that Walker's explicit depiction of the stereotype is a form of "artistic exorcism" (to quote Henry Louis Gates Jr.), and that these anti-racist parodies confront, distort, and disarm the hateful content by attacking it head on. This again, is a valid line of reasoning that is challenging to refute, but unlike the claims of reinvigorating the stereotype made by Pindell and Saar, Gate's contention relies on an understanding of post-modern theory that, quite frankly, is not generally accessible to the wider public. And to accuse viewers who do not understand the nature of Walker's imagery as being "visually illiterate" is not a little condescending. Notions of the post-modern, poststructuralist, and deconstructionist techniques and theory are for the most part the purview of an academic elite, a class of intelligentsia whose life experience bears little resemblance to that of the average American in general, and to the urban poor in particular.
It was noted earlier that responses to Walker's imagery frequently diverge along generational lines, an older generation disturbed by them, in which these stereotypes are a part of the living memory, and a younger generation which feels no direct connection to them, and sees them as part of a "distant" past. In this way, Walker can be seen as attacking (satirizing, or reinforcing, depending on your perspective) images of racial stereotypes, that for the most part are a thing of the past, purging them from the collective consciousness and rendering them neutered.
Aside from a few vestiges of this overtly racist imagery of the past (in a trip to the supermarket one might still encounter Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima) these revolting caricatures are not likely to be experienced by, let alone visible to, the average denizen of 21st century America; they have been replaced by a whole new subset of discreet, institutionalized and amorphous ones. Contemporary stereotypes such as the "welfare mom" or the "father who is never around" exist in mental spaces, and because they reside in the perceptions of individuals they are difficult to detect. By assaulting the stereotypes of the past Walker runs the risk of allowing certain viewers to feel a sense of pride in the achievements of overcoming the explicit racism of a bygone era without having to acknowledge the more virulent, nebulous forms that exist today. Walker, by beating a dead horse can be seen as distracting us from the inhumane treatment of the living one. The insidious forms of institutionalized racism that exist today are often so inconspicuous (especially to white people) that no perverse caricature of "sambo" can even come close to addressing them. By relying on literally a two dimensional reduction, Walker takes complex ideas about implicit or coded racism and renderers them invisible; in their place are a series of dated typecasts from an imaginary minstrel show that refocuses the discussion back into one about the artistic merits of aging stereotypes.
Kara Walker herself would probably concur with neither of her critic's nor her supporter's assessments of her own work. On numerous occasions she has made reference to the fact that while her work resides in a historical context, it is non-historical in nature. Additionally, Walker often points out that her installations should be seen as fictitious narratives, in which the image and stereotype are used as a device to drive a story or provoke a conversation around issues of power, dominance, anxiety, and sexuality, as well as those of racism, and in this regard they are exceptionally powerful and successful. This does however raise some particularly delicate issues about the employment of cultural symbols, both positive and negative, and to what ends.
Installation view of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, on exhibit through May 31, 2010 at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, 50 East Freedom Way, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202. Photo courtesy of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
Walker is the daughter of a former university professor and department chair, a privileged background by any standard, regardless of race. That she is a black woman in America by default makes her the victim of racism, but it may be worth considering that by and large Walker came of age in world where the fiercest battles of the civil rights era had already been fought, and if not won, than certainly at a point where an armistice was in place; a world in which accounts of systematic police beatings, murdered activists, church bombings, attack dogs, and fires hoses were for the most part second hand knowledge. This is in no way meant to diminish, or depreciate the forms of racism encountered by Walker after her family moved to Georgia when she was 13. But it needs to be understood that the racism encountered by her, and those of her generation, is qualitatively different from the violent forms encountered by those who were forcibly prevented from registering to vote before she was born.
This temporal distance, thought very short, gives rise to a mental distance that is far greater, and that appears to shed some insight into the generational divide that defines critics and supporters of her work. It is this temporal/mental distance that allows a younger generation of black artists, writers, and musicians to say things and use images that would be anathema to their elders. These symbols and linguistic forms "belong" to them (the younger generation) in a very different manner than they belong to those who were their victims. Because they enjoy the freedom and privileges won by others, for better or worse, these symbols don't mean the same thing, and as such do not seem "off limits".
Kara Walker. Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On), 2002.
Installation view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Projection, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 12x74.5ft.
Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Photo by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. From Art:21 on PBS; click here to visit site.Perhaps the ultimate expression of this time-space compression and emotional-rational expansion is the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. In conversations had for the writing of this article, several individuals indicated that their parents, an older generation of African Americans, were genuinely shocked at Obama's election. While a younger generation perhaps was still surprised, it at least found the idea plausible in a way that their parents could not. Understood in this context, Henry Louis Gates' assertions about Kara Walker's work are correct, but not because of post-modern irony, but because of temporal displacement, just as Saar's and Pindell's arguments are correct for the same reasons.
This then is the maddening paradox of Kara Walker's work. Each layer of meaning is preceded by one that is just as complex. Each question her work poses can be answered in numerous ways, and many times, with other questions. The debate that surrounds her cuts to the heart of identity in America, and not just what it means to be black and white, but what it means to be young and old, and how one's life experience conditions our perceptions of the past, present, and prospects for the future. Walker's work is a vein which yields several different, but equally precious kinds of ore, some beautiful and some radioactive. There are those who would say that this is what the best art of our time does and does so well, and still others would claim that it is this discursiveness that is destroying the art of our time. And they would both be correct.
The author would like to extend his sincerest thanks and appreciation to the research and generosity of Professor Ellen Price, as well as the many local artists who contributed to my research. Without their time and patience this article would not have been possible.
