When was betye saar born

African American Masters focuses on black artists whose efforts in the twentieth century demonstrate their command of mainstream traditions as well as the open assertion and exploration of their dual heritage. Read more about African American Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Works by This Artist 1 item Wishing for Winter Betye Saar mixed media: pine, glass, fabric, iron, chicken wire, staples, keys, belt buckle, hinge, window catch, pin, change purse, glove, book, wallpaper, vegetable fibers, feathers, and butterfly wing fragments, etc.

Close Before you leave African American Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum African American Masters focuses on black artists whose efforts in the twentieth century demonstrate their command of mainstream traditions as well as the open assertion and exploration of their dual heritage.

Betye Saar. Before you leave Saar recalls, "We lived here in the hippie time. Down the road was Frank Zappa. Saar remained in the Laurel Canyon home, where she lives and works to this day.

Art historian Ellen Y. Tani explains that, "Assemblage describes the technique of combining natural or manufactured materials with traditionally non-artistic media like found objects into three-dimensional constructions.

So named in the mid-twentieth century by the French artist Jean Dubuffet , assemblage challenged the conventions of what constituted sculpture and, more broadly, the work of art itself. Saar described Cornell's artworks as "jewel-like installations. Art historian Marci Kwon explains that what Saar learned from Cornell was "the use of found objects and the ideas that objects are more than just their material appearances, but have histories and lives and energies and resonances [ Saar recalls, "I had a friend who was collecting [derogatory] postcards, and I thought that was interesting.

So I started collecting these things. I thought, this is really nasty, this is mean. This is like the word 'nigger,' you know? Many of these things were made in Japan, during the '40s. I think in some countries, they probably still make them. In a way, it's like, slavery was over, but they will keep you a slave by making you a salt-shaker.

I said to myself, if Black people only see things like this reproduced, how can they aspire to anything else? Brown and Tann were featured in the Fall edition of Ebony magazine. Curator Helen Molesworth explains, "Like many artists working in California at that time, she played in the spaces between art and craft, not making too much distinction between the two.

In the late s, Saar became interested in the civil rights movement, and she used her art to explore African-American identity and to challenge racism in the art world.

The group collaborated on an exhibition titled Sapphire You've Come a Long Way, Baby , considered the first contemporary African-American women's exhibition in California. In , Saar sat on the founding board for Womanspace, a cultural center for Feminist art and community, founded by woman artists and art historians in Los Angeles.

The following year, she and fellow African-American artist Samella Lewis organized a collective show of Black women artists at Womanspace called Black Mirror. Saar was shocked by the turnout for the exhibition, noting, "The white women did not support it. It was as if we were invisible. There, she was introduced to African and Oceanic art, and was captivated by its ritualistic and spiritual qualities. She recalls that the trip "opened my eyes to Indigenous art, the purity of it.

All the main exhibits were upstairs, and down below were the Africa and Oceania sections, with all the things that were not in vogue then and not considered as art - all the tribal stuff. Of course, I had learned about Africa at school, but I had never thought of how people there used twigs or leather, unrefined materials, natural materials.

A couple years later, she travelled to Haiti. She recalls, "I said, 'If it's Haiti and they have voodoo, they will be working with magic, and I want to be in a place with living magic. During these trips, she was constantly foraging for objects and images particularly devotional ones and notes, "Wherever I went, I'd go to religious stores to see what they had. In , following the death of her Aunt Hattie, Saar was compelled to explore autobiography in writing, and enrolled in a workshop titled "Intensive Journal" at the University of California at Los Angeles, which was based off of the psychological theory and method of American psychotherapist Ira Progroff.

She recalls, "One exercise was this: Close your eyes and go down into your deepest well, your deepest self. Whatever you meet there, write down. I had this vision. There was water and a figure swimming. I had a feeling of intense sadness. I started to weep right there in class. Later I realized that of course the figure was myself. Painter Kerry James Marshall took a course with Saar at Otis College in the late s, and recalls that "in her class, we made a collage for the first critique.

We were then told to bring the same collage back the next week, but with changes, and we kept changing the collage over and over and over, throughout the semester. Enter your The HistoryMakers username. Enter the password that accompanies your username.

After the passing of her father in , Saar and her family moved to Pasadena, California to live with her great-aunt, Hattie Parson Keys. Saar earned her B. She later took graduate level classes in design at multiple institutions in California, but changed her artistic focus after taking a printmaking class.

After graduating from the University of California, Saar briefly worked as a social worker until she met jewelry artist Curtis Tann. She began making assemblages in Martin Luther King Jr.