User:Carolineqjones2/sandbox

Letter Campaign In the late 1990s, Betye Saar was a recognizable and vocal critic of artist Kara Walker’s work. Kara Walker created controversial artworks that some scholars said exhibited “the psychological dimension of stereotypes and the obscenity of the American racial unconscious”. Walker’s controversial and shocking artworks included Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart (1994), and The End of Uncle Tom and Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven (1995). The shocking images, her supporters said, challenged racist and stereotypical images of African Americans by offering stark images of the degradation of African Americans. Walker’s work brought to light the reality of 19th-century slavery. While other critics, such as Betye Saar and Howardena Pindell, disagreed with Walker’s approach and believed the artist was reinforcing racism and racist stereotypes of African American life. African-American artists such as Betye Saar and Howardena Pindell were vocal in their criticism of Walker’s approach. Walker’s body of art exhibits sexual images of slaves with their owners. In Saar’s view, the exploitative images did not positively contribute to the empowerment of black woman or black artists. Therefore, Saar could not take Walker’s work seriously. In an NPR Radio interview, Saar “felt the work of Kara Walker was sort of revolting and negative and a form of betrayal to the slaves, particularly women and children, and that it was basically for the amusement and the investment of the white art establishment”. Saar believes that Walker is creating shock value artwork to please white audiences. Overall, Saar felt that Kara Walker was betraying the black artists and womanhood by including stereotypical sexual images of black women. In September 2003, Walker explains “most of my work is simply about past events, a point in history and nothing else” in an Art 21 interview. Saar, who is 40 years older than Walker, has different ideas about art’s ability to offer a message. The difference in age between Saar and her contemporaries and Walker can explain the older critics’ reactions to Walker’s work. One explanation of this age gap mentions “older artists, including Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, and Howardena Pindell, as well as commentators like Juliette Bowles, are often highlighted as Walker's main detractors, rendering the attack on her work a form of internecine, intergenerational warfare in African American intellectual and cultural life”. Saar also responded to the civil rights movement in her art by including daily iconography, such as the Liberation of Aunt Jemimah, in order to highlight the misuse and misinterpretation of the black woman. Although Saar is responding by empowering the black female figure, Walker, on the other hand, uses explicit and uncomfortable images to reveal 19th-century slavery. As a result, viewers, as Saar did, may feel uncomfortable with her artwork. Although artists criticized Walker’s body of artwork, Walker was the receipt of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Genius Award in 1997. Very upset by Walker’s award, Saar wrote a variety of letters to people in the art industry, protesting Walker’s installation and her receipt of the award. In Saar’s letter, her question was to the art world: “Are African-Americans being betrayed under the guise of art?”.