Artist Betye Saar, whose work reflects Black identity, culture and spirituality, died Sunday morning in Los Angeles at 99. <\/p>\n
Saar\u2019s death was confirmed Monday by relatives. She would have turned 100 this week.<\/p>\n
A central figure of the 1960s Black Art Movement, Saar pioneered assemblage boxes, or sculptures made of found objects, and reclaimed Jim Crow-era memorabilia as powerful totems of Black liberation. <\/p>\n
\u201cHer symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists,\u201d according to Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represents her. <\/p>\n
Saar began her career in design and shifted to art at age 35. She continued to make art into her 90s. She grew up in Pasadena and was part of a community of Black artists in nearby Altadena<\/a>; she often cited Simon Rodia\u2019s Watts Towers as an early source of inspiration.<\/p>\n Saar\u2019s practice incorporated painting, printmaking, sculpture and found objects including dolls, washboards and other antiques. Boats, clocks, cages and altars recur in her practice, as well as symbols of the occult and cosmology. She often referenced her astrological sign of Leo in the form of lions, punctuating many works.<\/p>\n \u201cHer appropriation of Black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion,\u201d the gallery said. \u201cAmong the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach.\u201d<\/p>\n Made in 1969, \u201cBlack Girl\u2019s Window,\u201d was groundbreaking. Still, it wasn\u2019t widely celebrated until decades later, and it was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2019. \u201cThere weren\u2019t that many galleries in Los Angeles at the time and there certainly weren\u2019t any for Black artists,\u201d she once said in an interview<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThe Liberation of Aunt Jemima,\u201d created in 1972, is one of her most important works. It features memorabilia she collected that denigrated Black people, included a \u201cmammy,\u201d or 19th century minstrel character who smiled while serving white slave owners.<\/p>\n In Saar\u2019s hands though, the figure is reclaimed: She smiles, but holds a rifle and has a hand grenade.<\/p>\n It came in response to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.<\/a> in Memphis, Tennessee. Saar said<\/a> King\u2019s death \u201ctriggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI had a lot of hesitation about using powerful, negative images such as these \u2014 thinking about how white people saw Black people, and how that influenced the ways in which Black people saw each other,\u201d Saar said. \u201cWhat saved it was that I made Aunt Jemima into a revolutionary figure.\u201d <\/p>\n After more than 130 years, Quaker Oat announced it would retire its Aunt Jemima brand<\/a> in 2020, acknowledging the logo and its origins were \u201cbased on a racial stereotype.\u201d<\/p>\n Saar taught and mentored generations of Black artists, including painter Kerry James Marshall<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though Saar\u2019s work was exhibited in a 1975 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, in the decades that followed large institutions have exhibited her work only sporadically. In 2019 though, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a> and MoMA mounted concurrent solo shows.<\/p>\n