Michele Mattei, Betye Saar, 2012 (printed 2018), inkjet print, National Portrait Gallery, NPG.2018.37.2, © 2003 Michele Mattei
We remember artist Betye Saar, who died on Sunday, July 26, just days before her 100th birthday.
Inspired in part by childhood visits to Los Angeles, where she watched the Watts Towers take shape from broken glass, bottle tops, and other discarded materials, Saar came to art later in life after studying printmaking and graphic design. Beginning with color etchings, she later turned to assemblage, drawing on African and Oceanic myths, mysticism, and the occult. The death of Martin Luther King, Jr. marked a shift in her work, while later assemblages incorporated photographs, lace, and other memorabilia to reflect on memory, identity, and personal symbolism.
Betye Saar, Wishing for Winter, 1989, 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., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1994.40, © 1989, Betye Saar
Betye Saar, who was born in Los Angeles in 1926, created the artwork Wishing for Winter in 1989. It is a mixed-media assemblage: a window with its hinges is divided into five sections, four small forming a quadrant, and one large of equal size. It is filled with summer detritus: feathers and bird wings, one glove, a belt buckle, a small journal or prayerbook, and a few keys. There's an old photo, too, faded beyond recognition. It may evoke to the viewer a trip to the family summer house, of wandering through the attic when you come upon an old trunk, filled with keepsakes, mementoes, and hopefully a treasure or two.
In speaking of her own work, Saar has said, "I am intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects, with the components of technology. It's a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously."
Betye Saar, 1985. Woman's Building records, 1970-1992. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
