Who is Betye Saar?
African-American Assemblage Artist, born in 1926. Saar renowned for her assemblages that lampoon racist attitudes about blacks and for installations featuring mystical themes. Saar studied design at the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1949) and education and printmaking at California State University at Long Beach. In the early 1960s she created etchings and intaglio, but after seeing a Joseph Cornell show in 1968, she developed an interest in three-dimensional objects and began working in assemblage. Her works incorporate found objects of all sortsfrom those suggesting ritual folk cult to traditional Christianity. Many also challenge racist myths and stereotypes. Saar’s The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972), for example, is a mammy doll placed in front of the eponymous pancake syrup labels; she carries a broom in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Saar created less political works during that period as well, evocatively employing such materials as old photographs, glov
