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Betye Saar

Born, 1923 - 1929 (probably 1926) in Los Angeles, California

Betye Saar’s ‘The Liberation of Aunt Jemima’, 1972 was reproduced in Keith Piper’s ‘Relocating the Remains’ (1997) catalogue, the main text of which was written by Kobena Mercer. The chapter in which Saar’s work appears is ‘Art’s Histories and Culture’s Geographies: 1979 - 1985’. In the same year, a reproduction of the same work appeared in Kobena Mercer’s essay ‘Bodies of Diaspora, Vessels of Desire: The Erotic and the Aesthetic’ in the catalogue for ‘Transforming the Crown’. ‘The Liberation of Aunt Jemima’ was also reproduced in Mercer’s chapter in his book Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures (2007). The book was edited by Kobena Mercer and was one of four books (all edited by Mercer) in a series titled Annotating Art’s Histories, jointly published by The MIT Press, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Iniva the Institute of International Visual Arts, London. The chapter in question (in Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures) was Tropes of the Grotesque in the Black Avant-Garde.

The biographical entry on Betye Saar in Richard J. Powell’s Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century/Black Art: A Cultural History erroneously has her year of birth as 1929.

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Book relating to a publication, 1997

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Book relating to a publication, 2007

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Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1997

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Catalogue relating to an exhibition, 1997

Related exhibitions

Related venues

»  The New Art Gallery Walsall

Walsall, United Kingdom

»  New York Historical Society

New York, New York, USA, United States of America

»  Whitechapel Art Gallery

London, United Kingdom

»  Whitney Museum of American Art

New York, United States of America