Kara Walker at Art:21
The PBS series entilted Art:21 (Art in the 21st Century) has been a long-time favorite of mine. Each episode features one of the great artists of our time, and follows them to their studio, installations, or exhibitions, all the while interviewing and questioning them. The Art:21 website features snippets of these interviews and videos - or you can order full seasons from PBS or get them from Netflix.
Here’s a preview of the Art:21 with Kara Walker:
And a portion of an interview:
ART:21: Your very first silhouette work “Gone, An Historical Romance of Civil War As it Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of Young Negress and Her Heart” makes reference to Margaret Mitchell’s novel “Gone with the Wind.” What influence did this novel play in the development of your work?
WALKER: “Gone with the Wind” was one of those books that I already had preconceived ideas about. I already knew that I wasn’t going to like it. [LAUGHS] And some of my experiences in Atlanta with the mythology of “Gone with the Wind” included things like the sequel to it that came out around the time I was working in a large bookstore. And some of the more personal and private events that happened in and around places like the Cyclorama, which is not too far away from where they filmed parts of “Gone with the Wind,” and where the fake Tara was.
I had built up prejudices against “Gone with the Wind.” The first time I thought I would work with it, I was in graduate school and I was making a collage on top of the book “Gone with the Wind,” but really, without having read it. I decided that wasn’t going to work about halfway through and so I plopped down, started to read the book, and was thrilled with how engrossing that story was and how grotesque it was at the same time.
My interests were already running along the lines of other versions of the historical romance—the permutations of “Gone with Wind”—to some extent. It was the most fitting choice of text to work with. But, the romance of it, the storytelling, it was so rich and epic and that was what I hadn’t expected. I hadn’t expected to be titillated in the way that stories like that are meant to titillate. And at the same time it was so much fodder for the work that I wanted to do.
ART:21: In some ways that kind of storytelling is like the silhouette itself: evasive, yet confrontational.
WALKER: The silhouette lends itself to avoidance of the subject. Of not being able to look at it directly, yet there it is, all the time, staring you in the face. There it is, the whole world of “Gone with the Wind” and its legacy and the way that affects people’s everyday encounters. I went through my young adult life in Atlanta half-blind, let’s say, ignorant to some extent, because there it was. I was actually blinded by this melodrama. And the melodrama includes a kind of soft focus view of racism and laws that are passed and were passed, and continue to be shifted to affect some kind of change, or to affect some kind of, oh, I don’t know how to describe it exactly… You know, it’s designed to avoid the confluence of disgust and desire and voluptuousness that are all wrapped up in this bizarre construct of racism. You know, what black stands for in white America and what white stands for in white America are all loaded with our deepest psychological perversions and fears and longings. And, it’s a dangerous way of doing things but it’s just human, weirdly human.
