Shelf Life: Kara Walker NO/YES/?
November 10, 2009 at 3:26 pm by Wyatt Williams in Books, Visual Arts
Howardena Pindell and others criticize the work of Kara Walker in this collection of essays.
GENRE: Collected criticism about a contemporary artist
THE PITCH: Written responses to Kara Walker’s art divided into three sections: “NO” presents arguments against it, “YES” collects favorable reviews, and “?” is more ambiguous.
BOLD PRINT: Former Atlantan Kara Walker is a phenomenally successful artist, being one of the youngest recipients of the MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 1997 and named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2007.
THE WORK: PBS says, “Kara Walker’s work explores the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery.” A collection of her work and interviews can be seen at the ART:21 website.
AGAINST: Howardena Pindell sets the tone for arguing against the favorable reception of Kara Walker’s work, “Kara Walker’s work is being used as a weapon against the Black community in general to reinforce and maintain restrictions upon any visual dialogue with other artists of color and the wide range of work they produce.” Pindell and many of the contributors to this volume write that Walker’s work is racist and feel that their opinions have been silenced by “white privilege.”
FOR: Actually, there isn’t much in this volume that defends Walker’s art. The “Yes” section consists of heavily edited, previously published reviews and interviews. Often, the editing seems to have been done in a manner to reinforce or illustrate points from the “NO” section. Conspicuously absent are any arguments that see Walker’s work as critical of racism, like when Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote in 1997 that Walker’s work seeks “to liberate our people from the residual, debilitating effects that the proliferation of those images undoubtedly has had upon the collective unconscious of the African-American people.”
HISTORY: Pindell, along with Betye Saar, have been protesting and speaking against Kara Walker since 1997. Their protests and letters often accuse Walker’s work of promoting “negative-stereotypes” of African-Americans. Some have attributed this as Walker being “misread” or issuing from “generational” differences about ambiguity. The twenty-eight authors in Kara Walker – No couldn’t disagree more; they accuse Walker of everything from “minstrelsy” to “being bad” to stoke sales.
POSTIVE BLACK IMAGE: In an interview with Bomb magazine, Walker talked about dealing with Pindell and Saar’s accusations with work that asks, ““What is a ‘positive black image’?” Is a positive image one that is honest? And if so, to whom or what? I think that images, these hand-drawn characters I make, have the ambiguous duty of being both part of the real world (which is cruel and nasty) and the world of other images (which sometimes pretend to be noble, but are often concealing disgusting intentions).”
THE WINNER?: This volume doesn’t live up to it’s title, because there isn’t enough engagement between the “NO” and “YES” sections. A section of essays that actually defended Walker’s work to the accusations would have made for a lively dialogue with Pindell’s criticisms. Still, it succeeds in presenting a platform for the people that feel like they have been silenced or censored in their response to Walker’s work.
Kara Walker No / Kara Walker Yes / Kara Walker ? Introduction by Howardena Pindell & Essays by 28 Artists, Educators, Writers and Poets. Midmarch Art Press. $22.00. 148 pp.
autobiography: strips, dots, and video drawings by Howardena Pindell runs at the Sandler Hudson Gallery until November 28. The show features work created by Pindell between 1974-2009.
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