How Kara Walker Boldly Rewrote Civil War History

USS ALASKA

Captain
Joined
Mar 16, 2016
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smit...r-boldly-rewrote-civil-war-history-180965367/

"A new show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum entitled “Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated),” explores these twisted myths of slavery and the Civil War. Walker’s signature imagery—surreal, often violent, sometimes absurdly sexualized silhouettes of African-Americans—depict not actual people, but characters based on racist caricatures once widely disseminated throughout popular 19th-century culture."

Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/...l-history-of-the-civil-war-annotated-reviewed

Kara Walker Tells the Story of the Civil War From the Slave’s Perspective

"Growing up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, Kara Walker could not avoid the imagery of the Civil War. A tribute to Confederate leaders—Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson—is carved into the side of Stone Mountain itself, and every Independence Day, families gather at that side of the mountain to watch a fireworks display. Stone Mountain was also a gathering site of the second Ku Klux Klan. Those who have studied Walker’s biography know her move from California to a newly desegregated, but still very divided, Georgia in the 1980s heavily influenced her life and her art.

Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated) is based on the romantic depiction of the conflict captured in the pages of Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War. In this exhibition, Walker enlarges illustrations from the original volume and stencils large black figures on top of them. The stencils are not very detailed, but those familiar with Walker’s work will be reminded of the somewhat comical and grotesque ways she shapes these figures in her silhouettes. Walker’s pieces have the same titles as the original images, which implies she’s correcting history; by adding to the original work and keeping the name the same, she tells the story of the Civil War from the slave’s perspective. "


Cheers,
USS ALASKA
 
Back
Top