August 31, 2010

Kara Walker: Freedom: a fable

1997
Artist's pop-up silhouette book
10 1/2 x 9 3/8 in.
Gift of the Norton Family

The title of Kara Walker's pop-up book is "A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times." Walker has gained early fame for her nearly life-size works of precisely drawn, black paper silhouette dramas caricaturing the lives of slaves and masters in the ante-bellum American South. By depicting black people in disturbing clichés and stereotypes, Walker employs a kind of "in-your-face" art in order to reveal the shocking make-up of the American racial psyche.