REVIEW: “Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar” at The Neubauer Collegium for Culture & Society at the University of Chicago
Betye Saar installation view with Saar Hand Banner, 1968, Silk, fabric tape, ink, thread, 43.5 in x 31.5 in (110.49 x 80 cm). Courtesy the artist and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Robert Heishman.
REVIEW
Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar
The Neubauer Collegium for Culture & Society at the University of Chicago
5701 S Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
January 30 through April 27, 2025
By Kristin Mariani
It’s 32 degrees at the University of Chicago after a busy week of cultural events and programming across the city hosted by the Chicago Panafrica Constellation. A reception is in full swing at the Neubauer Collegium Gallery celebrating Betye Saar’s exhibit, Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar. The artist is present, and the gallery is full of enthusiastic admirers and members of the Bamum community from Cameroon. Saar thanks everyone for coming with a friendly reminder that it's cold here in Chicago, dress in layers, and stay warm, encouraging everybody in the room to keep it on. A young woman dressed in a big, dandelion-yellow puffer jacket eagerly approaches the crowd circling the artist, matching the bright yellow exhibit card grasped in her hand waiting for Saar’s signature. She spots the artist between onlookers and exclaims, "I can't believe it! There she is. This woman made me want to be an artist."
Betye Saar is 99 years old and still making art. She describes the roots of her creative energies grounded in family, growing up alongside people who worked with their hands and made things. Her mother was a seamstress and they made clothes together. Growing up in Los Angeles on visits to her paternal grandmother, she frequently walked by Watts Towers while Italian artist Simon Rodia was building the site. In a 2018 conversation with her daughter Alison Saar, also an artist, Betye Saar recalls, “I was a kid who loved the mysterious, the magical, the unknown, the other, and here was the unknown being constructed.”
Betye Saar installation view during the opening reception with Saar Hand Banner, 1968, Silk, fabric tape, ink, thread, 43.5 in x 31.5 in (110.49 x 80 cm). Courtesy the artist and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Max Herman.
At the Neubauer Collegium Gallery viewers are greeted by Saar Hand Banner, a cloth work appliquéd with a wide open palm surrounded by a dandelion-yellow ground. Suspended above the fireplace in the former drawing room, the hand-stitched surface is detailed with a cross-hatch of black lines mapping the major and minor flexion creases read in palmistry. Saar made this work in 1968, the same year as her divorce, the same year as Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the same year Olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black gloved fists on the podium in protest of systemic oppression and discrimination of black people.
Curated by Dieter Roelstraete, Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar shapes a particular perspective on this renowned artist’s work, juxtaposing her dress and costume designs made prior to her 1974 encounter at the Field Museum with a Bamum robe; a fateful event that altered the course of the artist's career. The robe is on loan from the field museum for the first time and displayed as a flat, rectangular form under a thick wall of glass in the north vitrine of the gallery. At the time of Saar’s visit to the Field Museum with David Hammons, the work was kept in the lower levels, and not carefully displayed or preserved. What is known about the robe is that it was worn for ceremonial purposes, hanging straight down from the shoulders. Pieced together along the center front, center back and side seams—selvage edge to selvage edge—it was stitched to utilize every inch of the hand woven cloth. Its surface is embellished with spherical rolls of human hair beaded in a Cheetah like pattern across the cloth. There are still many unknowns around this robe's origins, and many interpretations of its meaning.
Betye Saar installation view. Bamoi/Bamum Robe. Cameroon, late 19th century. Collection of the Field Museum. Courtesy the Field Museum and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Robert Heishman.
Saar’s recollection of the encounter is shared in the exhibition Press Release:
“It was so powerful, because not only was it a rough fabric and beautiful to look at, but it had a little bit of everybody on it,” and
“For me, even in a glass display case, it was almost like an electrical shock that came through that display.”
Bearing an uncanny resemblance to the 19th century Bamoi/Bamum Robe, but created before its encounter, Saar’s 1969 Cheetah Dress stands against the wood paneling on the east wall of the gallery. The mini dress, sewn and worn by the artist herself, was a a very fashionable garment in the 60’s, and is reflected in a number of her costume designs on display. Similar to Bamoi/Bamum Robe from Cameroon, Cheetah Dress is cut from a rectangle of cloth to hang straight down from the shoulders, shaped from the side seams into the form of a timeless shift dress. An ideal silhouette to highlight pattern and texture, the surface on this dress incorporates both print and pile, with cheetah patterns punctuated by hair-like threads that protrude from the surface as if in a state of electric shock.
Betye Saar installation view. Mixed media on paper. Courtesy the artist and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Robert Heishman.
Setting the scene:
A visual feast of costume designs displayed in an expansive vitrine continually draws viewers around the table. Under glass, countless characters are brought to life in a vibrant arrangement of illustrations, photos, facsimiles, LP’s and playbills. Illustrated in mixed media with a palette of jewel tones, Day-Glo pigments, animal prints and 60’s graphics, these costume designs were Saar’s way to make a living as a single mom. The textures, patterns, and detailing of each costume is represented by an assemblage of fabric swatches paperclipped along each illustration’s margins. Saar’s sensitivity to materials is present through the glass, with each swatch bearing the touch of the hand that selected it.
Betye Saar installation view. Places sketchbook with sketches from the Field Museum, 1974–1975. Mixed media on paper & facsimiles. Courtesy the artist and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Robert Heishman.
Mojo Necklaces and magic places:
There is a spiritual energy imbued in Saar’s adornments assembled from leather fragments fashioned like large talismans to be worn around the neck and waist. Saar maps the edge of each piece with angled stitch lines, inscribing her hand into each appliquéd layer. Every edge is blended to the next in her Mojo Necklaces and Mojo Belts, adding to the power of the whole and creating a gem in the raw surface within the leather. These adornments hold a charm-like quality, and were another form of currency for the artist, who sold pieces like these at local Renaissance Fairs in LA. In this vitrine there’s a photo of her daughter, Lezley Saar, wearing a Mojo Necklace for a class photo, and another photo of her three daughters together. In this photo Alison Saar wears the light blue, appliquéd Hand Bird Skirt, with its well worn surface featured under the glass as a remnant of this garment made by her mom.
Betye Saar installation view. Courtesy the artist and The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Photography by Robert Heishman.
Saar’s practice of collecting things discarded by others was like stepping into a river current, tapping into an energy stream that enabled her to transform her feelings, make new connections, embed meaning, and reinvent material value. The vitrines provide a window into the parts that make up the whole to Saar’s actualization as an artist. She has fashioned her own modality on this path. It is a manifold process, and she continues to embrace the unknowns at every turn.
Kristin Mariani is an artist, Couture Editor of Bridge, and Founder of RedShift Couture.
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