Process And Fierce Redemption In Betye Saar’s Call and Response

at LACMA, (through April 5, 2020)
Reviewed by Genie Davis

Betye Saar’s riveting, 40-object exhibition currently at LACMA offers a fascinating insight into the artist’s process. It’s strong focus on the power of redemptive faith and personal strength in the face of adversity is passionate and compelling — which can be frankly said of all Saar’s work. The exhibition also aches with possibility: Saar is a prolific artist, and as extensive as this exhibition is in terms of an insightful view of her sketchbooks, the longing remains to see more of her finished works, of which there are fewer than 20 exhibited here.

That aside, the exhibition, curated by Carol S. Eliel, senior curator of modern art at the museum, is entirely worthwhile. It leads viewers through the artist’s notebooks from the late 1960s and work from 1971 through the present. While by no means inclusive of all her material, it is a rich collection that reveals her passion for the spiritual, and her material use of household and other found objects. It also touches, with wisdom, on the implicit and inherent racism in American culture. As an artist, Saar’s concerns and motifs have always focused on the spiritual, race, and gender. She is innovative and seminal in the use of assemblage to shape galvanizing, story-telling art that defies convention even as it defines painful social and personal topics in a way that changes them into rites of passage and strength.