The Art of Kara Walker

Articles

D’Arcy, David. "Kara Walker Kicks Up a Storm," Modern Painters (April 2006).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
In this interview, the artist discusses her work and her 2006 exhibition Kara Walker At the Met: After the Deluge at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The show, which Walker was invited to curate, incorporates her art with pieces from the Met’s collection and was in part her response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Garrett, Shawn-Marie. "Return of the Repressed," Theater 32, no. 2 (Summer 2002).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Garrett writes about the history of blackface minstrel shows and its relationship to critiques of Kara Walker's work.

Hannaham, James. “Pea, Ball, Bounce,” Interview (November 1998).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race
An interview with Kara Walker and James Hannaham, Walker discusses her life in Atlanta, her experiences with racism, and her relationship to white art patrons and institutions.

Kazanjian, Dodie. "Cut it Out," Vogue (May 2005).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race
Dodie Kazanjian speaks to Kara Walker as she prepares to install an epic mural at New School University in New York. With photographs by Annie Leibovitz.

Perkins, Kathy A. "The Genius of Meta Warrick Fuller," Black American Literature Forum 24, no. 1 (Spring 1990).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Meta Warrick Fuller was one of the first black American artists known for sculpture. This essay relays the importance and gravity of her work and its critiques of racial oppression and white supremacy.

Saltz, Jerry. "Queen of Night," Village Voice 51, no. 12 (March 23, 2006).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame, Humor
Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz reviews a recent exhibition by Kara Walker which includes both drawings and new film work.

Szabo, Julia. "Kara Walker’s Shock Art," New York Times Magazine 146, no. 50740 (March 1997).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Narrative, Representing Race
Szabo provides a brief and very in depth background on Kara Walker. This article speaks of Walker's life in Atlanta and her accomplishments as an artist.

Walker, Hamza. "Kara Walker: Cut it Out," NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art no. 11/12 (Fall/Winter 2000).
Level: college/adult
Themes: Desire and Shame, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race
Hamza Walker, Director of Education at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, uses James Baldwin’s exploration of the question: “What does it mean to be human?” as a jumping off point for exploring issues of race, desire and history in Walker’s work. Hamza Walker points out the many ways that Kara Walker is “concerned with the cruel aspects of human nature set within an historical context.”

Non-Fiction Books & Catalogues

Barrett, Terry. Interpreting Art: Reflecting, Wondering, and Responding, New York: Mcgraw Hill (2002).
Level: high school/college/adult
Interpreting Art: Reflecting, Wondering, and Responding introduces readers to the varied methodologies of art interpretation.

Berger, Maurice. White Lies: On the Myths of Race and Whiteness, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2000).
Level: college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
This work offers a rich introduction into the construction of racial difference and categories in the United States. Berger discusses how the idea of race becomes less of a biological question, and more one of social construction and social control through power stuggles.

Berry, Ian, Darby English, Vivian Patterson, Mark Reinhardt, eds. Narratives of a Negress, Boston: M.I.T. Press (2003).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame, Humor
This book grapples with Walker's audacious and shrewdly provocative inquiries into the sexual and racial stereotypes that arose from the Deep South's culture of oppression and hypocrisy, terror and hate, and that continue to poison lives today.

Baume, Nicholas, ed. Getting Emotional, Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art (2005).
Level: high school/college/adult
From the rise of sensitive superheroes to the proliferation of mood-regulating drugs like Prozac, the concept and culture of emotion runs deeply through our experience of contemporary life and the images that we see. Getting Emotional presents the work of a diverse selection of artists for whom emotion is an important subject.

Carpenter, Elizabeth and Joan Rothfuss. Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of A Whole: Walker Art Center Collections. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2005.
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame, Humor, Representing Race, Narrative
The work of Kara Walker is discussed on pages 564-569. Copies of the Walker collections catalog are currently available at the Walker Shop.

Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (2004).
Level: college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, Desire and Shame
This work provides an in-depth analysis of the construction of black identity through the field of sociology. It deals with many of the same themes found in the work of Kara Walker related to the intersections of sexuality, race, and gender. It offers an interesting parallel critique of modernity's fascination with inscribing meaning onto black bodies and simultaneously provides insight into the complex natures of sexuality and race in relationship to how they complicate art, history and all aspects of U.S. culture.

Harris, Micheal D. Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London (2004).
Level: college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Harris speaks of how black memorabilia complicates history in the U.S., and the ways in which it has been reappropriated by black Americans. He provides a great introduction of racial caricatures, including the "Sambo" image, as well as a discussion on "the imposition by whites of stereotypical expectations and the complicated, layered, often painful, reality that characters experienced" (193).

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation, Boston, MA: South End Press (1992).
Level: high school\college\adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Twelve essays by hooks that look at the effect and the consequences of contemporary representations of race in U.S. culture. hooks speaks personally, socially and politically about the historical legacies and the present practices of white supremacy in culture and society.

hooks, bell. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery, Boston, MA: South End Press (1993).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race
Writing from a psychological perspective, hooks discusses how the psychological and holistic well-being of black women is effected by the intersecting oppressions of racism and sexism. Hooks also suggests alternative ways to struggle against oppression and the importance of taking care of oneself through building alliances against oppressive economic, gendered and sexual institutions and systems of power.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, (1858).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Based on a true story, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is one of the few full-length slave narratives written by a woman and one of the most graphic accounts of the sexual exploitation of women in slavery. From the vantage point of her life in New York City after she escapes from slavery in 1842, Harriet Jacobs offers a gripping account of the experiences that fueled her determination to remain hidden in a crawl space for seven years, and tells of her struggles to assure the freedom of her children.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, New York: Oxford University Press (1993).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race, Desire and Shame, Humor
A historical analysis of the development of blackface minstrelsy through the primary lens of class systems and social locations.

Patterson, Orlando. Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries, New York: Basic Civitas Books (1998).
Level: college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Patterson looks at aspects of African American social life and uses slavery and colonialism as starting points from which to begin the discussion.

Roediger, David. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, London and New York: Verso Books (1991).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race, Narrative
Roediger provides an in-depth discussion of the history of whiteness and its relationship to capitalism and power in the United States.

Shaw, Gwendolyn Dubois. Seeing the Unspeakable: The Art of Kara Walker, Durham and London: Duke University Press (2004).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame, Humor, Representing Race, Narrative
Seeing the Unspeakable provides a sustained consideration of the controversial art of Kara Walker.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (2003)
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race, Narrative
One of the distinguishing features of modern life is that it supplies countless opportunities for regarding (at a distance, through the medium of photography) horrors taking place throughout the world. Sontag’s book is a thought-provoking look at war, images, sympathy and conscience.

Vergne, Philippe, et al. Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2007.
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame, Humor, Representing Race, Narrative
Copies of the exhibition catalog are available at the Walker Shop beginning in March 2007.

Works of Fiction

Baraka, Amiri (LeRoi Jones). Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays, New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks (1964).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, Narrative
Baraka published this work when his name was LeRoi Jones. A playwright, Baraka portrays the difficulties surrounding the history of U.S. race relations, and policing the interactions between white women and black men. The dramatic conclusion is exemplary of the challenging and provocative works of the Black Arts Movement.

Butler, Olivia. Kindred, Boston: Beacon Press (1971).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Narrative
Dana, a woman from the twentieth century, is repeatedly brought back in time to save the life of her slave-owning ancestor, Rufus. She chooses to save him-and live the life of a slave-knowing that her actions will lead a free-born black woman to become his slave and her own grandmother.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World, New York: Harper Collins (2004).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race, Desire and Shame, Humor
The Known World is set in antebellum Virginia, where Henry Townsend is not only a free black man, but one who owns his own land and his own slaves. Despite the fact that he owns these men, women, and children's lives completely, his aim is to treat them compassionately. The Known World has received high praise. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post calls it "the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years."

Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind, New York: Macmillan Publishing (1936).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Gone With the Wind is a sweeping, romantic story about the American Civil War from the point of view of the Confederacy.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved, New York: Plume (1987).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Narrative
Named the best novel in the last 25 years by the New York Times and winner of the Nobel Prize, this novel was inspired by the true story of a black American slave woman, Margaret Garner, and, in part, illustrates the horror and complexity that slavery constructed and bestowed upon black identity.

Perkins, Kathy A. and Judith L. Stephens, eds. Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women,, Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1998).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
A collection of plays on lynching written by American women in the early 21st century.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin, (1852). Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Narrative, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
Uncle Tom's Cabin focuses on the tale of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave, the central character around whose life the other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve.

The Givens Foundation for African American Literature

Online

Interview, Museum of Modern Art Website, Part of the “Online Projects: Conversations with Contemporary Artists” (1999).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race
Kara Walker discusses her motivations for becoming an artist, how she became interested in the silhouette form, and answers some questions about her own opinions on race, her future as an artist, and a work on view at MOMA by artist Jacob Lawrence.

PBS series Culture Shock interactive online activity
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Desire and Shame, Humor
As part of PBS series Culture Shock, an interactive feature lets viewers decide whether or not Kara Walker’s work is “appropriate” viewing material.

PBS Series Art21
Level: high school/college/adult
The website related to the PBS Television series Art21: Art in the Twenty-First Century. The site features artists’ biographies, related thematic topics, video clips, and interviews.

Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge website
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
The exhibition website for a Metropolitan Museum of Art Show, Kara Walker at the Met: After the Deluge. The site features images of works by Walker.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art “Making Sense of Modern Art” Interactive Site
Level: high school/college/adult
This section of the interactive program Making Sense of Modern Art explores Kara Walker's installation No Mere Words Can Adequately Reflect the Remorse This Negress Feels....

Walker Art Center Channel Philippe Vergne Interviews Kara Walker
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, Desire and Shame
Walker Art Center Chief Curator Philippe Vergne interviews Kara Walker on the topic of Walker’s work and the contemporary portrayal of “the Negress."

PBS Series Race: The Power of an Illusion
Level: high school/college/adult
Theme: Representing Race
The companion website to California Newsreel's documentary, Race: The Power of an Illusion, this site contains many lesson plans, online activities and informative interviews with anthropologists and other scholars about race in society, science, and history.

Films

"Amos 'n' Andy" (1951-1953).
Level: Representing Race, Humor, Desire and Shame
"Amos 'n' Andy" was a situation comedy popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s.

"Bamboozled", Spike Lee, Director (2000).
Themes: Representing Race, Desire and Shame, Humor
A frustrated African American TV writer proposes a blackface minstrel show in protest, but to his chagrin it becomes a hit.

"Birth of a Nation", D.W. Griffith, Director (1915).
Level: college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Power Struggles, Desire and Shame, Humor
The Civil War divides friends and destroys families, but that's nothing compared to the anarchy in the black-ruled South after the war.

“Color Adjustment", Marlon Riggs, Director (1989).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race
This study of prejudice and perception traces over forty years of race relations in America through the lens of prime time TV entertainment. Revisiting such popular hits as “Amos and Andy,” “Beulah,” “The Nat King Cole Show,” “Julia,” “I Spy,” “Good Times,” and “Roots,” viewers see how bitter racial conflict was absorbed into the non-controversial formats of the prime time series. Annotation from UC Berkeley library catalog

"Daughters of the Dust", Julie Dash, Director (1991).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Representing Race
Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th-century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America. Set in 1902.

"Ethnic Notions", Marlon Riggs, Director (1987).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
This film covers more than one hundred years of United States history, in order to trace the evolution of Black American caricatures and stereotypes that have fueled racism against black people. Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, advertisements, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights era and implanted themselves within the American psyche. Annotation from UC Berkeley library catalog

"Gone with the Wind", Victor Fleming, Director (1939).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Narrative
American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land, Bill T. Jones, "Great Performances", PBS (1992).
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction
A documentary of the making of Bill T. Jones' Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land was aired on PBS's "Great Performances" series.

Stepin Fetchit Films (1930s)
Level: college/adult
Themes: Humor, Representing Race

"To Kill a Mockingbird", Robert Mulligan, Director (1962)
Level: high school/college/adult
Themes: Narrative, Represening Race
Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era South, defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge, and his kids against prejudice.

"Within Our Gates", Oscar Michaux, Director (1920)
Level: college/adult
Themes: Representing Race, Narrative, History: Collusion of Fact and Fiction, Desire and Shame
Abandoned by her fiancé, an educated negro woman with a shocking past dedicates herself to helping a near bankrupt school for impoverished negro youths.