Modes Of Response
Kara Walker’s works of art can stir strong emotions, inspire passionate dialogue and challenge viewers with scenes that are puzzling, bizarre, shocking, and initially mysterious. This section provides tools for engaging and interpreting these complex and often enigmatic works of art.
The act of interpretation is both individual and communal: we respond in thoughts feelings and actions to what we see; we work to make sense of our responses and we convey our understanding to others through writing, speech or other forms of expression. The following questions and activities are offered as interpretive strategies that can help guide reflection and response prior, during or after your visit. Our goal is to provide a resource that can help individuals, families, classes and communities discover and invent multiple interpretations and meanings from this provocative and exciting body of work.
1. Description
Controversial or difficult works of art are often criticized without accurate description. The act of describing slows the rush to judgment, deepens the engagement with the work and gives space for emotions and questions to arise. A full description addresses the people places and events in the work; the material from which the work is made; and how the artist addresses the subject of the work through the medium. Description helps you form interpretations and judgments that are accurate and coherent.
Questions for consideration:
What decisions has the artist made in terms of composition, arrangement, line, texture, and color?\\
2. Narrative
Kara Walker’s work is crowded with figures that evoke history, employ stereotypes and caricatures from the past and invite viewers to imagine stories and scenarios. Scenes are presented frozen and disconnected with fragments that invite viewers to fill in the missing elements. By shaping the experience of these artworks into anecdotal accounts with characters, plots, motivations, and actions you reveal new questions and insights that enrich understanding and interpretation.
Questions for consideration:
What characters are present in the story? How can you sequence the “scenes” to create a plot?
What do you imagine is motivating the characters?
What went on before and what will happen later?
3. Emotion
Emotions play a central role in the interpretation and judgment of works of art. Emotions arise spontaneously, frequently defy conscious effort, are often described in terms of bodily sensation and are closely associated with preference and evaluation. When you interpret and judge works of art you do so, not only by perceiving their subject matter, form and medium, but by fearing, desiring, enjoying, hating and loving.
Questions for consideration:
What are your emotional reactions to the work? Draw a simple facial expression that symbolizes your emotional response.
How does your emotional response affect your judgment of the work in question?
Do your emotional responses affect your preferences (the works of art in the show that you like and dislike)?
4. Association
Kara Walker’s work contains cultural and historical references that you can associate with your own experiences. Create connections between the artwork and books, poems, music, films, dance, theatrical productions or television shows, allows you to discover and invent a rich set of meanings and interpretations that is linked to their own life experience and knowledge.
Questions for consideration:
Choose a particular work of art. What things, people, places and experiences does the work brings to mind?
For a full minute write down everything that comes to mind with editing or rejecting any thought. Share your list with others and note overlap or similarities.
5. Meaning
Experiencing a work of art is about discovering, inventing and communicating meaning. However, meaning is never limited to only what the artist intended. In the end, our own experiences, associations, feelings and stories are vital aspects of the meaning of a work of art.
Questions for consideration:
How does Kara Walker’s use of racial stereotypes subvert their original intent and meaning?
How has the artist flipped the original intent of the practice of silhouetting in the antebellum south?