Types Of Responses
Kara Walker’s 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—with thoughts, feelings, and actions to what we see—we strive 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, students and communities discover and invent multiple interpretations and meanings from this provocative and exciting body of work.
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 artwork, 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 it is made; and how the artist addresses the subject matter through the medium. Description helps us form interpretations and judgments that are accurate and coherent.
Questions for consideration:
When you look at this artwork, what do you notice?
Take about 5-10 minutes to name things seen in the artwork, without making judgments or expressing emotional reactions.
What do you notice about the artist’s use of color? Shapes and forms? Overall arrangements or installation?
Association
Kara Walker’s work contains cultural and historical references that can be associated with your own experiences. Create connections between the artwork and books, poems, music, films, dance performances, theatrical productions, or television shows. Doing so allows you to discover and invent a rich set of meanings and interpretations that is linked to your own life experience and knowledge.
Questions for consideration:
Choose a particular work of art. What does it remind you of? What memory, experience, story, song, or other work does this trigger or bring to mind?
Narrative
Kara Walker’s art 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 often 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?
Emotion
Emotions play a central role in the interpretation and judgment of works of art. Since they arise spontaneously and frequently defy conscious effort, emotions are often described in terms of bodily sensations and are closely associated with preference and evaluation. When you interpret or judge a work of art, you do so not only by perceiving its subject matter, form, and medium, but also by fearing, desiring, enjoying, hating, and loving.
Questions for consideration:
What emotions do you feel as you respond to this work? What do you see that makes you say that?
How does your emotional response affect your judgment of the work in question?
How does it affect your preference for a particular artwork?
Meaning
Experiencing a work of art can involve discovering, inventing or communicating meaning. However, a work's message or significance is not limited only to the artist's intention. As viewer's, our own experiences, associations, feelings, and stories become vital aspects in finding meaning in a work of art.
Questions for consideration:
What do you think the artist wants viewers to learn or understand from this work?
Does Kara Walker’s use of racial stereotypes successfully subvert their original intent and meaning? Discuss in the group.
How has the artist changed the original intent of the 19th-century practice of cut-paper silhouettes?
Learn more about Critical Response.