Since the late 1960s, Saar has used discarded window frames like this one in her art. Here, she pays homage to a figure of legend venerated in Brazil: the blue-eyed, black-skinned Anastacia. Though expunged in the 1980s by the Brazilian Catholic Church, Anastacia was embraced by the local Umbanda religion, which combines aspects of Catholicism, Spiritism, and African and indigenous Brazilian belief systems. Copper coils on nails emerge from the window frame, suggesting psychic power or energy. The copper circuit boards used as a support evoke another form of energy generation and circulation.
Betye Saar
Memory Window for Anastacia, 1994
Paint on copper circuit boards in wood window frame, with metal ornaments and copper wire–covered nails
Private collection, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.© Betye Saar.
Robert Wedemeyer
Rachel Federman: Betty Saar's earliest found object assemblages from the 1960s used old window frames like this one. Two events in her life were particularly formative to her becoming an assemblage artist. As a child in the 1930s, she witnessed the construction of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles during weekly visits to her grandmother. Constructed by Simon Rodia between 1921 and 1954, the towers are a monumental work of folk art constructed from salvaged-steel rebar, cement, discarded bottles, and other detritus. Many years later, in January 1967, Saar visited an exhibition of works by Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum. This is Saar speaking about it in 2011.
Betty Saar: The show was like a jewelry store because it was very dim, pin spots on each little box. It just really blew me away as much as the Watts Towers did in another way, you know, where the Watts Towers went up and out and encompassed all the junk that he glued on it. Here was a little box where all the junk was put right inside, which was another little magical world instead of like taking a pane from the window and making a little box and being able to go into that little box. So that started the assemblages.
Audio: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles