Style

           To further understand the process of Kara Walker we should examine the style and format in which she choses to create her work. Walker has gained a massive amount of notoriety as the creator of large, panoramic black silhouetted cutouts of scenes depicting slavery, explicit pornographic situations, and master and slave sexual relations. (1) “She pairs these cutouts with evocative pseudo-romantic texts, which she writes herself, concerning the exploits of dusky maidens caught up in elusive fantasy scenarios of rebellion, sabotage, revolution and murder.” Walker’s narratives evoke the past in their content and format. (1) “Walkers classic art, black cut-paper silhouettes, is itself a throwback to another era, and a distancing feature that enables her to evoke the past in order to criticize both it and its’ legacy in the present”.(2)  By examining the issue of Physiognomy, the idea that identity can be determined by external appearances, Walker expresses and confronts issues such as racism through the use of caricatures with stereotypical physical features.(3) Walker herself says the use of such a medium allows her to “set up a situation where the viewer calls up a stereotypic response to the work – that I, the black artist/leader, will “tell it like it is. But the “like it is,” the truth of the piece, is as clear as a Rorschach test.”(1) By expressing elements such as stereotypes and caricatures through the use of a historical medium, Walker not only provides us with controversial subject matter but invokes controversial responses from her viewers as well.

-Gregory Lahm

1. Walker, Kara Elizabeth., and Ian Berry. Kara Walker: Narratives of a Negress. Saratoga Springs, NY: Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 2003. Print.

2.   Walker, Kara Elizabeth., Annette Dixon, Robert Reid-Pharr, and Thelma Golden.Kara Walker: Pictures from Another Time. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2002. Print.

3. "In the Studio: Kara Walker." Interview by Steel Stillman. Art in America May 2011: 88-95. Print.

     The image above is a personal work I created in a similar style to that of Kara Walker. The image shows a high contrast black silhouetted figure of a woman feeding a cat. I utilized my understanding of the artists work by replicating the effect she creates with her black cut out figures in high contrast with their background. Although stylistically I utilized a similar medium, contextually I decided to deviate from the content Kara Walker typically focuses on. Where as she utilizes historical controversial subject matter for her works, I decided to focus on a far less explicit subject. Through creation of this piece I have learned that although the majority of the detail in this image is omitted by use of silhouettes, the simple black images provide great insight as to what is being conveyed as well as allowing plenty of room for viewer interpretation. 

-Gregory Lahm