MCMXCIX
- Amersfoot, Netherlands: Roma Publications, 2017
Amersfoot, Netherlands: Roma Publications, 2017. Near Fine/Near Fine. Amersfoot, Netherlands: Roma Publications, 2017. First Edition. Octavo (23cm); [212]pp. Illustrated dust jacket; grey card wrappers with black stamping to spine. Illustrations throughout. Dust jacket ever-so-slightly bumped. Binding sound. Textblock, endsheets, and interior pages clean. Near Fine.
Kara Walker (b. 1969) is an American contemporary artist known for creating panoramic friezes of cut-paper silhouettes. Her work deals primarily with race, gender, violence, and identity.
MCMXCIX reproduces a sketchbook Walker started in 1999, which she describes as a space to work through “uneasy, unrefined, unfinished thoughts and anxieties,” and an intermediary between reality and imagination. Much of the work done in this sketchbook was used in an installation titled “Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)” (2000). The piece, which is in the Guggenheim’s collection, marks the artist’s earliest addition of colored projections to her characteristic tableaux. Like much of Walker’s work, “Insurrection!” uses large-scale silhouettes to evoke American slavery and the antebellum South. In this case, however, the light cast over the scene means that visitors cannot view the piece without seeing their own shadows. By engaging museumgoers in this way, Walker prevents passive voyeurism and confronts onlookers with their presence.
Kara Walker, “Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On),” https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/9367.
Kara Walker (b. 1969) is an American contemporary artist known for creating panoramic friezes of cut-paper silhouettes. Her work deals primarily with race, gender, violence, and identity.
MCMXCIX reproduces a sketchbook Walker started in 1999, which she describes as a space to work through “uneasy, unrefined, unfinished thoughts and anxieties,” and an intermediary between reality and imagination. Much of the work done in this sketchbook was used in an installation titled “Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On)” (2000). The piece, which is in the Guggenheim’s collection, marks the artist’s earliest addition of colored projections to her characteristic tableaux. Like much of Walker’s work, “Insurrection!” uses large-scale silhouettes to evoke American slavery and the antebellum South. In this case, however, the light cast over the scene means that visitors cannot view the piece without seeing their own shadows. By engaging museumgoers in this way, Walker prevents passive voyeurism and confronts onlookers with their presence.
Kara Walker, “Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On),” https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/9367.
Details
Title
MCMXCIX
Author
Kara Walker
Condition
Near Fine
Publisher
Roma Publications: Amersfoot, Netherlands
Date
2017