Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer - by Diana Seave Greenwald (Hardcover)

About the Book

Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an artist whose assemblages tell visual stories and convey political messages. A figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, she works with found objects, many of which she gathers on her travels to explore themes like symbolic mysticism, feminism, racism, and Eurocentric chauvinism. This volume examines Saar's creative process, her trips around the world, and the ways in which her artworks engage with global histories of travel and forced migration. This illustrated book draws on interviews with Saar and the companions who accompanied her in her travels across four continents over several decades. Essays contextualize Saar's journeys within her broader life and career, as well as how her practice fits into broader traditions, such as scrapbooking, in African American visual culture. In addition to providing this context, this book explores how Saar's assemblage practice both echoes and provides a counterpoint to the collecting practices of Gilded Age American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner. Featuring previously unpublished material, including almost thirty travel sketchbooks and two dozen finished assemblages, this book offers a timely social history of the impact of travel on the African American experience. --From publisher's description.

Book Synopsis

A richly illustrated look at how travel influenced the work of renowned contemporary artist Betye Saar

Betye Saar (b. 1926) is an artist whose assemblages tell visual stories and convey powerful political messages. A leading figure of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, she works with found objects--many of which she gathers on her extensive travels--to explore themes like symbolic mysticism, feminism, racism, and Eurocentric chauvinism. Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer sheds new light on Saar's unique creative process, her trips around the world, and the diverse ways in which her artworks engage with global histories of travel and forced migration. It presents how the artist's work conjures the transporting experience of a voyage to a faraway place.

This beautifully illustrated book draws on original, in-depth interviews with Saar and the companions who accompanied the artist in her travels across four continents over several decades. Essays by leading scholars contextualize Saar's journeys within her broader life and career, as well as how her practice fits into broader traditions--such as scrapbooking--in African American visual culture. In addition to providing this context, this book explores how Saar's assemblage practice both echoes and provides a critical counterpoint to the collecting practices of Gilded Age American art collectors like Isabella Stewart Gardner.

Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished material--including almost thirty travel sketchbooks and two dozen finished assemblages--Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer provides a fresh look at a groundbreaking American artist while offering a timely social history of the impact of travel on the African American experience.

Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Exhibition Schedule
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
February 16-May 21, 2023

Review Quotes

"Covered with bold, saturated watercolors alongside gleaned materials such as dried flowers, currency, and stamps, the books capture the emotion and excitement of venturing abroad"---Carly Pippin, Getty

"Saar's assemblage pieces. . . . [are] visual delights: alluringly intricate, mysterious, complex"---Murray Whyte, Boston Globe

"An Art Newspaper Top Art Book of the Year"

"Full-colour throughout, this fabulous volume--as close as commercial publishing gets to an artist's book--explores the importance of travel for the African American sculptor Betye Saar. Interweaving the explanatory text and images of Saar's assemblages (found material combined with the artist's own drawings and paintings) are full-page facsimiles of her fascinating travel journals."---Jacqueline Riding, The Art Newspaper

"Shortlisted for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association"

"Determined to expand awareness about this much overlooked Black artist, Betye Saar . . . extends the previous scope of insight into her practice beyond her assemblages; the book includes color reproductions of half a dozen notebooks from her decades of world travel."---Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi Review of Books

"This beautiful book . . . details the artist's journeys over 50 years, from trips to Morocco in 1968 and Guatemala in 2018. . . . It is as close as a mass-produced art tome gets to an artist's book--a covetable object in its own right."---Ben Luke, The Art Newspaper

About the Author

Diana Seave Greenwald is assistant curator of the collection at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Her books include Isabella Stewart Gardner: A Life (with Nathaniel Silver) and Painting by Numbers: Data-Driven Histories of Nineteenth-Century Art (both Princeton).