Betye Saar
In 1994, while attending an artist residency at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in northern Italy, Betye Saar experimented with using a Polaroid camera as an artist’s tool in tandem with her skills in printmaking, collage and design. Photographing everything from gardens and native flora to the plethora of objects and architectural details in the villas throughout town, Saar began creating what she referred to as “altered Polaroids:” striking photographic compositions on a miniature scale that synthesized core elements of her practice while evolving towards something bigger. Following her finely-honed intuition, Saar would “alter” the photographs by scratching, drawing and pressing into the surface of the images developed, producing unique and unexpected results. She then pasted the altered Polaroids into the pages of her sketchbooks and collages, further augmenting them with ink and watercolor paint. Comprising ten mix-media wall assemblages created over almost as many years, this little-known series of work reveals a psychospiritual depth that is testament to both Saar’s mastery of her craft and the enduring power of her practice.
Saar’s experiments with altered Polaroids coincided with a renewed interest in the forms of “Tantric art,” a visual language derived from Hinduism that is characterized by symmetrical compositions of geometric shapes and lines rendered with a limited color palette. Tantric art was formally established as an academic discipline in the mid-20th century by renowned South Asian author and curator Ajit Mookerjee, whose seminal text Tantric Art: Its Philosophy and Physics is credited by Saar for first cultivating her interest in the genre. The philosophy of Tantric art and its previous influence on Saar’s practice is evident in works from her earlier series of altar assemblages such as Sadhana (1974), named for a Sanskrit term that describes a disciplined spiritual practice in pursuit of enlightenment. This connection is further cemented in the homophone of “alter” and “altar,” a deliberate act of wordplay that Saar uses to inscribe her experiment with divine, holy purpose. In documents from her studio archives, Saar articulates the principles of Tantric art that have significantly impacted her practice and catalyzed her experiments with altered Polaroids:
“The Tantra is a particular section in the Hindu religion which practices the expansion of consciousness to view the universe as if it were within ourselves. In Tantric art, the artist is involved in a continuous process of discovery, of creating order from disorder, a process of creating a universe within. The artist uses vertical and horizontal lines, circles [and] dots. Certain symbols and color relationships are combined and recombined; the process becomes a way of seeing.”
These elements of Tantric art were materially embodied in Saar’s altered Polaroids experiments and represented in Personal Icons, a traveling solo exhibition of work made between 1993 and 1995 which included more than half of the assemblages featuring altered Polaroids. Adopting the Tantra’s philosophy as an aesthetic and conceptual framework, Saar asks us to regard the works in Personal Icons—and the altered Polaroids themselves—as self-contained universes that find harmony within chaos:
“These works are a conscious effort on my part to embody the ideas of Tantric art and still employ my own methods of artmaking: my intuitive way of gathering materials and recycling them into [assemblages]. I used more paint than usual and included experimental altered Polaroid photos. In my own way, creating a universe within a frame or box.”
By appropriating the Polaroid’s small, square format as both a literal and metaphorical container, Saar’s altered Polaroids generated unique images that also independently function as cosmological fields. When integrated into her mixed-media assemblages, the altered Polaroids become a universe embedded within a universe, simultaneously forming a visual analogue to the Tantric diagram which invites prolonged contemplation and inward reflection.
In a work from Personal Icons titled Time and Terrain, Saar uses frames and trays as a container for altered Polaroids as well as a selection of objects that reference her singular visual lexicon, such as eyes, birds and religious iconography. The composition is demarcated through a planar series of frames within frames that create the illusion of profound depth using primarily two-dimensional materials. At the center of a painted tray are two altered Polaroids which provide an abstract background to a miniature Buddha seated in a meditation pose. Embodying the act of ritual that has long provided the foundation of Saar’s artistic process, an accumulation of scratches, lines and other marks on the surface of the photograph destabilizes its inherent indexicality, transforming it from mere simulacrum into an enigmatic representation of ineffable spiritual matter. Esteemed curator Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins—who had previously commissioned Saar’s work for the 22nd Sao Paulo Bienal in 1994—elucidates the function of geometry in Tantric philosophy through an essay written for Personal Icons’ exhibition catalogue, which serves as one of very few in-depth analyses of Saar’s altered Polaroid assemblages:
“In these works, rectangles reoccur often as they represent the Tantric symbol for the expansion of knowledge. These works are symmetrical, following the Tantric belief that one should strive to find a center of energy within oneself. Often constructed with two or three frames or trays, these works feature a very focused central viewing space. Margins between the edge of the outer frame and the activity within the central frame often help to direct the viewer’s vision towards the center.”
When integrated into her mixed-media assemblages, the altered Polaroids become a universe embedded within a universe...
The effectiveness of this spatial logic is apparent in other assemblages such as Visionary, which underscores the transient nature of perception as it manifests in Saar’s work and the spiritual practices from which she draws inspiration. Surrounded by a thick border of dark, marbleized paper, an altered Polaroid is centered in a series of rectangles that hint at a sacred encounter with the divine buried deep inside of us. Alternating between concealing and revealing the contents of the image, Saar augments this mechanical reproduction of a painting through a series of intuitive and gestural mark-making that emulates acts of devotion performed in worship or supplication. Layers of paint accumulate on the surface of the Polaroid leaving only two figures visible: the Virgin Mary—recognizable by her blue robe and golden crown—holding an infant Jesus Christ. Beneath the altered Polaroid is another Buddha figure seated atop a makeshift vajrasana, the Sanskrit word for a throne that symbolizes reaching enlightenment. Reflecting Saar’s longstanding interest in synthesizing diverse cultural practices from around the world, this juxtaposition creates a synergy of Eastern and Western cosmologies which reveals a universal spiritual language that transcends spatial and temporal boundaries.
Other altered Polaroid assemblages in Personal Icons reflect a second Tantric concept known as panchavarna, a canon of five essential colors that are fundamental building blocks of Tantric symbolism and iconography. This limited palette of white, yellow, red, blue and green is used to convey profound spiritual meaning and correspond to various elements, insights and phenomena in Tantric philosophy. Three assemblages in the exhibition—identified through their shared title of Vision at the Villa yet distinguished by their respective use of red, blue and green—create an informal triptych with colors from the panchavarna that imbue monochromatic materials with additional symbolic weight. In Blue Vision at the Villa, Saar combines the Tantric color for consciousness with shades of red that signifies both passion and the sacred life force embodied by fire. Near the top of the composition is an altered Polaroid that Saar took of a porcelain Chinese lion that she encountered in the lobby of the Rockefeller Center each day of her residency. The marks in the altered Polaroid are replicated around its edges using watercolor paint, envisioning a supernatural power emanating from the lion statue which animates the object, transforming it into a guardian of the internal universe depicted in the assemblage. Visual cues to elements of Tantric philosophy are repeated in the accompanying works Green Vision at the Village—the color symbolizing balance and harmony, especially as it manifests through nature—and Red Vision at the Villa, in which altered Polaroids from Saar’s Bellagio residency are similarly embedded above objects and materials that correlate with the panchavarna. In each assemblage of the triptych, colorful beads arranged in the shape of vases and urns hold twigs that, when painted, resemble pieces of coral—effectively conjuring the Mediterranean environment of Saar’s residency long after its conclusion. Like the layers of watercolor paint that blur the edges of her altered Polaroids, allowing them to merge with their aesthetic surroundings, this series of mixed-media assemblages is emblematic of the way that Saar’s work permeates the boundaries separating our material reality from the metaphysical worlds embedded within.
One of the final works to incorporate Saar’s altered Polaroids brings the series full circle by integrating them with her iconic window assemblages: created in 2004, 4 Doors in a Window (Bellagio, Italy–1994) is a multilayered work that conceals its depth behind a deceptively simple appearance. Upon close examination, this window assemblage embodies a pivotal juncture in Saar’s body of work as both the culmination of her aesthetic experiments conducted over the past decade and a compelling representation of her practice at the start of a new millennium. Using digital software and technology specific to the 21st century, Saar scanned and enlarged a selection of altered Polaroids from her 1994 Bellagio residency and printed them to fit the dimensions of a vintage window frame, creating the largest of her altered Polaroid assemblages with twice as many images. Compared to earlier works that featured one or two photos in small, intimate compositions which embodied the Tantric philosophy of “a universe within ourselves,” the enlarged scale of 4 Doors in a Window emphasizes the formal qualities of Saar’s altered Polaroids by allowing them to occupy most of the composition’s surface area. In the process of scanning, enlarging and reprinting her altered Polaroids, Saar erases the image’s tactile qualities from its surface, flattening the accumulation of scratches and gestural mark-making into painterly abstractions of sublime phenomena. The intuitive process used to create Saar’s first altered Polaroids transformed them from indexical images into ritual objects; by further augmenting the images through digital manipulation, Saar establishes a final threshold that, upon crossing, allows the Polaroid-turned-ritual-object to resume its original state as photographic image once more. In this regard, 4 Doors in a Window emerges as an entity greater than the sum of its parts which illustrates the far-reaching impact of this experimental series in modernizing Saar’s creative practice.
The trajectory of Saar’s altered Polaroid experiments mirrors the philosophy of Zen Buddhism which visualizes “the Way,” or path to enlightenment, as a circle that unfolds in stages. These stages are articulated in a famous anecdote by 9th century Zen master Qingyuan Xingsi which has withstood the test of time: “At the beginning of a journey, I saw the mountains as mountains and the rivers and rivers. After a while, the mountains were no longer mountains and the rivers no longer rivers but by the end of my journey, the mountains were once again mountains, and the rivers once again rivers.” Adopting the structure of a Buddhist kōan—a paradoxical question, riddle or statement used as a tool of meditation that facilitates a spiritual breakthrough by exhausting our capacity for reason—Xingsi divides the Way into three stages starting with the first, in which we perceive the world through a conventional, surface-level means and experience phenomena as solid, independent entities. Upon reaching the second stage through a disciplined meditation practice, the illusion of separate entities gives way to seeing the interconnectedness and impermanence of all things. In the final stage, we return to the conventional reality of the world with the profound wisdom and spiritual insight obtained by enlightenment, which allows us to see the extraordinary within the ordinary.
Seen as a whole, Saar’s altered Polaroids emerge as an entity greater than the sum of its parts, foreshadowing her arrival at the final stage of the Way. Undertaking this experimental series modernized her practice for a new era by allowing Saar to revisit interests and themes from early in her practice with profound wisdom and insight, which materialized in new works that shed layers of visual excess for a more refined approach. In this regard, her altered Polaroid assemblages become emblems of a spiritual and aesthetic threshold that declares the 21st century a new age of enlightenment for Saar’s practice, positioning her to create the best work of her life.