Betye Saar
By Emily Steer
The stars reflect our lives back to us. For millennia, they have been used to locate humans’ position on the land; interpret our narratives; and communicate a world of feeling beyond the physical realm. For contemporary artists, stars are often used to bridge the gap between the scientific and the creative, the rational and the intangible. Their artworks reflect upon traditions of mapping and craftsmanship, creating glittering cosmos in rich textiles or unconventional materials.
American artist Betye Saar has a long-held interest in both astronomy and astrology, exploring the narrative potential of the night sky. She used printmaking in her early works, inspired by mystical items such as palmistry charts and phrenological maps. This feeds into a fascination with space and a connection with clairvoyancy which began when she was a child. She has since explored her own zodiac sign in works such as Mystic Window for Leo (1966). In this piece, the artist used assemblage to convey different interpretations of the leonine sign, highlighting the creative potential to symbolise our own behaviour through the stars. She has also made powerful political work focused on Black liberation and is a keen collector of metaphysical items and alters that connect with her ancestral history.
In 1988, she created Celestial Universe, dying constellations of stars and the zodiac signs inspired by them onto rich blue taffeta. This formed part of an exhibition which also reflected on the practical uses of the stars, referencing their potential for nautical navigation in Voyages: Dreams and Destinations at the National Taiwan Museum of Art in Taichung.
The stark line that we often draw between science and creativity is broken down in Saar’s work, and she does not take a literal approach to the use of astrology in her pieces, focusing on its symbolic rather than rational possibilities. “I’ll read the astrological chart in the daily newspaper, but that’s just for my own amusement,” she has previously said. “I think my use of astrology has two purposes. It suggests the unknown, and then it also suggests the known by the stars and the moon, and so forth, telling your history. If you believe in those charts, their positions pertain to what your personality can do or what your life might be. I don’t really devote my consciousness to that. It’s more the symbols themselves that matter to me, like how the moon suggests peacefulness.”