The brilliance of Kara Walker’s silhouettes has always lain in the way they embodied their historic sources, without bogging down in direct quotation, and invented new narratives that comment on that legacy. Here, using Harper’s, she engages her sources directly (for the first time, according to the museum), and this lessens the scope and power of her work.
But in conjuring the Civil War, Walker seems to be coming sidelong at our present war. Making blacks the protagonists of her Civil War scenes — when in traditional (white) accounts they’re bit players — might lead us to ask who the bit players are today. Who but the Iraqis and the Afghanis? Our president tells us we’re bringing freedom to these countries, making Iraqis and Afghanis our partners; yet when he describes the war, it’s America against the insurgents and the terrorists. The ordinary people of the Middle East are bit players, the “collateral damage.” Can this mindset be unrelated to our dismal performance?
Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History Of The Civil War (Annotated)
Addison Gallery Of American Art, Phillips Academy, 180 Main St, Andover | Through April 15
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