.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and templates to aid with the installation of the work.
Mastah's Done Gone, executed in 1998, presents the viewer with a hallucinatory carnival of chaos from the idiosyncratic world of Kara Walker. In these Dante-esque revels, figures who appear allegorical in their actions and poses fill the wall-space, bringing issues of race and sexuality into vivid focus through sometimes lurid actions. This is a scene of ante-bellum plantation life gone wrong, a topsy-turvy picture of violence, exploitation and depravity. The master is gone and chaos ensues. Is this emancipation? A child is whipping himself, a man is working, holding his hammer; the trappings-- and, arguably more importantly, the habits and mentality-- of freedom appear to be painfully lacking, regardless of the masterless status. Indeed, some of the characters have gone to lengths to find substitutes, strange placebo slaveries of their own.
This is a far from simplistic approach to the historical issues surrounding racism and slavery in the United States. Looking at the figures in Mastah's Done Gone, it is clear why so many of Walker's fellow African American artists rounded on her, complaining about her use, and therefore perpetuation, of racial stereotypes. In Mastah's Done Gone, Walker's image of slavery, there is as much masochism as there is sadism on display. The artist takes no prisoners, ruthlessly examining the thoughts, beliefs, motivations and actions of slave and slaver alike, and in so doing, scrutinising with merciless irony her own place and participation within the discussion of race. Many other black American artists take a more positive, more active stance through their art, using it as a platform to make political points. Walker's view is more complex as it exposes much of the fallibility on every side. Her art is an accusation of complicity levelled against both the culture of the 'dominant' white world and the descendents of the Southern slaves. This permeates every level of Mastah's Done Gone and is evident in content and in presentation. For the silhouettes are essentially abstract black areas on a wall the fact that the viewer interprets one shape as a black man and another as a white woman shows the level to which these stereotypes are alive and well in our own reflexes, our own readings of a situation.
Walker's use of the silhouette is itself a powerful statement. She has turned the dainty artform and idle pastime of the decadent Southern belles against the very culture that enjoyed it so much. Instead of genteel boudoir scenes and profile portraits of the plantation owners and their wives and daughters, here the silhouette has been used to capture a seething underbelly, a dark vision of the state and the ramifications of slavery and racism. At the same time, the fact that the silhouette was, precisely, drawing room art, often created by amateurs whom we imagine punctuating their indolent lifestyles with similar hobbies, emphasises the complexity of Walker's own position. She has deliberately selected a medium that is not quite fine art, adding yet another question mark, another indefinable quantity, to her work. And crucially, it is a medium in which the white ladies of the past, sitting enjoying the spoils of their slaves, would capture, for posperity, their profiles... in black.
Mastah's Done Gone, executed in 1998, presents the viewer with a hallucinatory carnival of chaos from the idiosyncratic world of Kara Walker. In these Dante-esque revels, figures who appear allegorical in their actions and poses fill the wall-space, bringing issues of race and sexuality into vivid focus through sometimes lurid actions. This is a scene of ante-bellum plantation life gone wrong, a topsy-turvy picture of violence, exploitation and depravity. The master is gone and chaos ensues. Is this emancipation? A child is whipping himself, a man is working, holding his hammer; the trappings-- and, arguably more importantly, the habits and mentality-- of freedom appear to be painfully lacking, regardless of the masterless status. Indeed, some of the characters have gone to lengths to find substitutes, strange placebo slaveries of their own.
This is a far from simplistic approach to the historical issues surrounding racism and slavery in the United States. Looking at the figures in Mastah's Done Gone, it is clear why so many of Walker's fellow African American artists rounded on her, complaining about her use, and therefore perpetuation, of racial stereotypes. In Mastah's Done Gone, Walker's image of slavery, there is as much masochism as there is sadism on display. The artist takes no prisoners, ruthlessly examining the thoughts, beliefs, motivations and actions of slave and slaver alike, and in so doing, scrutinising with merciless irony her own place and participation within the discussion of race. Many other black American artists take a more positive, more active stance through their art, using it as a platform to make political points. Walker's view is more complex as it exposes much of the fallibility on every side. Her art is an accusation of complicity levelled against both the culture of the 'dominant' white world and the descendents of the Southern slaves. This permeates every level of Mastah's Done Gone and is evident in content and in presentation. For the silhouettes are essentially abstract black areas on a wall the fact that the viewer interprets one shape as a black man and another as a white woman shows the level to which these stereotypes are alive and well in our own reflexes, our own readings of a situation.
Walker's use of the silhouette is itself a powerful statement. She has turned the dainty artform and idle pastime of the decadent Southern belles against the very culture that enjoyed it so much. Instead of genteel boudoir scenes and profile portraits of the plantation owners and their wives and daughters, here the silhouette has been used to capture a seething underbelly, a dark vision of the state and the ramifications of slavery and racism. At the same time, the fact that the silhouette was, precisely, drawing room art, often created by amateurs whom we imagine punctuating their indolent lifestyles with similar hobbies, emphasises the complexity of Walker's own position. She has deliberately selected a medium that is not quite fine art, adding yet another question mark, another indefinable quantity, to her work. And crucially, it is a medium in which the white ladies of the past, sitting enjoying the spoils of their slaves, would capture, for posperity, their profiles... in black.