Quotes by Kara Walker - Page 1

I have no interest in making a work that doesn't elicit a feeling.
Kara Walker / Artist
Work
Interest
Elicit
Feeling
Making
No Interest
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Once you open up the Pandora's box of race and gender... you're never done.
Kara Walker / Artist
Done
Gender
Pandora
Pandora's Box
Race
Box
Open
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I'm a sponge for historical images of black people and black history on film.
Kara Walker / Artist
History
Black
Black History
Film
Historical
History People Black
History Black People
Images
Sponge
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I never learned how to be adequately black. I never learned how to be black at all.
Kara Walker / Artist
Adequately
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I knew I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know what it was I wanted to say.
Kara Walker / Artist
Artist
Wanted
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Silhouettes are reductions, and racial stereotypes are also reductions of actual human beings.
Kara Walker / Artist
Reduction
Silhouettes
Stereotype
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I really love to make sweeping historical gestures that are like little illustrations of novels.
Kara Walker / Artist
Gestures
Historical
Illustrations
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The silhouette says a lot with very little information, but that's also what the stereotype does.
Kara Walker / Artist
Doe
Information
Littles
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The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events: a point in history and nothing else.
Kara Walker / Artist
History
Events
Illusion
Past Events
Work History Past
Simply
Else
Point
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Challenging and highlighting abusive power dynamics in our culture is my goal; replicating them is not.
Kara Walker / Artist
Dynamics
Highlighting
Them
Challenging
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I don't know how much I believe in redemptive stories, even though people want them and strive for them.
Kara Walker / Artist
Stories
Strive
Believe People I Believe
How Much
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I took a political stance early on, but I don't think my work is overtly political. I respond to events.
Kara Walker / Artist
Stance
Respond
Early
Took
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To be a truly conscientious artist, you have to look at what's not working and challenge it. You riff on things.
Kara Walker / Artist
Artist
Challenge
Conscientious
Working
Look
Riff
Truly
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If you're a Black artist, you could paint a wall of smiley faces, and someone will still ask you, 'Why are you so angry?'
Kara Walker / Artist
Artist
Black
Wall
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I trust my hand. If I go into a space with a roll of paper, I can make a work, some kind of work, and feel pretty satisfied.
Kara Walker / Artist
Trust
Space
Paper
Satisfied
Pretty
Hand
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As a child, I was subjected to a lot of spaghetti Westerns and hated them. I wanted the Indians to win - or just not be so sad!
Kara Walker / Artist
Sad
Spaghetti
Indians
Subjected
Westerns
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I don't think that my work is actually effectively dealing with history. I think of my work as subsumed by history or consumed by history.
Kara Walker / Artist
Consumed
Thinking
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My work is really abject and self-effacing sometimes. I mean, it's big and overwrought, but it's just paper dolls, and it's kind of silly.
Kara Walker / Artist
Dolls
Paper
Silly
Abject
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The promise of any artwork is that it can hold us - viewer and maker - in a conflicted or contestable space, without real-world injury or loss.
Kara Walker / Artist
Space
Artwork
Injury
Loss
Promise
Any
Without
Maker
Hold
Viewer
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I think really the whole problem with racism and its continuing legacy in this country is that we simply love it. Who would we be without the 'struggle?'
Kara Walker / Artist
Country
Struggle
Thinking
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Humor's always been the problem of my work, hasn't it? When working, I feel satisfied when I surprise myself. And when I surprise myself, I wind up laughing.
Kara Walker / Artist
Humor
Laughing
Satisfied
Surprise
Wind
Work Myself Always
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Im not really about blackness, per se, but about blackness and whiteness, and what they mean and how they interact with one another and what power is all about.
Kara Walker / Artist
Blackness
Mean
Whiteness
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I don't think that my work is very moralistic - at least, I try to avoid that. I grew up with that sermonising tendency, and I don't think visual work operates like that.
Kara Walker / Artist
Visual
Moralistic
Tendency
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There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.
Kara Walker / Artist
Art
Education
Smile
Doctors
World
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I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.
Kara Walker / Artist
Performing
Institution
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I grew up partially around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in that part of the country, there was always this aura of mythology and palpable sense of otherness about being a Southerner.
Kara Walker / Artist
Georgia
Mountain
Mythology
Aura
Palpable
Stone
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A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected... that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time.
Kara Walker / Artist
Situation
Unexpected
Heroine
Same Time
Wanting
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There is something very strange and unsettling for me about making a work that doesn't fit with what's the norm or what's acceptable. There's something both liberating about it and challenging. I can imagine it doing more harm than good.
Kara Walker / Artist
Acceptable
Harm
Imagine
Liberating
Norm
Strange
Work Good Me
Unsettling
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I'm fascinated with the stories that we tell. Real histories become fantasies and fairy tales, morality tales and fables. There's something interesting and funny and perverse about the way fairytale sometimes passes for history, for truth.
Kara Walker / Artist
Funny
History
Truth
Fables
Fairy
Fascinated
Interesting
Morality
Real
Stories
Tales
Fairy Tales
Histories
Passes
Perverse
Tell
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A lot of my work has been about the unexpected—that kind of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time. That kind of dilemma—that push and pull—is the underlying turbulence that I bring to each of the pieces that I make.
Kara Walker / Artist
Kind
Pieces
Unexpected
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Sugar crystallizes something in our American Soul. It is emblematic of all Industrial Processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White Being equated with pure and ‘true’ it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.
Kara Walker / Artist
Ideas
Soul
White
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Sugar crystallizes something in our American soul. It is emblematic of all industrial processes. And of the idea of becoming white. White being equated with pure and 'true': it takes a lot of energy to turn brown things into white things. A lot of pressure.
Kara Walker / Artist
Becoming
Brown
Energy
Pressure
Pure
Sugar
Equated
Industrial
Processes
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It feels like a game, this work I do. It is totally heartfelt, and I love the sticky terrain, the straight-up cartoons, how the irrepressible and icky rise to the surface. But I am not just trying to call forth bugaboos and demons for the sake of it, for fun.
Kara Walker / Artist
Feels
Heartfelt
Sake
Sticky
Surface
Terrain
Totally
Rise
Love Work Game
Demons
Forth
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I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she'd like to kill
Kara Walker / Artist
Knives
People
Southern
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One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my dad’s lap in his studio in the garage of our house and watching him draw. I remember thinking: ‘I want to do that, too,’ and I pretty much decided then and there at age 2½ or 3 that I was an artist just like Dad.
Kara Walker / Artist
Dad
Artist
Memories
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I've seen people glaze over when they're confronted with racism, and there's nothing more, you know, damning and demeaning to having any kind of ideology than people just walking the walk and saying what they're supposed to say and nodding, and nobody feels anything.
Kara Walker / Artist
Demeaning
Feels
Ideology
Racism
Nobody
Seen
Confronted
Damning
Having
Walk
Just Walking
Saying
Supposed
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I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.
Kara Walker / Artist
Artist
Figures
Issues
Painting
Professors
Relieved
White
Male
Side
Deal
Mythological
Themes
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There was a manifesto in the late '60s/early '70s, and it basically laid out what 'black art' was and that it should embrace black history and black culture. There were all these rules - I was shocked, when I found it in a book, that it even existed, that it would demarcate these artists.
Kara Walker / Artist
Black
Black History
Book
Embrace
Shocked
Art History Culture
Rules
Artists
Basically
Existed
History Art Culture
Laid
Manifesto
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I know that in my family there are histories of violence that are internal family things and that are oftentimes dealt with internally. By internally, I mean inside the family group, but also partly inside ourselves. You know, self-hatred and hostility and rage and this cycle that won't break.
Kara Walker / Artist
Hostility
Cycle
Dealt
Histories
Internal
Oftentimes
Partly
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I guess there was a little bit of a slight rebellion, maybe a little bit of a renegade desire that made me realize at some point in my adolescence that I really liked pictures that told stories of things - genre paintings, historical paintings - the sort of derivatives we get in contemporary society.
Kara Walker / Artist
Society
Adolescence
Contemporary
Contemporary Society
Derivatives
Genre
Historical
Little Bit
Made
Rebellion
Stories
Little
Bit
Liked
Guess
Maybe
Pictures
Point
Realize
Renegade
Slight
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I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful
Kara Walker / Artist
Art
Beautiful
Mean
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Kara Walker Quotes - Page 1

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