Betye Saar Black Girl's Window Analysis

1960s America saw the rise of two opposing art movements, the Black Arts movement and the feminist arts movement respectively. The idea that black women gain the same representation and recognition as their white female and black male counterparts proved false. Instead, black women were further marginalized and disenfranchised by both sides leaving them to decide between siding with the sexist male dominated Black Arts Movement or with the exclusive racist feminist movement. Betye Saar, a prominent Black female artist of the Black Arts movement that came to glory with her artwork “Black Girls Window”, which uses assemblage to present an intersectional, complex and diverse black woman that rejects the misogynistic gaze of the Black Arts Movement,

Growing up she wished to attend art school but segregation in schools didn’t allow for her to study art like her white counterparts instead she studied design with a minor is sociology. At the time, there was a great struggle for black artists to find financial success/gain from their art as they were considered inferior in comparison to their white counterparts and were “lucky” to get jobs as a window designer or a job in graphic designs of which Saar did the latter. Saar would create studio cards until after the birth of her second daughter which refueled her passion for fine arts. After returning to school and gaining and additional degree in printmaking, she began experimenting. In the beginnings of her career she focused solely on printmaking and as time progressed, she fell into “junk art” or assemblage, thusly finding her own artistic signature in the midst of the Black Arts movements. Saar began combining her printmaking skills with her assemblage pieces and so was created her signature style. Her signature style became indicative of her beliefs and identity which in turn made her one of very few and very prominent Black female artists of the