Collection
Banks's Army Leaving Simmsport.
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Related Parent:
Related Siblings:
- Cotton Hoards in Southern Swamp.
- Signal Station, Summit of Maryland Heights.
- Buzzard's Roost Past.
- Alabama Loyalists Greeting the Federal Gun-Boats.
- Crest of Pine Mountain, Where General Polk Fell.
- Occupation of Alexandria.
- Deadbrook after the Battle of Ezra's Church.
- Foote's Gun-Boats Ascending to Attack Fort Henry.
- An Army Train.
- Lost Mountain at Sunrise.
- Scene of McPherson's Death.
- Confederate Prinsoners Being Conducted from Jonesborough to Atlanta.
- Pack-Mules in the Mountains.
- Exodus of Confederates from Atlanta.
This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):
Periods and Styles: MLC Portfolio: Civil WarThemes: MLC Portfolio: Invisibility in Image and Text
Object Information
For her series of prints, <i>Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War
(Annotated)</i>, Kara Walker enlarged select illustrations found in the two
volume book (1866 and 1868) of the same title and used them as backdrops
against which her silhouetted characters introduce new narratives. This
portfolio of fifteen lithographs marks the first time the artist has united
her signature black cutouts with historical documentation. “These prints,”
Walker said, “are the landscapes that I imagine exist in the back of my
somewhat more austere wall pieces.”
Thickly layered with symbolism and historical context, these prints are
neither simple nor straightforward. Walker’s stylized figures confront,
invert, and disrupt existing perceptions of race as they crawl, walk, leap,
even fly through her panoramas, turning stereotypes inside out and upside
down. Haunting our psyche as dark shadows of the past, the silhouettes
obstruct our view of Harper’s pictures as Walker invites us to interpret the
altered scenes, question what is now present or absent, and maybe confront
what has been missing from the onset. Reading the portfolio becomes an
exercise in substitution and erasure, both visually and historically. Kara
Walker fills in the blanks, reinserting the participation of African Americans
in the Civil War, and, like much of her other work, triggers in her viewer a
sense of uncertainty, discomfort, and emotional intensity.
Exhibition History
This object was included in the following exhibitions:
Kara Walker: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), Addison Gallery of American Art, 1/9/2007 - 4/15/2007Your current search criteria is: Object is "Banks's Army Leaving Simmsport."