Midcity, Los Angeles
Group Exhibition
Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar
Roberts ProjectsRoberts Projects is delighted to present Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar, an exhibition exploring the central role of costume design in Saar's early career and throughout her life as a mother and artist. The archivally-driven exhibition features over 200 objects, including costume designs, photographs, drawings, garments, jewelry, artworks and historic materials from the 1950s–1970s. Anchored by Saar’s costume designs, Let’s Get It On brings together for the first time a collection of newly-discovered photographs documenting early productions at the Inner City Cultural Center (ICCC)—a multicultural performing arts institution founded in the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion—presented alongside the original sketches she created for those very performances. As part of a series of exhibitions and initiatives celebrating the occasion of Saar's 100th birthday this summer, Let's Get It On advances a new understanding of the artist's design work as a vital part of her interconnected and ever-evolving practice. In 1968, Saar began working as a costume designer for the ICCC, where she collaborated on productions such as West Side Story (1969), Antigone (1970), The Gnadiges Fraulein and Burlesque is Alive (1970), among many others. Working and performing in theater unlocked a new world for Saar, transforming her artistic perspective and introducing her to actors, directors, artists and curators with whom she'd form lifelong friendships as she transitioned to the world of fine art. Saar has described the long-lasting impact of these years on her practice, saying, "Theater sets and lighting influenced my later work when I went into installation art because I liked a certain kind of theatrical feeling to my installations. As early as the late sixties and early seventies, theater became part of the information that I stored there.” While working for the theater, Saar also regularly made clothes, jewelry and costumes for her daughters and others, many of them for the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, held at Paramount Ranch in Southern California from 1964–1973.