The Beginning

Kara Walker, artist

born 1969

Landfall Press, publisher

active 1970–2004

Steve Campbell, printer

The Beginning, 1995

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: etching; aquatint

Dimensions:
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 895 x 591 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 35 1/4 x 23 1/4 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 36 1/4 x 25 1/4 x 1 in

Credit line: Gift of Ann Jeffries Thompson in memory of Robert Raymond Smith (class of '78)

Accession number: 1997.0344.01

Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Bold Women

Kara Walker uses silhouettes to entice viewers to decipher her work’s lively narrative, only to confront them with the uncomfortable legacy of racism and slavery. These prints depict unnervingly violent acts committed by characters wearing old-fashioned clothing and mimicking stereotypes of Black Americans. During the 18th and 19th centuries, silhouettes were a popular art form used for family portraits. Walker repurposes the historic medium’s ability to visualize and conceal bodies, evoking and challenging viewers’ desires to fill in the blanks.

Art and Activism: 50 Years of Africana Studies at KU

Kara Walker is a world-renowned artist who challenges viewers to consider race, inequality, and histories of violence with her silhouettes. During the 18th and 19th centuries, silhouettes were a popular art practice mostly used by women as a way to keep a record of their loved ones. In The Means to an End, Walker shows gruesome depictions of violence against Black enslaved people in the United States. The figures have stereotypically African American characteristics. In five “acts,” Walker crafts a narrative that grows progressively more powerful and dramatic. This exhibition is looking back at the past to examine the present day, to see what we are and what we have come from. We tend to look at the good times of the past and celebrate that, but this series encourages us to take a different turn, to look at times that most people tend to overlook or censor. Walker’s imaginative visualizations force the viewer to face the violence of the past. Written by Corey Williams

Art and Activism: 50 Years of Africana Studies at KU

Brosseau Center for Learning: In Conversation with the 2016 KU Common Book

“As for now, it must be said that the process of washing the disparate tribes white, the elevation of the belief in being white, was not achieved through wine tastings and ice creams socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor, and land: through the flaying of backs; the chaining of limbs; the strangling of dissidents; the destruction of families; the rape of mothers; the sale of children; and various other acts meant, first and foremost, to deny you and me the right to secure and govern our own bodies.” ("Between the World and Me," p. 8)

Exhibition Label: "Sum of the Parts: Recent Works on Paper," Jun-2001, Stephen Goddard Kara Walker turned to the silhouette as a means of expression because, in her words, she was looking for a clean and easy way to bring together a bunch of messy ideas that were troubling her. Her images force us to confront an especially unsavory aspect of our heritage-racial stereotypes. She explains, “I want the viewer to be really compelled to look, to have this question mark: Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? Which means you have to keep looking, which you may not want to do.”