"Mystery has guided Saar her entire life… Drawing on a variety of cultural forms, objects and materials—from black identity traditions to influences of beliefs of all kinds, Saar’s artistic process is in her own words a stream of consciousness thing.”
Elegantly suspended from above, Rainbow Mojo radiates with the prismatic and cosmic brilliance of its diverse celestial motifs, drawing each passersby into an ritualized viewing experience that distinguishes the very best of Betye Saar’s illustrious oeuvre. One of Saar’s earliest ritualistic installations, Rainbow Mojo from 1972 exemplifies a seminal juncture in her practice that witnesses the genesis of the artist’s mature style. Debuted at Saar’s first institutional solo exhibition at California State University in 1973, Rainbow Mojo was recently included in the critically acclaimed, landmark exhibition, Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Art which travelled internationally to six major museums including the Tate Modern in London, The Brooklyn Museum in New York, and The Broad in Los Angeles from 2017-2020; in each of these locations, the present work was prominently installed alongside other seminal masterpieces by David Hammons, Sam Gilliam, Barkley Hendricks, and others of Saar’s contemporaries. It is only in recent years that Saar has received long overdue recognition as one of the most influential African American artists of the past half-century, celebrated for her transformative reimagining of everyday materials, which privileges spirituality to address matters of race, gender, and politics. In the cut and painted leather surface of Rainbow Mojo, Saar interweaves a wide spectrum of her aesthetic and anthropological sources – from Haitan voodoo and Egyptian cosmology to Renaissance art and African American quiltmaking – exemplifying with chromatic luster and artisanal finesse her everlasting mystical influence on art history.
Rainbow Mojo in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, 1963-1983
For nearly seven decades, Betye Saar has developed an eclectic oeuvre defined by her powerful metamorphosis of forgotten objects into mystical assemblages that probe nuanced experiences of womanhood, African American identity, and spirituality. Influenced by Joseph Cornell’s miniature box-like sculptures containing everyday items, Saar discovered in assemblage art newfound opportunities to construct intimate worlds from the found objects she intuitively collects s, manipulates, and recontextualizes. Paralleling ancient folkloric traditions of creating fabulations from the fragments of reality, Saar discovers her contemporary spiritual gravitas in the radical artistic exercise of creating new imagery from recycled common material, such as the leather fabric that Saar has deftly cut and painted in Rainbow Mojo.
- The Sun and Stars
The Sun is historically the most celebrated celestial body, acting as the principal deity for many cultures, while symbolizing life, energy, fire, warmth, and light for various peoples up to the present day. The Sun is of course also a star, and the depiction in this work by the artist can be interpreted to illustrate both the sun's energy transforming into a rainbow, as well as that of a shooting star, considered a symbol of good fortune in many cultures. Abundant in the artist's body of work, the Sun or shooting star depicted here inevitably presents the viewer with strong feelings of hope and possibilities.
- The Moon
Like the Sun, the Moon has been revered by ancient peoples and cultures, and is a central celestial body or deity in astronomy, various cosmologies, and traditional navigation, all fascinations present in the artist's larger body of work. The Moon is recurrent in many of Saar's most highly praised works, including Black Girl Window at MoMA, and to many ancient peoples has symbolized women and female energy, as well as a guiding light in t.mes s of darkness.
- The Eye
A common motif in the artist's oeuvre, to which the artist even dedicated a specific work (Eye, 1972), the eye recalls a wide array of cultural symbolism around the world, including the Eye of Horus, the "evil eye", the myth of Cyclops, the Free Masons, and the "all-seeing eye of God."
- The Rainbow
A symbol of good luck or fortune in some cultures, it is very possible that Saar also considered the Rainbow as symbol of unity. Presenting the synthesis of all colors and spectrum into one, the rainbow implies a vision of unity among different races, genders, cultures, and orientations.
- Central Hanging From Above
The work was designed to hang from the ceiling in a central space, rather than against a wall. This implicates the viewer drastically into an active participant, requiring one to tilt their head up as if contemplating the night sky. Recreating the feeling of looking up at a shooting star, one feels tempted to make a wish when gazing up at Rainbow Mojo.
- Leather
Known for utilizing a wide array of media and forms in her oeuvre, Saar was very fond of found objects, denoting a tradition implemented by other African American artists such as Melvin Edwards and Jack Whitten. Here, she uses leather, an organic material utilized by many traditional cultures for clothing, shelter, and other uses.
By refusing outright classification with its unconventional materiality, shape, and installation, Rainbow Mojo exists in the formative space between assemblage, sculpture, and painting. Replete with t.mes less cosmological symbolism and boldly painted with brightly effervescent colors, the present work seamlessly synthesizes the rainbow, the sun and moon, and the omniscient eye into a stunningly unified composition. More notably, as it remains delicately suspended from the ceiling, Rainbow Mojo invokes a chapel-like, ritualistic space that guides the viewer’s gaze up towards the cosmos to radically transform the simple act of looking into a singularly spiritual occasion: as if looking up at a shooting star, one is compelled to make a wish upon the overhead vision of Rainbow Mojo. In his praise of the present work as a highlight in Saar’s major California State University exhibition in 1973, scholar Mark Godfrey focuses on its indelibly dazzling installation: “Saar created a cavern-like environment in which various works were set against blue-grey painted walls. Some, including Rainbow Mojo 1972, were suspended, referencing her interests in astrology and cosmology.” (Mark Godfrey, "Rituals in Los Angeles," Soul of A Nation: Art In The Age of Black Power, London, 2017, p. 120)
“A mojo is an amulet or charm used in some voodoo-based beliefs (religions). Its power is somewhat ambiguous, as it depends on both the user’s strength of belief and his or her motive. As a shaman gleans the environment for special ingredients and objects to fabricate the mojo, I glean estate sales, flea markets, and thrift shops at home and in my travels for special materials for my work..."
Indeed, the iconography of Rainbow Mojo brilliantly reflects Saar’s interest in the spiritual allure of Egyptian, Caribbean, West African sculptures: artifacts that Western art history has historically diminished, if not altogether excluded. Captivated by their absence in the art historical canon from which many of her contemporaries drew inspiration, Saar resonated with Arnold Rubin’s academic critique of the hegemonic Western display of African sculpture: “Rubin argued that African sculpture has power and energy and that it’s more than a decorative object; it’s seductive and more visual, something Saar has always emphasized in her work, especially in her installations” (Stephanie Seidel quoted in Gabriella Angeleti, “Welcome to the esoteric world of Betye Saar at ICA Miami,” The Art Newspaper, 28 November 2021 (online)). The influence of mystical lineages on Saar is reflected perhaps nowhere better reflected than in the esoteric implications behind the objecthood of Rainbow Mojo; in her own words, “A mojo is an amulet or charm used in some voodoo-based beliefs (religions). Its power is somewhat ambiguous, as it depends on both the user’s strength of belief and his or her motive” (Betye Saar quoted in Roberts Project LA, Betye Saar: Mojotech, Culver City 2020, n.p.)
“There’s something very old, and something very new at the same t.mes about what she does. When you know Betye, and you start to really look into her work, you start to think that she escaped from one of the pyramids or something… She’s just into a strong mystical quality, and somehow I think that she was a daughter to one of the pharaohs or something.”
Now 95 years old, Saar has dedicated her career to creating art that deftly harnesses the transformative power of ritual within the interstices of art historical conventions. Testifying to her profound influence on contemporary art history, Godfrey adds that her 1973 exhibition “heralded a shift in the practices of Californian artists such as Senga Nengudi… David Hammons, and Kinshasha and Houston Conwill who began in the mid-1970s to create rituals in their exhibitions and performances.” (Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, Exh. Cat., Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, Tate, London, 2017, p. 120) As in the very best of Saar’s practice, Rainbow Mojo welcomes the viewer’s active engagement to exemplify her sublime penchant for invoking ritualistic practice, the allure of which has simultaneously marveled and nourished mankind since the dawn of human history. By condensing and sewing together the t.mes less symbols of cosmic wonder into a uniquely intimate composition, Rainbow Mojo evinces Betye Saar’s transcendental artistic finesse in representing the universal experiences that bind humankind at large.
