Now You Cookin’ with Gas from Bookmarks in the Pages of Life Series

Now You Cookin’ with Gas from Bookmarks in the Pages of Life Series

Much of Saar’s work explores the experiences of African American womanhood, emphasizing their independence. Here, a photographic image of a woman is situated on the edges of a cityscape while two men in colorful zoot suits stand contained within a border of repeating brownstone apartment buildings. The men’s eyes are exaggerated and we follow their stare to the figure of the woman posed confidently on the outskirts; though she is observed by the two men, the woman appears unaffected, independent, and free to move beyond the boundaries of the streetscape in which the two men appear confined. This print is paired in Saar’s Bookmarks from the Pages of Life with Zora Neale Hurston’s “Story in Harlem Slang.” Hurston’s short story, originally published in 1942, follows a confident, prosperous African American woman who dismisses the catcalls of two men who are far less successful than they boast.

Betye Saar

2000

Serigraph

David C. Driskell Center Permanent Collection,
Gift from the Sandra and Lloyd Baccus Collection