?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
BETYE SAAR (1926 - ) Untitled (Phrenology Box).
Mixed media assemblage box, (including glass, acetate sheet, flashlight cubes, a doll's head and an etching by the artist), circa 1965-70. 280x216x63 mm; 11x8 1/2x2 1/2 inches. Dated "'70" in pencil on the verso.
Provenance: private collection, New York; thence by descent to the current owner.
This striking, surreal box is an early assemblage work in Saar's phrenology series--the silver paper covered, mirrored cigar box includes a cut-out of the 1965 color etching The Man from Phrenology. This etching was also used in the 1966 assemblage The Phrenologer's Window, and in other assemblages by the artist.
The 19th century pseudeo-science of phrenology relied upon measurements of the skull and was often used to justifiy discrimination by classifying people racially and socially. Saar used this diagrammatic profile as a metaphor for a pyschological or mental space, and the classification used in cultural and social segregation. It also appears again in other works, including her 1970 self-portrait, Self Window with Reflection.
