Mar 31, 2022 - Sale 2599

Sale 2599 - Lot 221

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
KARA WALKER (1969 - )
Freedom, A Fable: A Curious Interpretation of the Wit of a Negress in Troubled Times.

Bound pop-up book, with offset lithographs and five laser-cut, pop-up silhouettes on wove paper, 1997. 238x213 mm; 9 3/8x8 3/8 inches, full red leather binding as issued. Edition of 4000.

Each year, the Peter Norton family commissions an art edition to celebrate the Christmas season and holidays. The book was privately published and gifted to friends. Another copy of this book is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Through the use of a pop-up book, Kara Walker takes a medium typically relegated to young children's entertainment, and writes of a, "soon-to-be emancipated 19th century Negress." What begins as a seemingly hopeful story of a free life written in the mode of a fairy tale quickly mimics her dark and provocative imagery. Freedom, A Fable, details the racial and sexual horrors that awaited young African American women in the 19th century.