Feb 16, 2012 - Sale 2268

Sale 2268 - Lot 70

Price Realized: $ 2,880
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
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 tale of a free life written in the mode of a fairy tale, Walker's prose quickly mimics her dark and provocative imagery, detailing the racial and sexual horrors that awaited a young African-American woman in the 19th century.