SAN MARINO, Calif. — Standing in the gallery of Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight, you are bathed in oceanic, cobalt blue light. The buzz of neon lights drones in the background. It’s hard to say if the temperature has truly dropped, or if it’s psychosomatic, that the atmosphere has cooled your skin just by the power of suggestion. You’re floating in space, or suspended underwater — gravity works differently here.
The phases of the moon are painted on the wall in a matte metallic silver, and a small poem by Saar is draped across the wall: “The moon keeps vigil as a lone canoe drifts into a sea of tranquility seeking serenity in the twilight.” In the middle of the room, a long canoe, 17 feet across, sits atop a bed of branches, bramble, and sheets of jagged wood. At either tip of the ship is a watchful eye guiding the raft in both directions. Two sentinels — antiques affixed with antlers — keep watch at each end. Saar has crafted a fantastical scene; you can envision the boat careening upriver, striding forth.
The vessel is occupied by bird cages confining animal antlers and seated upon miniature chairs fit only for a toddler — or, perhaps, spirits who scarcely need a physical seat, just an invitation to rest. These scavenged items are characteristic of Saar’s found object assemblage; she hunts for her materials, whether in nature or at flea markets.
Installation view of Betye Saar, “Drifting Toward Twilight” (2023)
“I like combining manufactured objects with natural objects,” says the 98-year-old artist in a video at the back of the gallery. She started collecting at four or five, she explains, but the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was a catalyzing moment. She was so overwhelmed with emotion that she could do nothing but create art, leading her to assemble one of her most famed sculptures, “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972), which empowers and equips a “mammy” figurine with defensive weaponry.
Saar is a famed Angeleno, a fixture in the city’s art scene, but she was raised in Pasadena, which neighbors the Huntington Gardens, where this site-specific commission went up in 2023. In the short directed by Kyle Provencio Reingold, the camera follows her through the massive campus, where she first wandered at 12 or 13 alongside her mother and neighbor. We forage the gardens with her as she instructs the Huntington employees of her artistic intentions; you can hear the giddiness in her voice as she remembers her childhood traversing its grounds, selecting fallen branches and trimmings. “Even in death, those things can be really beautiful,” she muses.
The gallery lighting shifts from daylight to dusk as time creeps along. Drifting Into Twilight is an encapsulated, self-sustaining environment of its own, like a display exhibit at a natural history museum with a surrealistic twist. The room is as relaxing as it is disorienting; it feels like you’ve been plunged into a misty and peculiar other world. You are sinking, descending, drifting into twilight.
Installation view of Betye Saar, “Drifting Toward Twilight” (2023)
Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight continues at Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art at the Huntington (1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, California) through November 30, 2027. The exhibition was curated by Yinshi Lerman-Tan and Sola Saar Agustsson.