Porgy & Bess

This artist book of Porgy & Bess, the libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, is the occasion for Kara Walker’s first series of lithographs. The book contains 16 lithographs, with another four images not in the book available separately in a portfolio.

Porgy & Bess has been has been controversial since its premiere in 1935; Kara Walker is known for her controversial art on themes of race, violence, and American history. In her Artist’s Statement, she says of the characters: “they’ve become archetypes of another no less grand drama, that of: ‘American Negroes drawn up by white authors, and retooled by individual actors, amid charges of racism, and counter charges of high-art on stage and screen, in the face of social and political upheaval, over generations.” This fraught status, along with memories of her mother’s reaction to a cast recording, led her to render them in a straightforward way, “…more an homage to the feeling of the music. And to that feeling I had as a child of a heavy atmosphere hanging around a timeless act of love.”

View the complete prospectus in PDF format.