And all the fucking just seemed so sad

I finally saw Kara Walker at the Whitney. It was kind of a weird experience. So many of the cut-outs were familiar to me from all the press the show has been getting, and there was something under-whelming or off about them. Not that they weren't powerful and not that in real life the installations aren't more complex and evocative, but I just felt kind of lost and sad, like I was inside the head or the sketchbook of a very lone and tormented soul. And I didn't like the feeling.

At the same time, I thought the images were very beautiful, but I felt guilty about this. White liberal guilt, of course. Where there's oppression, there you will find beauty. Perhaps. (??)

I was most taken by the video installations, where the cut-out sillhouettes were treated like puppets (I'm sure there's a very common term for this and that I am a retard), they were on sticks, moving to a story line. And all the fucking just seemed so sad. I had a very creepy sense of being a child and being exposed to intrusive and scary sexual stuff that I don't understand by that I know is icky.

Anyway, I thought it was brilliant, but I didn't like how it made me feel.

It reminded me of Henry Darger, being inside the twisted and intimate imagination of a very unique and talented mind.