Red Star 1970

Curator: Here we have Raymond Saunders' "Red Star" from 1970, a vibrant mixed-media piece combining acrylic paint and collage elements. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: It's certainly bold. The large red star immediately grabs your attention, sitting almost aggressively against the more subdued, chaotic background. There's a visual tension that's quite striking. Curator: Indeed. Consider the process here. Saunders uses found materials, scraps really, integrating them with paint and gestural marks. He is very conscious of elevating the mundane through his application. This challenges the conventional notion of artistic materials. Editor: Absolutely. If we look closely, the layering of colours—the interplay of turquoise, orange, and yellow—creates depth, a sense of history. It’s not just flat application; there’s intentionality in the build-up, creating both visual texture and also a kind of implied narrative from the overlapping images and symbols. The geometric severity of the star, however, interrupts any potential spatial illusions. Curator: That tension is deliberate. Saunders worked through the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War. The red star is a symbol freighted with social and political meaning; what did it signify at the time it was created and displayed, and how might we interpret it now? Consider that the “readymade” silkscreen of a red star—overlaid with fragments of found images—can become a profound statement on labor and artifice. Editor: It's fascinating how such a simple shape, repeated and repurposed, generates such a wealth of interpretative possibilities. We find written numbers, scribbled glyphs, and these textural moments where materiality itself takes center stage in terms of creating visual interest in the object. Curator: Exactly, and what a perfect note to end on—drawing attention to material and making, while pointing to issues of its context in relation to time and the artist's life. Editor: It underscores how form and material interweave in shaping meaning, a dialogue we must continue to explore in Raymond Saunders' striking work.