Look at Torch Song by Alison Saar

Write or discuss your responses to the artwork.

• What do you see?
• What mood or emotions do you sense from the figure?
• What visual details suggest movement, sound, or energy?
• Saar chose not to include pupils in the figure’s eyes. What does that mean to you? What story does it tell about the figure’s experience or state of mind?
• What do you think the figure is expressing? Her mouth is open. Is she yelling? Is she singing? Speaking? Is she distraught? Passionate? Praying?

Read About Torch Song by Alison Saar

My commute from Chelsea [a neighborhood in New York City] became an essential part of my creative process. Walking from the A train across 125th Street, I was immersed in the vibrant sounds and sights of Harlem… I felt the spirits of that era nodding in approval at the new rhythms gracing the streets.Alison Saar

As a young artist, Alison Saar was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, in 1983. Over the next several decades, Saar created multiple series of artworks inspired by the historic African American neighborhood’s rich legacy and history, from the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. One series features fictionalized musicians, singers, dancers, and patrons of jazz clubs during the Harlem Renaissance. Saar combined her research about Harlem’s history with her own feelings and imagination to create the fictional characters featured in these images, which were installed in the windows of the Harlem-125th Street subway station in New York City. She later adapted several of these figures into a suite of prints called The Copacetic Suite. Torch Song is one of the prints from The Copacetic Suite.

The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant time of artistic, literary, and intellectual activity centered in Harlem during the 1920s and 1930s. Musicians, singers, dancers, writers, and artists made works that acknowledged the beauty and pain of the Black experience, challenged oppression and racism, and celebrated connections to African cultural traditions. During the Harlem Renaissance, artists gathered to play and listen to music in jazz clubs, blues clubs, and speakeasies—intimate venues that often operated in basements and storefronts during Prohibition. This shared experience of music was powerful. People could forget their day and lose themselves in the music, and for many, the experience was deeply spiritual. The energy of these spaces transformed music into a form of community, resilience, self-determination, and freedom.

The figure in Torch Song embodies the energy of the Harlem Renaissance. She holds a large flame in her hand, but she doesn’t appear to actually be on fire. What does fire remind you of? Think about the meaning of fire, the title Torch Song, and consider the backdrop of Harlem’s vibrant music scene. Think about what the flame might represent.

Look again at the figure’s eyes. Saar has chosen not to include the figure’s pupils, a feature that appears throughout her work. According to Saar, the meaning behind these pupil-less eyes has changed over the years. Saar was inspired by a book of Roman bronzes that her father gave her, whose sculptures had lost their inlaid eyes over time, creating a vacant, mysterious, and otherworldly look. Saar has also described the lack of pupils as symbolizing the presence of a mask or an inner spiritual life. At other times, she has suggested that her figures exist between the physical and spiritual worlds, and the absence of pupils reflects that liminal state.

Torch Song, and the other artworks in The Copacetic Suite, are multi-block linocuts. Alison Saar carved multiple blocks of linoleum using carving tools. Each block was inked with a different color and printed separately onto Japanese kozo paper. By layering the impressions one at a time, Saar built the rich colors and textures that give each print its distinctive appearance.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• How did Saar’s commute when she lived in New York City influence her creation of Torch Song?
• Why do you think the figure is holding a flame? What might the flame symbolize?
• Do you think this figure is powerful? Why or why not?
• How might this image reflect experiences of Black identity, diaspora or cultural history?

Explore More Images from The Copacetic Suite

After looking at each image, consider the following questions:

• What themes do you see running through these images?
• What visual similarities can you find across these prints and Torch Song?
• Saar named this set of prints The Copacetic Suite. (Copacetic means “all good” or “very satisfactory.”) Why do you think Saar chose this name for these artworks?

Optional Activities

• Read more about the Harlem Renaissance.
• Explore the power of symbols through printmaking.

A network or group of people, sometimes living in a particular place, who share interests, values, characteristics, responsibilities, or physical spaces.

Very satisfactory, often used to mean “all is well” or “everything’s good.”

People settled far away from their ancestral homelands.

In-between or transitional.

Artworks made using a relief printmaking technique, in which the artist cuts or carves an image into a sheet of linoleum, applies ink, then presses it onto another surface to print it.

Historical, organized, and systemic mistreatment of and discrimination towards a group or community. Oppression can be ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.

A period in the United States throughout the 1920s, when it was illegal to make or sell alcohol in the United States.

Prejudice and discrimination against people because of their race.

The right or ability of a person or group to make their own choices or control their own destiny.

A hidden, secret place where alcohol was sold during Prohibition in the 1920s, when it was illegal to make or sell alcohol in the United States.