Acrobats

Acrobats

Acrobats is one of the prints produced during the course of Saar’s graduate studies at California State Long Beach, where she specialized in printmaking. Here we see an acrobatic troupe of undistinguished figures posed in a daring act of physical skill. The characters balance across the vertical length of the paper, stacked on each other’s shoulders. From a distance, the highly-textured, dark gray washes of ink partially obscure the print’s representational elements. The top figure on the stack of dark, charcoal bodies proudly raises their arms to reveal a severed head in each hand: a subtle and unassuming, yet gruesome, detail.

Betye Saar

1960

Etching

Collection of Lewis Tanner Moore