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On view from September 18, 2016–January 5, 2017 in the Derfner Judaica Museum
Opening Reception and Artist’s Talk: Sunday, September 18 from 1:30-3 p.m.

Text by Susan Chevlowe, Chief Curator and Museum Director

Inspired by the first five books of the Bible, Robert Katz’s mixed media assemblages owe something to childhood memories of his father, an aircraft mechanic during World War II, using tools and fixing things. “Growing up,” Katz has explained, “I remember that the trunk and back seat of our ‘56 Chevy was often filled with his beloved tools and mysterious mechanical apparatuses.” He has also vividly described the two of them sitting side by side in synagogue on hot, early autumn days and inhaling “his fragrance of oil and grease” as they shared in Jewish observance, instilled and passed on from generation to generation. “As he turned the pages of the prayer book, I would notice the accumulation of years of dirt under his finger nails,” he said.*

Over time, those paternal influences combined with what Katz observed and learned from the work of such major 20th-century sculptors and early installation artists as Eva Hesse, Edward Kienholz, Jacques Lipchitz, Louise Nevelson, David Smith, and Robert Smithson. Each of these artists connected to their environment in a deeply subjective way, incorporating memory or elaborate fantasy, irony and social commentary, the quirky and uncanny into their art.

Katz’s Assemblages

In The Five Books of Moses, 2011, Katz used found objects, his father’s old tools, and other castoffs from a pile in his studio or from a steel yard. Each sculpture is filled with industrial detritus and other vestiges whose former utility has been transformed. Still, the newly configured array of items provides a way into the text. Recognizable objects that are whole or mere fragments, smooth or coarse, durable or ephemeral, neutral or bright in color have been repurposed to illuminate the biblical narrative.

The parts have been welded and assembled on a steel plate above a cast plaster book opened to the corresponding title page; purple velvet fabric drapes across the supporting pedestal. In Genesis, Katz incorporated a manifold from the exhaust system of an old truck, which had brought to mind the Creation. In Exodus, a yellow fragment of molten bronze had suggested to him the golden calf and a square piece of marble and blue thread were used in Numbers because they resembled the Tabernacle, the sanctuary during the time of the Israelites’ wanderings in the desert. With these symbolic allusions, the artist eschews narrative while engaging with text, tradition, and memory. His process connects ancient words and stories with tokens and traces of his life.

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Conversation with the Artist

Susan Chevlowe: What inspired you to create this installation?

Robert Katz: About five years ago, my children climbed into bed next to me one early Sunday morning and asked me to read to them. The book that they brought me was an old, illustrated text of the Bible stories that was given to me when I was their age. They were as much enthralled by the illustrations of the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, the Great Flood, and the Exodus, as the story that I was reading. At the end of the reading, they asked me to make them a Bible book. An innocent enough request, but one that had great implications for me.

SC: So how did their request for a book become a sculptural tableau?

RK: I have often been accused of being a storyteller but never a book maker. For many months I thought about their request that I wanted to honor. Then one day, standing at my work bench, inspiration came to me. I noticed a well-worn, wooden box containing screws that had ten compartments and it suggested to me the Ten Commandments. . . . I had suddenly come to realize that my book would not be in the form of traditional pages, but rather it would be a mixed media, three-dimensional sculptural installation that would reveal the story of the five Books of Moses.

SC: Can you describe the process of assembling the Books?

RK: Using many of the old tools that my father left me, I began to assemble each book with the welding torch. It was like a puzzle, where initially the pieces are well hidden among the pile in my studio and steel yard. Daily discoveries brought forth the wonderful exuberance of clarity.

SC: Your work is not a literal narrative. How do you expect the viewer to interpret it?

RK: When viewing this project, some components will be obvious to the viewer, and other symbols may need closer scrutiny, investigation, and thought. I enjoy the uniqueness of telling this ancient story with a variety of unlikely industrial, twentieth-century components that in our everyday lives would have no reference to the biblical text. It is an artwork that uses these unlikely objects to reveal a familiar story that has impacted the lives of nearly all Jewish children. . . . the meaning of each tool and object. . . ultimately will be open for the viewer’s interpretation.”

*All quotations from the artist are taken from an email to the author dated July 30, 2015.

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About the Artist

Robert Katz was born in 1950 and grew up in the Bronx and Brooklyn. He studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and received his undergraduate degree in studio art from New York University in 1972. In 1973, he traveled to Montana and settled near the banks of the Clark Fork and Bitterroot Rivers, establishing a studio in the shadow of the northern Rockies, where Native American culture shaped his artistic process. In 1975 he earned an MFA degree in sculpture from the University of Montana.

Katz is Professor of Art in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Maine at Augusta, where he has taught since 1981. He has also been on the art faculty at Southern Illinois University and Oberlin College. Influenced by an initial trip to Israel in 1987 and many more to Poland commencing in 1990, his art during the past twenty-five years has explored issues of Jewish identity, family remembrance, social memory, and the Holocaust, and he has participated in numerous conferences, panels, and seminars addressing the Holocaust and other genocides. For three summers in the 1990s he was artist-in-residence at Seeds of Peace International Camp, creating large outdoor sculptures with Israeli and Arab youth.

In Maine, Katz has exhibited at the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, the Danforth at the University of Maine in Augusta, Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Viles Arboretum in Augusta, and the Michael Klahr Center, University of Maine at Augusta. He has also been commissioned to create Maine Percent for Art projects in the communities of Auburn, Benton, and Waldoboro. His multimedia installation Were the House Still Standing: Maine Survivors and Liberators Remember the Holocaust is a permanent installation at the Michael Klahr Center.

Nationally, his sculptures, drawings, and installation projects have been exhibited in numerous one-person and group exhibitions at museums and galleries, including the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut; Hundred Acres Gallery, New York City; the Art Academy of Cincinnati; Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Missouri; the Missoula Museum of the Arts and the Yellowstone Art Center, both in Montana; and Gallery 401 at the Jewish Community Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Dwelling of Remembrance: A Holocaust Memorial was dedicated in 1989 at Scarsdale Synagogue, Scarsdale, New York. In 2010, he was included in Seduced by the Sacred: Forging A Jewish Art at the Mandell JCC in Hartford, Connecticut, and in 2012 in West Meets East: A Cross Cultural Exhibition at Jiangsu Chinese Art Academy, Nanjing, China.

Additionally, his installation/performance projects have been exhibited at the March Gallery in Richmond, Virginia (The Day of the Dinosaur); Charter Oak Cultural Center in Hartford, Connecticut (Fragments of Dispersion); the University of Maryland (Journey Home), and the Medalta Potteries National Historic Site in Alberta, Canada (Where Have All the Children Gone?).

More information on the artist may be found at http://www.robertkatzsculptor.com

This text appeared in the brochure printed conjunction with the exhibition Robert Katz: The Five Books of Moses on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum from September 18, 2016–January 5, 2017.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for all visitors, including residents of the Hebrew Home, their families, and the general public, who come from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs, and elsewhere. RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 12,000 older adults through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718.581.1596 for holiday hours or to schedule group tours, or for further information visit our website at http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

 

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

On view July 27–October 23, 2016 in the Gilbert Pavilion Gallery
Text by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator

Etching Out Dreams: Contemporary Slovak Prints by Dušan Kállay, Kamila Štanclová, and Katarína Vavrová features three contemporary artists who share connections to Slovak master Vincent Hložník (1919–1997), whose work is represented in the Hebrew Home’s Art Collection. Hložník was an influential artist who founded the graphic design department at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 1952. Both Dušan Kállay and Kamila Štanclová were Hložník’s students, and Katarína Vavrová studied with Hložník’s protégé Albín Brunovský (1935–1997) in the 1980s. Linocut prints from Hložník’s series Dreams (1962) will be on view concurrently this September at the BBLA Gallery at Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan.

The graphic arts have been important to modern Slovak art since before, during, and after the Communist era. In the decades following the establishment of the graphic design department at the Academy, Hložník’s teachings and philosophy influenced generations of Slovak graphic artists. Key characteristics of the graphic work created at the school include expressive figuration, narrative, and an underlying sense of fantasy. Hložník himself was profoundly influenced by Surrealism.

 

Kállay graduated from the Academy in 1972 and went on to become an award-winning illustrator, notably as a recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his contributions to children’s literature. Included in the exhibition are four etchings by Kállay, each rendered with meticulously fine lines and overlapping shapes that demonstrate his technical skill. The works contain an exquisite type of chaos, full of movement and forms that suggest storylines, rather than depict a literal narrative. In 1994, Kállay succeeded Brunovský as head of the Department of Printmaking and Book Illustration at the Academy, thus preserving Hložník’s legacy.

 

Štanclová, who studied with Hložník from 1965–1971, has also received numerous awards, including a UNICEF award for children’s book illustration and a Celebrating Print Award from KADS New York, among others. Štanclová utilizes patterns and figurative motifs in developing her print compositions and their meanings. Rather than make a sketch in advance of preparing an etching plate, she draws directly onto the plate, continuously evolving and reworking the image. She considers this approach to be like writing a diary that documents her creative process. Her etching Dance with the Wolves II (2012) demonstrates her technique of repetition and trial and error, as she uses the repeated shape of a paperclip to fill part of the space and create complex layers.

 

A generation younger than Kállay and Štanclová, Vavrová studied with Brunovský at the Academy until 1990. With their exquisitely delicate imagery, her four painterly etchings on view evoke quietude and human pathos, suggesting different emotional states. Vavrová uses bold dashes of color sparingly to highlight the importance of select compositional elements. Figures isolated or embracing are alienated from one another even if in close proximity, while surrealistically upside down trees and elongated horses contribute to their moods.

Kyselica Art & Design Studio New York (KADS NY)

KADS New York is an art dealership with consulting practice based in New York City specializing in modern and contemporary Central and Eastern European fine art prints, offering collectors a range of exquisite works created by renowned as well as emerging artists. For more information, visit KADSNY.com.

This exhibition takes place in conjunction with a separate show of 20 linocut prints by Hložník from the Hebrew Home Art Collection, entitled Vincent Hložník: Between War and Dream, which will be on view August 16–September 16, 2016, at the BBLA Gallery at Bohemian National Hall, 321 East 73rd Street in Manhattan. A closing reception will be held on September 15 at 6:30 p.m. Viewing hours are Monday–Friday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. The Gallery is occasionally closed for special events. For more information, visit BohemianBenevolent.org or call 212.988.1733. This event is organized by Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale and Consulate General of Slovakia in New York, with support of BBLA.

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Checklist of the Exhibition
All works courtesy KADS New York and the artists

Dušan Kállay (b. 1948)
Encounter of Labyrinths, 1998
Color etching
31 3/8 x 23 ½ inches

Dream of John the Watchmaker, 1983
Color etching and drypoint
31 ¼ x 23 ½ inches

If I Had More Love (The Garden of Cain Series), 1990
Color etching with aquatint
31 3/8 x 24 3/8 inches

Props of the Actor Dusan Hanak, 1986
Color etching and drypoint
31 3/8 x 25 5/8 inches

Kamila Štanclová (b. 1945)
Changing or Undressing the Skin, 1990
Color etching
30 7/8 x 25 ¾ inches

Dance with the Wolves II, 2012
Color etching
31 ½ x 23 3/8 inches

Hide Your Tears Under Your Eye Lids, 1994
Color etching
30 7/8 x 25 ¾ inches

The Old Moving House, 1982
Color etching
30 7/8 x 25 1/16 inches

Katarína Vavrová (b. 1964)
Ascension of Trees, 2013
Hand-colored etching
23 ¾ x 31 5/8 inches

Untitled (Smutenka I), 2014
Hand-colored etching
17 ¾ x 19 ¼ inches

Untitled (Smutenka II), 2014
Hand-colored etching
17 ¾ x 19 ¼ inches

Mystery of Holic’s Castle, 2013
Hand-colored etching
23 7/8 x 27 5/8 inches

This text was printed in the brochure produced in conjunction with the exhibition Etching Out Dreams: Contemporary Slovak Prints by Dušan Kállay, Kamila Štanclová, and Katarína Vavrová on view in the Elma and Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion Gallery from July 27–October 23, 2016, open to the public daily from 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. Hebrew Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 12,000 elderly persons in greater New York through its resources and community service programs.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

 

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

Richard McBee: Relative Narratives

On view April 10–August 14, 2016
Text by Susan Chevlowe, Chief Curator and Museum Director

Richard McBee draws equally from what is read and what is seen. Discussions of Jewish art often set these systems—textual and visual knowledge—in opposition. However, McBee eschews such binaries. Instead, he has a rich and deep knowledge of the Bible and biblical commentaries and of the history of art that together form the wellspring of his art. Sotah Series, 2009, and The Story of Asenath, 2013, are narrative postmodern works that hark back to the way in which stories were told sequentially in the ancient wall paintings at the synagogue at Dura Europos or by Giotto at the Arena Chapel. With their pastiches and visual quotations, they offer the familiar intermingling of present and past in Jewish history and tradition.

Perhaps the only instance of Asenath in the history of art is her appearance in Rembrandt’s Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph of 1656 (Museumslandschafts Hessen, Kassel, Germany), according to McBee. The Sotah story has rarely, if ever, been retold in visual art. McBee’s Sotah Series comprises four, individually titled 24-x-24-inch canvases and Asenath eight panels, 20 x 20 inches also with separate titles. In each grouping, the simply drawn figures act in spaces where the geometry echoes or complements the canvas shape, which is punctuated by such forms as the architectural triangles of pediments (Sotah) or pyramids (Asenath). Both series take place in settings identifiable through simple visual clues that function as a synecdoche relative to the larger narratives: an execution yard; a patriarch’s bedroom; a synagogue, or an apartment block.

Sotah Series

The source of Sotah Series is Numbers 5:11–31, and what is “perhaps one of the most egregious biblical laws concerning women,” according to the artist. The chapter describes a trial by ordeal, referred to in the text as a curse that is imposed on a wife (the Sotah), who is accused of adultery, even if her husband has no witnesses or is simply jealous. As McBee explains and as elaborated in the Talmud (Tractate Sotah 8a), this law demands that the accused woman “be publically humiliated, her hair let down, and her breasts exposed before the community in an effort to get her to confess her ’crime.’’’ This action is represented in the second of the four panels, Sotah Exposed, on the steps of a synagogue building lit by the warm tones emanating from inside and on the right by the cold light of the moon in a dramatic night sky. McBee goes on: “If she is still adamant of her innocence, she is forced to publicly drink magical bitter waters and, if she survives, she is fated to return to her distrustful husband, who put her through this demeaning process in the first place.”

I posed the following questions about the series to McBee:

Can you address how the paintings narrate the scrutiny and humiliation of the Sotah without re-enacting it; in other words, does the representation run the risk of degrading women? How do you avoid it? How do you challenge it?

Are you concerned that depicting the humiliation of the Sotah in a graphic, perhaps even voyeuristic, manner undermines your critique?

Why represent this “long-abandoned practice,” as you describe it, to address contemporary concerns in general, and, in particular, relative to other abuses women face in non-Jewish communities throughout the world today that have nothing to do with Jewish law [halacha]?

RM: The primary motivation for creating Sotah Series is my frustration and anger as we encounter this halacha each year in Numbers. The accused wife’s ordeal seems so cruel and unjust as embedded in the holy Torah I not only love, but constantly use as the primary source of my creativity. Therefore, I was compelled to depict it in as disturbing a way as possible to convey my distress with its contents. Of course, the last painting of the series, Sotah Returns Home, bears my narrative punch. Now that she is found innocent, we see her cowering in fear from her husband and “blessed” to have more and better children with the very man who neither trusted nor loved her.

SC: The works, as you’ve said, examine how “religious and social norms attempt to control women and their bodies.” While the trial by ordeal of the Sotah has been abandoned (and some claim it may never have been practiced), when talking about the series elsewhere, you’ve contextualized it by citing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan’s campaign to Unite to End Violence Against Women: “The most common form of violence experienced by women and girls is physical violence inflicted by an intimate partner. On average, at least one in three women is beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in her lifetime.” (http://www.un.org/en/women/endviolence/pdf/VAW.pdf)

As the U.N. acknowledges, widely condemned outside of the societies where they occur, all kinds of physical and emotional abuse, including forced marriage, female circumcision, traf­ficking, and rape, continue and are both consequence and cause of discrimination against women and violations of their human rights. Such violence is both condoned and practiced by those in power (almost always men), even as they may be relative to traditions or behaviors that have been tolerated and that can be used as justification to continue them. Is at least part of your message that they, too, not only must be, but can be abandoned, as the Jewish case demonstrates?

RM: Sotah Series depicts an injustice that must be seen in the light of day, much like a photograph or painting of an American lynching, the massacre of Guernica famously depicted by Picasso in 1937 (Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid), or Goya’s The Third of May 1808 of 1814 (Museo del Prado, Madrid), or his etchings, The Disasters of War of 1810–20. My job is to make the Jewish audience face the troubling realities of the text we live by. The need to depict the narrative in contemporary terms reflects the unchanging reality of the contemporary subjugation of women. Additionally, the mere fact that we do not (i.e. are not able to) actually enact this ritual today does not remove it from our Torah, nor from the lists of the 613 biblical mitzvot [commandments] nominally accepted by Orthodox Jews.

The Story of Asenath

A reference to Asenath is found in the story of Joseph in Genesis. It appears in the text shortly after Joseph has interpreted Pharoah’s dream: “And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenathpaneah; and he gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Potiphera priest of On. And Joseph went out over the land of Egypt” (Genesis 41:45, Jewish Publication Society, http://theology101.org/bib/jps/gen041.htm). As in Sotah Series, McBee uses expressive brushwork and a limited palette that helps to establish locales and settings and to set the emotional tone for the unfolding of the narrative. Among the hues, there is the bold manganese blue that identifies Shechem, perpetrator of the rape of Dinah and father of Asenath, and the lemon yellow of the wall in the fourth panel that provides a transition into the land of Egypt before morphing into the raking light in the scene where Asenath’s and Joseph’s children, Ephraim and Menasseh, receive their grandfather’s blessing.

SC: Can you speak to the incongruity of settings in The Story of Asenath? The first four panels are spaces that are recognizable and seemingly of the present—a domestic interior and an urban landscape—the next three are foreign and exotic—plainly Egypt—and the final one—familiar and home-like—literally, Jacob’s bedroom. But the familiar is, of course, uncanny as the events taking place in them are not bound by the rules of time and space. Can you elaborate on this progression?

RM: The first scene, Leah and Rachel Pregnant, is a prequel in the doctor’s office. Rachel is pregnant with Joseph and Leah is pregnant with Dinah. The beginnings of domesticity will soon be shattered by rape and murder and exile in a harsh, black-and-white urban environment. Egypt is deeply foreign, but softened by the inclusion of Joseph into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar in the seventh panel, Asenath Brings Joseph Home to Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar (a reference to Rembrandt’s The Return of the Prodigal Son of ca. 1661-1669, in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg), signaling Joseph’s return to Jewish identity. Finally, one finds Jacob’s home, in which the first domestic scene is brought to a conclusion by Asenath, central and dominant, in Asenath Confirms Jacob’s Crossed Blessing. A biblical family portrait, it echoes the royal family portrait of Velázquez’s Las Meninas of 1656 (Museo del Prado, Madrid), as well as being a visual acknowledgement of Rembrandt’s Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph.

SC: Against their father’s wishes, Dinah’s brothers take revenge for her rape by murdering all the men of the city and taking their women, wealth, and property as spoils (Genesis 34:25–29). You depict a firing squad made up of the brothers, Simeon and Levi, in the third panel, Slaughter of the Men of Shechem, a composition that pays homage to such iconic works as Goya’s The Third of May 1808 and Manet’s several versions of Execution of Emperor Maximilian of 1867–69. Goya’s The Third of May presented a new, radical, up-close view of war and mass killings. Closer to our own time, Picasso’s Massacre in Korea of 1951 (Musée Picasso, Paris), where the victims are women and children, also relates compositionally to your work. In your painting, Simeon and Levi hold rifles, while in Genesis they used swords. What modern warfare sometimes reveals is a blurring of victim and perpetrator. With these modern weapons, and because the victims are nude, I can’t help thinking of the iconography of representations of the Holocaust and the death squads pictured in those rare photographs that document such killings. What is meant in your work by this allusion, if it is there?

RM: Both the rape of Dinah and the vicious response of Simeon and Levi are cautionary tales that initially seem to be dead ends. Rape and sodomy followed by calculated mass murder seem to have no narrative purpose. These events cause a schism between Jacob and his vigilante sons that persists through Jacob’s final blessing at the end of Genesis. It is the midrash that salvages a feminist tale from male squalor. The ancient midrash provides Joseph with 1) a Jewish wife and Jewish children; 2) the possibility of a Jewish identity (my midrash), and 3) a narrative purpose to an otherwise horrific encounter with the residents of Canaan. The art historical references you see in Slaughter of the Men of Shechem are all intentional. The victims’ nudity echoes their circumcision (see Genesis 34:24). The urban landscape is actually a battlefield ruin.

SC: In the biblical text, Jacob chastises his sons for taking revenge, expressing his fear that the survivors in the Hivite land will in turn seek retribution. The biblical chapter ends with a rhetorical question posed by the sons in their defense: “And they said: ‘Should one deal with our sister as with a harlot?’” (Genesis 34:31). Jacob wishes to prevent a cycle of war that may commence with this incident. Did you think about this in your interpretation of the narrative?

RM: In the biblical narrative Jacob cannot stop the cycle of violence. Only the midrash allows him to save Asenath from the bloodletting.

SC: We then see her brothers turn against Dinah, because her daughter is born of shame. Jacob protects her by sending her to Egypt. In the fourth panel, Jacob Saves Asenath, as in the first panel, Jacob is dressed in dark clothing with a broad-brimmed hat; here he stands protectively between Dinah and her brothers. Your accompanying text explains that Dinah’s daughter is Asenath, who, as the (adopted) daughter of Potiphar, will be given to Joseph by Pharoah to wed (Genesis 41:45). That she is Dinah’s daughter we know from the midrash (Midrash Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer), not from the text. (This also makes her Joseph’s niece!). Can you tell me about the next scene showing Asenath with Potiphar and his wife? Is that the angel swooping in from the upper left, and what is the secret the child is whispering in Mrs. Potiphar’s ear?

RM: In the fifth panel, Asenath Arrives in Egypt, the angel who brought her to Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar is hovering protectively. Potiphar is appalled by the intrusion because, as some have suggested, he is a eunuch who lusted after Joseph, whom Asenath is destined to marry. At the same time, Asenath whispers to Mrs. Potiphar that she (Asenath) will fulfill Mrs. Potiphar’s vision of a role in Joseph’s family. Mrs. Potiphar realizes her role is not as wife, but as mother-in-law.

SC: The scene of Joseph and the crowd of women in his thrall, Asenath Discovered by Joseph, is your own midrash. Joseph is dressed as an Egyptian, but the women near him are a multicultural group of semi-clad and dressed women, perhaps from different places and social classes. Can you say more about this? And, of course, Asenath, rather than portrayed as an Egyptian, is clothed anachronistically in what looks to be a costume derived from western dress of the late 19th century—perhaps from Edvard Munch, Summer Night’s Dream (The Voice) of 1893 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

RM: Asenath Discovered By Joseph is entirely my midrash. The adoring Egyptian women are modeled on the screaming fans of the Beatles. Many midrashim support the notion of Joseph’s sexual appeal. Asenath is contrasted as a prim (and holy, “kadosh,” as we see from the Hebrew letters across her chest) example of Jewish female modesty.

SC: In Asenath Confirms Jacob’s Crossed Blessing, when Jacob intentionally blesses Ephraim before Menasseh, you assign an important role to Asenath; she prevents Joseph from switching hands to bless the older child first. Is this your midrash, too?

RM: Asenath’s active role in the crossed blessing is indeed my own midrash, but inspired by Rembrandt’s prominent depiction of Asenath in Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph. Scholars debate why Rembrandt included a non-scriptural character in this painting. Jamie Buettner explains the reason as, “The inclusion of Asenath in the family drama underscores the importance of the mother in Dutch society” [California State University, Fresno https://www.fresnostate.edu/socialsciences/historydept/documents/organizations/hindsight/FamilyBenediction.pdf]. Nonetheless, I detect a much more narrative rationale for her presence in Rembrandt. Louis Ginzberg quotes Yelammedenu (Tanhuma B) that Asenath cared for the ailing Jacob in Egypt and informed Joseph that his father was failing and it was time to ask for his blessing (The Legends of the Jews, 1909). I would not be surprised if Rembrandt knew that midrash.

SC: How do you see the relationship between Sotah Series and The Story of Asenath?

RM: Sotah Series is a protest, a warning; The Story of Asenath is a celebration of the pivotal role a woman plays in the future of the Jewish people. Born out of the violence of rape, its ensuing revenge of mass murder, and the murderous threat of her own uncles, Asenath’s role of maintaining her Jewish identity (given to her by her grandfather Jacob) and standing apart from her Egyptian peers, allows her to impart that identity to the second most powerful man in Egypt, Joseph. It is Asenath who fully understands the wisdom of her grandfather’s unorthodox blessing of her and Joseph’s sons. It is she who guides and sustains; she is not a victim, rather she shapes the Jewish future.

About the Artist

 Richard McBee was born in New York City and studied painting at the Art Students League of New York. He has dealt exclusively with subject matter from the first five books of the Bible, rabbinic commentaries, and from Jewish history in figurative narratives since 1976. In 1991 he was one of the founding members of the American Guild of Judaic Art. Since 2008 he has been active as a curator in the Jewish Art Salon in New York City and most recently organized Passover and the Consequences of Freedom at Brooklyn Jewish Art Gallery, a co-presentation with Jewish Art Salon.

McBee has exhibited in the U.S. and Israel since the late 1970s. Most recently, three of his paintings from a series on Hagar were included in a group exhibition organized by Jewish Art Salon, New York/New Work, at Mishkan Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel (2015–2016). He was also included in the Jewish Art Salon Pavilion at the Jerusalem Biennale, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem (2015); in two exhibitions at the Museum at Hebrew Union College, New York, Evil: A Matter of Intent (2015–16) and The Sexuality Spectrum (2012–2013); Terror: Artists Respond, Dershowitz Center Gallery at Industry City, Brooklyn (2011), and Dura Europos Project, Museum of Jewish Art in Philadelphia (2010–11).

From 2000 until 2014 he wrote a regular column in The Jewish Press surveying the Jewish arts scene and has also been published in The Forward and The Jewish Week. Lecturing throughout the country, his artwork is also in many private collections. Additional information on the artist, and his writings, may be found at http://www.richardmcbee.com

This text, which originally appeared in the printed exhibition brochure, was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Richard McBee: Relative Narratives on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum from April 10–August 14, 2016.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for all visitors, including residents of Hebrew Home, their families, and the general public, who come from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs, and elsewhere. RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 12,000 older adults through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718.581.1596 for holiday hours or to schedule group tours, or for further information visit our website at http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

 

Making Continuity Contemporary: Eastern Europe in New York

On view from March 13–July 17, 2016
Text by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator

An exhibition featuring work by eight artists originally from Eastern Europe, Making Continuity Contemporary: Eastern Europe in New York, addresses themes of personal history, geographical dislocation, identity, and intellectual freedom. In different ways, each artist explores both the disruptions in and continuities with their cultural backgrounds, whether through pictorial abstraction, participatory projects, auditory or written language, or conceptual reinterpretation of cultural symbols. Their mediums also range widely, from hand-drawn animation and audio, silver light drawings, and painting to works in mixed media, photography, sculpture, and installation.

Maryna Bilak, a Ukrainian artist originally from the Carpathian Mountains, earned an MFA from the Institute of Art of Subcarpathian National University in 2007 and came to the U.S. in 2012 to further her art studies by enrolling at the New York Studio School. Using her knowledge of traditional Ukrainian textile motifs, she incorporates these patterns into three-dimensional paintings in which she manipulates color and shape by folding canvas and in multimedia installations in which she assembles hand-painted stones. Bilak started crafting the stones from discarded materials, such as scraps of plastic and tape from the floor of her studio. The painted stones suggest how fragments can be rearranged and assembled in such a way as to foster cultural continuity.

Alina and Jeff Bliumis’s series Casual Conversations in Brooklyn (2007) engages questions of how cultural experiences and identities intersect. The photographers spent a day in Brighton Beach—home to a large Jewish and Russian-speaking community—and offered passersby the opportunity to choose from three different signs featuring the words “Russian,” “Jewish,” and “American,” or to create their own. On view are three photographs of subjects photographed holding the signs they chose—sometimes more than two—to represent their cultural identities. Alina and Jeff Bliumis were born in Belarus and Moldova, respectively.

Yevgenia Nayberg, who grew up in Kiev, Ukraine, is represented by the painting Bird Dictionary (2011), a rumination on the process of learning a new language. Phrases in Cyrillic text are incorporated into the work, labeled as ordinary things: “regular person,” “regular landscape,” and “standard moon.” However, the reality is the opposite, and the work touches on the idea that learning a new language is strange and surreal for non-speakers. The artist also pays homage to Suprematism in another work on view, a triptych entitled Happy Man Series (2013).

Bulgarian-born artist Eva Nikolova references Balkan architecture in her handdrawn animation and silver light drawings—works on light sensitive paper—that construct narratives about memory and personal dislocation. In the animation Zemya Zemya (2008), the iconic architectural form of the Orthodox Christian church is seen through a series of free-associative events, leaving interpretation of the narrative up to the viewer. According to the artist, the title is a doubling of the Bulgarian word for earth, land, or ground and refers to the signage on rockets designating the missile type—ground-to-ground or surface-to-surface. The architectural images in Nikolova’s works function as cultural emblems—whether intact or seemingly dilapidated—and explore shifting identities.

Diana Shpungin’s You Will Remember This (2011) is a hand-drawn animation derived from video footage of her father several months before his death. In it he speaks about life in Soviet Latvia, including an anecdote about how he acquired his first car in exchange for 15 tons of potatoes. The animation is a companion piece to the installation 1664 Sundays (2011), which is not on view in this exhibition, but that was comprised of a pile of potatoes collected by the artist and distributed to attendees with paper bags printed with her father’s recipe of a meal he cooked for her on Sundays. The potato functions as a symbol for this black market culture, used as currency, but remains an ordinary object capable of evoking memory, memorial, and the intimate politics of food that were of great importance during grain shortages in the USSR, according to the artist. The title of the installation refers to the number of Sundays that Shpungin and her father overlapped in their lifetime. The work suggests the transmission and reception of cultural memory across generations.

Wings denote freedom and liberation in the work of illustrator Peter Sís, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to the U.S. in 1982. His works in the exhibition include two illustrations, one blue, one yellow, from his adaptation of The Conference of the Birds (The Penguin Press, 2011)—a 12th century Persian epic poem. A surrealistic pattern in the shape of an eye formed from his drawing of a flock of birds spreads across a richly colored surface, demonstrating the process of journeying. The motif of wings also appears in Sís’s autobiographical children’s book The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (2007). Through a series of illustrations and journal entries, Sís tells the story of a young boy who takes flight on his bicycle made with wings of “dreams” and escapes over a barbed-wire fence toward a distant New York City. The wings are represented by sheets of colored paper that throughout symbolize the artist’s own drawings. The story ends with the fall of a border wall.

Leonard Ursachi’s drawings of bunkers and a maquette for Fat Boy (2014)—a large sculpture on view in Prospect Park in Brooklyn referencing the first Atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man—engage what the artist describes as “the bunker mentality.” Ursachi’s native Romania is dotted with bunkers abandoned after the Communist era, existing as militant symbols that instill a sense of fear and the unknown. Fortified and practical structures that function as emblems of violence, bunkers are capable of withstanding heavy damage and protecting those inside, but they also allow their inhabitants to act on the offensive. In 1998, eighteen years after he defected from Romania, Ursachi began using the form to explore the contradictory feelings of fear and refuge that they suggest. The four drawings on view document the various forms Ursachi’s bunkers have taken over the years.

Beginning in 2012, a series of exhibitions have been mounted that were drawn from The Hebrew Home’s collection of Eastern European art of the 1950s and 1960s. These exhibitions focused on different movements, individuals and groups of artists—both official and dissident—working in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states during the Cold War. The current exhibition has emerged in an effort to look beyond those earlier generations of Eastern European artists to the current group of eight artists, who originate from seven different countries and who work and live in new circumstances, yet, in varying ways, maintain connections with their pasts.

Making Continuity Contemporary: Eastern Europe in New York sheds light on some of the strategies and interests among this particular group of artists who have spent part of their lives away from the places they were born. The artists in the exhibition—some of whom left their countries of origin as children and others who left as adults—engage issues of Eastern European cultural identity from diverse perspectives, including the vantage point of some who left Eastern Europe with extreme difficulty and under duress. This exhibition does not seek to trace any direct lines of influence from past to present, but rather delves into how contemporary artists of Eastern European origin are engaging personal histories and cultural identities today.

This text, which originally appeared in the printed exhibition brochure, was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Making Continuity Contemporary: Eastern Europe in New York on view in the Elma and Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion Gallery from March 13–July 17, 2016.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. Hebrew Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 12,000 elderly persons in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718-581-1596 for holiday hours and to schedule group tours, or for further information please visit our website at http://www.hebrewhome.org/art

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

To Forgive and Remember: Reshaping Contemporary Consciousness
Text by Susan Chevlowe, Chief Curator and Museum Director

Planned to coincide with the Jewish High Holidays, To Forgive and Remember: Reshaping Contemporary Consciousness addresses the historical and present impact of judgment, forgiveness, oneness and remembrance on individuals and communities through the lens of contemporary art. The artists’ explorations of these themes evoke personal and distant histories, and what they reveal occupies a place at an intersection between the two. Communities and cultures are distinct and have their unique characteristics, yet these processes and values echo across the experiences of individuals and groups. They allow for reconciliation and repair and keep both individuals and societies moving forward.

The exhibition went on view on the eve of the New Year (Rosh Hashanah), which is followed ten days later by the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)—observances that focus on repentance and regret, followed by forgiveness and renewal. As Rabbi Jan R. Urbach has written:

Teshuvah is a kind of creativity. As a creative act, it is not a simple return. Teshuvah is a return forward, a return to something that never was, a return to a new creation. We return to who we have always been, and are meant to be, but have not yet become. We return to growth and possibility that have lain dormant within us and not yet flourished, much as sculpture lies hidden within a brute block of stone. That is the sense in which teshuvah is a creative act.*

The connection of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to creativity is profound. As Rabbi Urbach explains, the New Year is associated with the creation of the world, and the idea of repentance (teshuvah) with the re-creation of the self. The exhibition consists of 15 works by nine artists in a range of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, collage, silkscreen and linoleum printing, textile and assemblage. Using photography, artists Aileen Bassis and Dennis Red-Moon Darkeem create autobiographical works informed by their childhoods in the Bronx; Robert Kirschbaum and Elyssa Wortzman approach the biblical story of the Sacrifice of Isaac, part of the New Year liturgy, through the medium of abstraction; both Alexis Mendoza and Ken Goldman evoke Dada and Surrealism in their curious juxtapositions of objects and materials; Joyce Ellen Weinstein’s print and Anne Kantor Kellett’s sculpture draw inspiration from their experiences in Lithuania and Rwanda, respectively; Laurie Wohl’s textile, embroidered in Hebrew, Arabic and Greek, evokes a hope for reconciliation and oneness.

The Artworks

In her series Stories End, 2012, Aileen Bassis has created virtual altered books using images she made from a real book, Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends. She digitally altered, combined and re-photographed images of the book and her own photographs of former Bronx synagogues. Today, these former synagogues have been transformed into churches, secular community centers or have been abandoned. The series pays homage to her childhood in the South Bronx, using the book that she re-discovered when emptying her parents’ apartment. It had been a gift to her brother from their Temple Sisterhood.

Dennis RedMoon Darkeem’s Star of the RedMoon, 2014, is an autobiographical work infused with cultural memory created from photographs and designed into a Native American Indian star quilt pattern. It is representative of the traditional patch-work of many Native tribes in the Southeastern United States, who used old scraps of European fabrics to create blankets and clothing. According to Darkeem: “Patchwork tells a story through colors, images and placement. This work tells the story of my birth, for example, my birth stone, a diamond, buildings representing my growing up in the city and the grass dance—the style of dance I grew up learning as a child.”

Ken Goldman’s plastic, 3D-printed Selichot–Schulklopfer–iPhone dock, 2015, updates the traditional wooden synagogue knocker or schulklopfer. Schulklopfer refers both to a specific type of wooden hammer and to the individual in the community who banged on doors to wake congregants in Ashkenazi communities (and sometimes in Sephardi ones) in time for the early morning prayers of forgiveness (Selichot) said leading up to the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement. The shape of the wooden hammer rep-resented a ram’s horn instrument (shofar) blown as part of the synagogue services. Down-loaded with a shofar app, an iPhone is set and placed in the dock. One is then awakened to the sound of the shofar blasts resonating through the ram’s horn-shaped speaker.

Anne Kantor Kellett says that being a daughter of Holocaust survivors influenced the creation of her sculpture, Gloibn, 2012, whose title means “believe” in Yiddish. As she explains: “The negative space beneath Gloibn’s chin is integral to the piece. It gives the feeling of being suspended, defying gravity, and therefore speaks to faith and inner strength.” She continues, “her right eye appears gouged out, but represents inward reflection. It’s about justice and what is seen and cannot be seen. The back of her head reveals points of vulnerability, which recur in my work. At once strong and broken. Her scars are rooted in nature, which always triumphs.”

Kantor Kellett’s other work in the exhibition, Rachmones, 2011, meaning to have mercy, compassion or empathy, was inspired by her work with survivors of genocide in Rwanda. She explains: “It has a proud air but is contemplative and pensive. Rwanda’s justice system includes Gacaca, which is a system by which people who committed genocide are judged by their community members before they can reenter society. Judgment and the question of ‘forgiveness’ loom in this piece. The top of the head is open to receive, judge and to let go.”

Part of a larger group of drawings, Robert Kirschbaum’s three works on view from the series Akedah, 2008–2009, belong to an abstract narrative of the Sacrifice, or Binding, of Isaac. According to the artist: “For more than thirty years, my art has been a means for me to reconcile the existence of tangible sanctified architectural elements in the home and in the synagogue with the broader significance of the Temple, its destruction and its mythic re-creation. Recognizing that this work of architecture is the single most potent image in a religion that eschews representation, I have undertaken to explore the symbol of the Temple within strictures imposed by the second commandment.” Awareness of the centrality of exile to the Jewish experience has led Kirschbaum to internalize the ideal of return and the miracle of redemption. His richly and vigorously drawn, yet precise, geometric and architectonic forms, evoke both the encounter with the divine and the destruction and mythic recreation of the Temple—the historic site of ancient altars.

Alexis Mendoza’s Untitled, 2015, is from his recent series of works, Time and Place, in which vintage or antique furniture symbolizes a living past, with the acceptance of pain, as, for example, in the case of this work, where pain is represented by the steel nails that have been hammered, their points down, into the surface of a found wood bench from the 1940s. Works from the series embody the notion that one must go on: forgive and forget. As personal possessions that their owners have lived with for a long time, furniture has the ability to tell stories on multiple levels. Individual chairs or benches are also places to sit to listen to and share stories, and, ironically, one can sit on the flat heads of the nails and remain unharmed; perhaps the pain here is bearable if only one gives the other a chance to share it. According to the artist: “The strength of the nails on the wood and the sensibility of the bench or chair, etc., create a situation that does not exclude the spectator . . . inviting me to activate their visual and emotional perception. . . . my artworks bring the viewer to a place of hope, rhythm, remembrance or surprise.”

Joyce Ellen Weinstein’s silkscreen and linoleum print, Blind Leading the Blind with Yellow Cross, n.d., grew out of time spent in Vilnius, Lithuania, during an artist’s residency at Europos Parkas Open Air Museum of the Center of Europe. While in Vilnius, she observed and photographed employees from a local furniture factory practicing trust and bonding exercises. Viewed afterward, the images suggested to her mysterious, even ominous, goings on that lent themselves to reinterpretation in a series of prints entitled The Blind Leading the Blind. According to Weinstein: “Some people were blindfolded and others walked on tight ropes attached high up on the trees. I took many photographs documenting this activity. Later, when I looked at the photos, I found the imagery very startling, intriguing, mysterious and ominous, lending them to interpretations related to the human condition.”

Laurie Wohl’s Will There Yet Come? A Grain of Hope, 2015, a textile with a spiritual narrative, alluding to the form of a traditional Jewish prayer shawl (tallit), incorporates a question posed by Israeli poet Leah Goldberg: “Will there yet come days of forgiveness and grace?” According to Wohl, building on texts from Micah, Psalms and Peter, “the piece signals the longing for reconciliation and oneness in the three Abrahamic religions found in the poetry of Israeli poets Leah Goldberg and Yehudah Amichai, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and the Israeli Druze poet Samih al-Qasim.”

The texts are in Hebrew, Arabic and Greek. The translations are as follows:
Amichai: “Amen and amen, so may it be his will.” “a stone of amen and love. Amen and Amen, and may it come to pass.” “From the place where we are right/Flowers will never grow/In the spring.”
Darwish: “Salaam is two enemies longing, each separately, to yawn on boredom’s sidewalk.”
Al Qasim: “There’s enough room for both of us in the field.” Micah 4:4: “every man shall sit under his fig tree and none shall make him afraid.” 1 Peter 3:11 (Ps. 34:14): “Seek peace and pursue it.”

According to Elyssa Wortzman, her painting, Sacrifice, 2012, represents the ritual of animal sacrifice shrouded in an ascending cloud of mysterious smoke that both covers and reveals. The story of the traditional sacrifice ritual of the Akedah, or Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22: 1–19), in which Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son, is read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. Wortzman hopes that by obscuring the event itself, and instead providing an archetypal, emotional and psychological offering, the viewer may project her individual sacrifices and offerings into the work.

The Artists

Born in New York City in 1949, and now living and working in New Jersey, Aileen Bassis creates work in book arts, printmaking, installation and digital photography, and is a published poet. She received a fellowship in photography from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a grant from the Puffin Foundation, and her work is in the collections of Dartmouth and Wellesley College and Newark Public Library. http://www.aileenbassis.com

A New York-based artist, who was born in the Bronx in 1982, Dennis RedMoon Darkeem’s work focuses on the fragmentation and manipulation of structure and surface, while exploring the shape-shifting force of popular culture in our lives. He received his BFA and MFA from Pratt Institute and has participated in exhibitions and programs at the International Center of Photography, The Laundromat Project, MoMA PS1 and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. Darkeem lives and works in the Bronx. http://dennisredmoondarkeem.weebly.com

As an observant Jew and artist, Ken Goldman, who was born in Memphis, TN, in 1960, feels he has the privilege and challenge of creating art from within. While at times seemingly irreverent, his works are inspired by and react to Jewish traditions and texts. His mixed media works have been shown in Israel, Europe and the United States. He will have a solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art in fall 2015. Goldman lives and works on Kibbutz Shluchot in Israel. http://www.kengoldmanart.com

Anne Kantor Kellett was born in Brooklyn in 1949 and attended the High School of Music and Art. She is a graduate of Fordham University and the National Academy School of Fine Arts, and also studied at the Art Students League and the International Center for Photography, and was the recipient of a Newington-Cropsey Foundation Fellowship of sculpture. She lives and works in Bucks County, PA. http://www.kantorkellett.com

In his art, Robert Kirschbaum explores Judaic concepts of sacred space derived from ancient Jewish art as well as early Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah. Kirschbaum, who was born in New York City in 1949, received his MFA degree from Yale University in 1974, undergraduate degrees from the University of Rochester and the Boston Museum School, and is currently Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. http://www.artspacenh.org/artists/RobertKirschbaum

Alexis Mendoza is an artist, writer and independent curator. He has exhibited his artworks in museums and galleries in countries around the world, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. He is co-founder and co-creator of the Bronx Latin American Art Biennial and a founding member of BxArts Factory. Mendoza was born in Havana City, Cuba, in 1972, and lives and works in the Bronx. http://artcurated.blogspot.com

Joyce Ellen Weinstein, who was born in New York City in 1940, is in permanent and private collections in the United States and Europe. Her artwork appears in Fixing the World: Jewish American Artists of the Twentieth Century (New England University Press) and The Book as Art (National Museum of Women in the Arts). She was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist candidate, and three- time finalist and one-time winner of the Metro DC Dance Award for scenic design. She lives and works in Manhattan. http://www.joyceellenweinstein.com

Laurie Wohl, who was born in Washington, D.C., in 1942, is an internationally-known fiber artist. Her Unweavings® have been widely exhibited and are held in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, American Bible Society, Constitutional Court of South Africa, Catholic Theological Union and numerous other public and private collections, and have been on long-term loan to United States Embassies in Beirut, Vienna, Tunis, Cape Town and Pretoria. She lives and works in Manhattan. http://www.lauriewohl.com

Elyssa Wortzman, an artist, educator, Jewish Spiritual Director and developer of award-winning Jewish cultural programs, is completing her D.M in. in youth mindfulness through the arts at the Graduate Theological Foundation. Wortzman is a Fellow of the Jewish Art Salon, New York, and has two current exhibitions in San Francisco. She was among the first participants in Art Kibbutz’s “The Jewish Waltz with Planet Earth” artist residency. Wortzman was born in Toronto, in 1970, and lives and works in San Francisco. http://www.elyssawortzman.com

*Rabbi Jan R. Urbach, “Teshuvah—A Creative Process,” in Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, ed., Rosh Hashanah Readings: Inspiration, Information, Contemplation (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006): 5-6.

Works in the Exhibition
All works courtesy of the artists

Aileen Bassis
Peace, from the series Stories End, 2012
Archival inkjet print, 16 x 16 in.

Vanished, from the series Stories End, 2012
Archival inkjet print, 16 x 16 in.

Magic, from the series Stories End, 2012
Archival inkjet print, 16 x 16 in.

Happiness, from the series Stories End, 2012
Archival inkjet print, 16 x 16 in.

Dennis RedMoon Darkeem
Star of the RedMoon, 2014
Collage on board with made fabric framed, 36 x 47 in.

Ken Goldman
Selichot–Schulklopfer–iPhone dock, 2015
Plastic: 3D printed, 9 1/8 x 4 1/4 x 1 3/8 in.

Anne Kantor Kellett
Gloibn, 2012
Hydrocal, pewter patina, 20 x 10 x 14 in.

Rachmones, 2011
Plaster, bronze patina, 24 x 8 x 10 in.

Robert Kirschbaum
Akedah Series #40, 2008–2009
Mixed media on paper, 9 x 8 in.

Akedah Series #46, 2008–2009
Mixed media on paper, 9 x 8 in.

Akedah Series #48, 2009–2009
Mixed media on paper, 9 x 8 in.

Alexis Mendoza
Untitled, from the series, Time and Place, 2015
1945 wood bench and steel nails, 29 x 41 x 22 in.

Joyce Ellen Weinstein
Blind Leading the Blind with Yellow Cross, n.d.
Silkscreen and linoleum block print, 30 x 30 in.

Laurie Wohl
Will There Yet Come? A Grain of Hope, 2015
Unweaving® fiber art, 35 x 43 in.

Elyssa Wortzman
Sacrifice, 2012
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 40 x 40 in.

This text originally appeared in the brochure produced in conjunction with the exhibition To Forgive and Remember: Reshaping Contemporary Consciousness on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum from September 10, 2015–January 3, 2016.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for all visitors, including residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public, who come from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and elsewhere. RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 13,000 older adults through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and exhibitions open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718 581.1596 for holiday hours or to schedule group tours, or for further information visit our website at http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
RiverSpringHealth.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

 Vincent Hložník: Between War and Dream

Click here to visit the online exhibition

On view from March 29–July 26, 2015
Text by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator

Vincent Hložník was born in 1919 in the small Slovak town of Svederník and studied drawing in secondary school. He went on to attend the School of Applied Arts in Prague in 1937. Just two years later, on March 15, 1939, German troops occupied the city. Hložník remained in Prague, and was profoundly affected by the daily atrocities that were occurring around him, including deportations, beatings and executions perpetrated by the Nazi authorities (Petránsky 116). In his works of the period, along with overt depictions of the effects of war, such as isolated figures and scenes of refugees, he drew and painted horses, circus people, clowns and musicians. Such motifs suggest, ironically, an anxious presence, set within a grim, anonymous world. Many of these same subjects continued to appear in later works. For example, in the color linocuts on view in the present exhibition, which represent a turning point in Hložník’s career, these figurative motifs—always related to exploration of the human condition—begin to take on more symbolic and metaphorical meaning (Horváthová 13). One of his most explicit references to the Nazi atrocities is in a postwar etching, entitled Incarcerated (Concentration Camp) of 1946 (Petránsky 77).

For Surrealists and other artists of the period, realistic styles were inadequate to express the devastation and humanitarian crises brought on by war. The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s Guernica was perhaps the era’s most influential work to address this theme. An abstract work in stark black and white, it was painted in response to the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica and became a widely recognized antiwar and antifascist icon after it was exhibited at the Paris International Exposition in 1937. The painting’s influence is visible in linocuts and other works by Hložník that convey this same message of protest.

Around 1940, Hložník met Ján Mudroch (1909-1968), who was a prominent figure in “Generation 1909,” a group of modernist Slovak artists all born around that year. “Generation World War II,” of which Hložník was a part, is considered to be a direct continuation of the modernist approaches to art and humanistic social themes that were of concern to “Generation 1909.” At Mudroch’s studio in Bratislava, Hložník was introduced to a group of young artists with whom he discussed Surrealism. Hložník credited this encounter as being a pivotal moment when Surrealism opened a completely new set of artistic possibilities that allowed him to explore the realm of the purely imaginative (Petránsky 138–139).

Following his graduation from the School of Applied Arts in 1942, Hložník went on to work in the medium for which he is best known: the graphic arts. Although his initial focus was on painting, beginning in 1945, he began experimenting with woodblock printing, most likely turning his attention in this direction as the medium moved to the fore of modern Slovak art. This was the result of the achievements of a few key artists working in the late 1930s, who had begun to approach graphic art from a new, modernist perspective, including placing an emphasis on the reduction of form to its essential geometry and exploiting the potential of the medium’s inherent expressive power. Their explorations resulted in the creation of modern art that maintained a link with earlier styles and traditions, such as Slovak woodcuts and German Expressionism (Petránsky 130). Hložník worked in almost every printmaking technique in existence, including woodcut, engraving, linocut, etching, drypoint, aquatint, lithography, monotype, autography and algraphy (Horváthová 14). In addition to being a fine artist, he also was lauded as a book illustrator, and from the early 1940s collaborated with avant-garde typographer Dušan Šulc (1912-1996), a creative relationship that lasted for more than 40 years (Peterajová 5).

In linocut printmaking, the artist creates a relief template by carving an image into a sheet of linoleum that is then inked and pressed against a piece of paper, either by hand or press. Linoleum and other materials used to create plates, such as wood, can be used multiple times and are usually limited to a particular number. For ex­ample, the prints on view are all from an edition of 20. Before 1962, the majority of Hložník’s graphics were in black and white until he became interested in painting again. The linocuts demonstrate this renewed interest with their unique incorporation of red, green, yellow and blue geometric planes of color. During this period he utilized the same semi-figurative imagery—horses, human limbs, contorted figures—that appear in his vividly colored and often large-scale oil and tempera paintings.

The animals in Hložník’s prints and paintings are often contorted into semi-abstract shapes or shown mounted by ominous riders. In the color linocuts, among other works, horses reference Cervantes’s 17th-century novel Don Quixote and its protagonist’s farcical quest to right the world’s wrongs according to an out­moded code of chivalry. In a dystopic universe, detached human limbs, tangled corpses, monstrous figures assembled from eyes and teeth, the Angel of Death, threatening flanks of silhouetted and stylized archaic warriors holding spears and shields rendered as tiny distant figures signal unspecified danger. Angles and voids activate the space and create an instability marking the very real threat of annihilation, whether from war or nuclear arms. Three other series of prints also dating from 1962 incorporate similar motifs, entitled Dreams, The Lost Generals and Majesty of the Void. The latter two address emptiness and such existential questions as humanity’s place in the universe, and were exhibited in Bratislava at what was then the Municipal Gallery of Bratislava (now Bratislava City Gallery). Other major cycles of prints created from the late 1950s to the mid-60s address displacement, loss, destruction and death using the same symbolism.

One of Hložník’s most notable accomplishments was establishing the highly influential Department of Graphic Art and Illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava after he joined the faculty in 1952. From this department emerged what is referred to as The Hložník School—a generation of Slovak graphic artists who approached art with a “deeply humanist experiencing of the world, on the border of reality and dream, of drama and poetry,” as described by L’udovít Petránsky, author of a monograph on Hložník. They often exhibited together as a group under the same name (Petránsky 383). Some of the most important figures in Slovak art in the latter half of the 20th century emerged from this school.

After 1948 when the country fell under Communist authority as a satellite state of the Soviet Union, modernist styles in all the arts were officially banned. All art had to adhere to the tenets of Socialist Realism, a figurative style that glorified Soviet ideals. Also described as “official art,” it was the only style allowed in Eastern Bloc countries. However, some modernist artists, including Hložník, for most of his career, managed to innovate and find success even within the confines of official art, surviving the tug-of-war over cultural policies between hardline Stalinists and reform-minded liberals.

In 1962—the same year the prints on view were created—Hložník was serving as chancellor at the Academy and exhibiting at major venues both domestically and abroad. Although his work drew from modernist styles that were banned or shunned in Czechoslovakia at the time, his subjects were well received and he was a highly-respected artist and teacher. However, in 1972, during the process of “normalization” when new, hardline policies were implemented, Hložník was forced to give up his position. Many other intellectuals suffered similar fates, including art historian and critic Radislav Matuštík (1929-2006), who wrote frequently about Hložník, including the introduction to the catalogue for the artist’s one-person show at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1965.

Hložník subsequently turned more of his attention to painting after 1972. His work has been widely exhibited and collected throughout the Slovak Republic and in other countries. An essential figure in modern Slovak art as both a teacher and artist, Hložník had an immeasurable influence on its direction, particularly in the graphic arts. His ongoing commitment to social justice is evidenced by his participation as one of 24 signatories representing important Slovak cultural figures who endorsed the “Declaration on the Deportation of the Jews,” a proclamation published in 1987, which denounced antisemitic measures against Slovak Jews during World War II. Hložník died in Bratislava in 1997.

The Hebrew Home acquired the linocuts in this exhibition following their inclusion in the 1965 London exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery. Founded in 1960 by eminent art collector Eric Estorick (1913-1993) and his wife, Salome (1920-1989), the gallery was a premier venue for Eastern European artists to exhibit in the West. Estorick was born in New York City in 1913, his family having emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism. He became a political writer and lecturer in sociology at New York University before settling in London. Jacob Reingold (1915-1999), the Hebrew Home’s executive director for almost four decades, met Estorick through a family connection. In the mid-1970s, with the assistance of donors and Estorick’s support, Reingold, an art lover who established the Home’s renowned art program, was able to acquire many works by artists who were mostly unknown in the West. These works have been “rediscovered” in the Hebrew Home’s collection in recent years.

Further reading:

 Brier, Pavel. Vincent Hložník (v mojich fotografiách a spomienkach). Bratislava: Petrus, 2005.

Habšudová, Zuzana. “Intersections of Three Artists.” Spectator.sme.sk. The Slovak Spectator, 03 Apr. 2006. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Horváthová, Mária. Introduction. Continuum Ars Et Vita: Vincent Hložník, Ľubo Zelina, Zuzana Hložník. Exh. cat. Bratislava: FO ART, s.r.o., 2007.

Jaloviarová, Renáta. “Predstavili Nepublikované Kresby a Grafiky Vincenta Hložníka.” Pravda.sk. Pravda, 10 Dec. 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Matuštík, Radislav. Introduction. Vincent Hložník. Stratení generáli. Majestát ničoty. Protivojnové cykly 1961–62. Exh. cat. Bratislava: Mestská Galéria, 1962.

Matuštík, Radislav. Introduction. Vincent Hložník: Paintings and Graphics. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1965.

Peterajová, Ľudmila. Introduction. Vincent Hložník, Dušan Šulc: Zakladatel̓ské Osobnosti Slovenského Knižného Umenia: Výber z Knižnej Tvorby 1942–1992. Exh. cat. Martin, Slovak Republic: Turčianska Galéria, 1993.

Peterajová, Ľudmila and Viliam Turčány. Rozhovor s veršami Viliama Turčányho. Bratislava: Tatran, 1984.

Petránsky, Ľudovít. Vincent Hložník. Bratislava: Tatran, 1997.

Prokeš, Jakub. “V Žiline Vystavia Kresby a Grafiky Vincenta Hložníka. ” Pravda.sk. Pravda, 26 Oct. 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Prokeš, Jakub. “Maliar Hložník.” Pravda.sk. Pravda, 06 Nov. 2014. Web. 04 Mar. 2015.

Saučin, Ladislav. Introduction. Vincent Hložník: Grafika. Prague: Galerie Václava Špály, 1979.

Svašek, Maruška. “The Czech Art World in the 1950s and 1960s.” Contemporary European History 6.3 (1997): 383-403. Print.

This brochure has been produced in conjunction with the exhibition Vincent Hložník: Between War and Dream on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum from March 29–July 26, 2015.

All works in the exhibition are from The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families, and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. The Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 11,000 elderly persons in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Lithography in Leningrad: Soviet Graphic Arts in the 1950s and 60s

On view May 18–August 17, 2014
Text by Emily O’Leary, Assistant Curator

This exhibition features 37 lithographs created by nine official artists at the state-run Leningrad Experimental Graphics Workshop in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 60s. The lithographic medium was first used in Russia in the 1810s, but had been invented in Germany around 1796.  A mechanized process, lithography allowed for the economical production of prints as well as other commercial uses, such as advertising. Lithographs are produced by drawing with a grease pencil on polished limestone or a specially prepared metal plate that is then inked and run through a press leaving an image on a sheet of paper pressed against it. The lithographs featured in this exhibition exemplify a period in the Leningrad Workshop when artists pushed the boundaries of the lithographic process. They sought to create prints that more closely resembled drawings and watercolors and that were modulated in tone compared to the high contrast, blocky character of linoleum printing (Kozyreva and Lipovich, 15).

Alexander Vedernikov was particularly successful in achieving this aesthetic. He was said to have described his goal in lithography as follows: “to make four colors look like twenty-four” – a reference to the four ink colors available for printing (Kozyreva and Lipovich, 17). His colorful, patterned still lifes reflect the influence of Matisse and the Fauves; as do the saturated colors of Russian landscapes by Vladimir Sudakov, another Workshop artist. Alexandra Yacobson’s Russian folktale illustrations and Gerda Nemenova’s minimalist portraits capture the graphic gesture of drawing, with their delicate, linear qualities.

As official artists, all the artists in this exhibition were members of the Artists Union and were required to adhere to the principles of Socialist Realism—a figurative style that supported the goals and ideals of Soviet society. Lithographs produced in the Workshop were made in small editions of ten copies, of which the artist was allowed to keep nine for personal use, and one of which was retained in the Workshop’s archives. The Artists Union would then periodically review the archives and order additional runs of 500 impressions from a single lithograph to be distributed by the State to factories, libraries, recreation halls, collective farms, and schools in the Soviet Union (Mullaly and Cole, unpag.).

The prints in this exhibition were all created during the Thaw—a period of liberalization following the death of Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.  A new era, the Thaw fostered innovation and revitalization in the visual arts as artists experimented with previously banned modernist styles. They sought to push past the rigid restrictions of Socialist Realism, while negotiating the boundaries of Soviet ideals and socialist principles. The graphic arts, in particular, gave artists room to experiment because they were considered lesser arts and were associated with craft work (Sjeklocha and Mead, 123).

The subjects of the artists in the Leningrad Workshop ranged from Boris Ermolaev’s Socialist Realist themes to Gregory Israelevich’s foreboding images of owls, which symbolically evoke the passage of time and the transience of life. Ermolaev was a successful painter whose earlier Socialist Realist paintings in the 1930s and 40s drew heavily on the traditions of folk art and icon painting, resulting in simplified and flattened forms. One of his lithographs in this exhibition, Mothers (1961), rendered in vibrant colors and emphasizing flattened, linear shapes, most strongly exemplifies the conventions of Socialist Realism in its idealized depiction of workers on collective farms. On the other hand, Israelevich’s owl prints were singled out by Terence Mullaly in his introductory catalogue essay for the exhibition Lithographs by Twenty-Seven Soviet Artists in 1961 as an example of how not all Soviet artists were wholly “devoted to the doctrine of Socialist Realism.” (Mullaly, unpag.)

As a Jewish artist whose work explored Jewish themes, Anatoli Kaplan also straddled a fine line during the Stalinist era and beyond into the period of the Thaw. In one of several black and white lithographs on view in the exhibition, residents of a Jewish town (shtetl) appear to be on their way to synagogue on the eve of Simchat Torah—the annual holiday of the completion of the Torah reading cycle. At center, a young girl holds a flag in one hand, and with the other her father’s hand as they head a procession through an archway. On the left another boy is running to join the rest of the community, and at right, a mother helps her son tie his neckerchief. The Grosvenor Gallery in London commissioned several sets of prints from Kaplan illustrating Sholem Aleichem stories. By the Tailor’s House is from one series, Tevia the Milkman (ca. 1961). It depicts a goat, ubiquitous in Yiddish folk tales, and in this instance, given the dismal, rainy scene outside the Tailor’s house, perhaps portending an ominous fate for the village’s inhabitants.

Many of the artists in this exhibition were first exhibited in the West in a groundbreaking exhibition entitled Lithographs by Twenty-Seven Soviet Artists held at the Grosvenor Gallery in London in the spring of 1961. The gallery was founded in the previous year by the Eric Estorick (1913-1993), who later became best known as a collector of Italian Futurism, and his wife, Salome (1920-1989). Estorick was born in New York City in 1913, his family having emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism. He became a political writer and lecturer in sociology at New York University before settling in London. Lithographs by Twenty-Seven Soviet Artists was one of the earliest exhibitions of Soviet art at Estorick’s gallery—a niche that he would continue to champion through many exhibitions for the next several decades. The show was so well received in Britain that the exhibition traveled to New York City later the same year. Many of the prints on view in the current exhibition were included in that show and later acquired for the Hebrew Home Art Collection in the mid-1970s when Jacob Reingold (1915-1999) was the Home’s Executive Director, a position he held for almost four decades. The Museum of Modern Art also acquired a selection of these same lithographs in 1962, including examples by Ermolaev, Kaplan, Nemenova, and Vedernikov, among many others.

Estorick met Reingold through a family connection. In the mid-1970s, with the assistance of donors and Estorick’s support, Reingold, an art lover who established the Home’s renowned art program, was able to acquire many works from Grosvenor Gallery by artists who were mostly unknown in the West. Today, however, many of those artists—both Russian and from former Soviet republics—have become recognized names in the history of Soviet and Russian art. Their works have been “rediscovered” in the Hebrew Home’s collection in recent years.

 

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Further reading:

Bradley, Josephine. “European Print Acquisitions.” October 18, 1962. The Museum of Modern Art.

Ivins, Jr., William M. How Prints Look. Rev. ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1987.

Kozyreva, Natalia. Boris Ermolaev, 1903-1982: Paintings, Drawings, Watercolors and Lithographs from The State Russian Museum. Saint Petersburg: Palace Editions and The State Russian Museum, 2004.

Kozyreva, Natalia, and I.N. Lipovich. Leningrad Easel Lithography, 1933-1963: The History of Experimental Graphic Workshop LOSHa. Exh. cat. Leningrad: State Russian Museum, 1986.

Mullaly, Terence. Lithographs by Twenty-Seven Soviet Artists. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1961.

Mullaly, Terence. Introduction. Sylvan Cole, Jr. Foreword.  Lithographs by Twenty-Five Soviet Artists: Leningrad Experimental Graphics Laboratory. Exh. cat. New York: Associated American Artists, 1961.

Sjeklocha, Paul, and Igor Mead. Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967.

Artists in the Exhibition

Boris Ermolaev
(Russian, 1903-1982)

Gregory Israelevich
(Russian, 1924-1999)

Anatoli Kaplan
(Russian, b. Belarus, 1902-1980)

Vera Matiukh
(Russian, b. Germany, 1910-2003)

Gerda Nemenova
(Russian, b. Germany, 1905-1986)

Michael Skouliari
(Russian, 1905-1985)

Vladimir Sudakov
(Russian, 1912-1994)

Alexander Vedernikov
(Russian, 1898-1975)

Alexandra Yacobson
(Russian, 1903-1966)

This text, which originally appeared in the printed exhibition brochure, was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Lithography in Leningrad: Soviet Graphic Arts in the 1950s and 60s on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum, May 18–August 17, 2014.

All works in the exhibition are from The Art Collection at Hebrew Home at Riverdale.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families, and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. The Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 11,000 elderly persons in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

The Politics of Paint – Landscape Painting in the Soviet Union, 1953-1964

On view February 9 – April 20, 2014
Text by Emily O’Leary, Assistant Curator

This exhibition features landscape paintings from 1953-1964 created during the Thaw—a period of unprecedented artistic freedom in the Soviet Union following the death of the Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) and the rise of Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). Various modernist styles emerged in painting at this time, influenced by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

The decade of the Thaw followed the end of Stalin’s reign of terror and brought condemnation of his cultural policies, including the notorious purges when many renowned composers, writers and artists were imprisoned or killed for creating “formalist” work – art for art’s sake. Prior to the Thaw, Socialist Realism—figurative art that supported the goals and ideals of Soviet society—had been the only official state style. Artists could be brutally persecuted for not obeying this dictate. While still the officially sanctioned style, the Thaw allowed for exploration of other, modernist styles, aside from Socialist Realism, and permitted greater artistic freedom. It lasted until Khrushchev was ousted in 1964.

Compared to history painting or portraiture, landscape painting was not intended to have a didactic purpose. However, in the Soviet era when everything was politicized, landscapes that failed to contain human figures or socialist content were considered “superfluous to the cause of the Revolution” (Swanson, 349). Artists during the Thaw were given the freedom to work in previously banned styles, yet there was still an expectation that they would adhere to a party line.

A popular style that emerged during the Thaw was Working-Class Impressionism—a term coined by Dr. Vern G. Swanson—which drew inspiration from French Impressionism. The work of Alexander Dubinchik, Moisey Feigin, Vladimir Gavrilov and Alexey Morosov, all of whom are included in this exhibition, exemplify this tradition, combining an impressionistic aesthetic with socialist content. These painters retained the principles of Socialist Realism in their work by promoting an idealized view of Soviet society. Their canvases contain bright colors and optimistic depictions of everyday life. Impressionistic works like these would have been deemed unacceptable and derided as bourgeois art during Stalin’s era.

The strong influence of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism on Russian art can be traced back in part to collectors Ivan Morozov (1871-1921) and Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936). They acquired major works by such masters as Monet, Cezanne, Matisse and Picasso in the early 20th century, but after the Revolution in 1917, both collections were nationalized and given to museums. When modernism was denounced as anti-Soviet quickly thereafter, the works were hidden away from public view. It was only during the Thaw that they reemerged and were exhibited in 1956 at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. For the first time in decades, open discussions were allowed about the merits of and differences between modern art and Socialist Realism, allowing styles such as Impressionism to return to the fore and fostering new artistic directions.

With its nationalist subject, broad, loose brush strokes and luminous color palette, Gavrilov’s painting, Uglich, The Church of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (1963), is a classic example of Working-Class Impressionism. It depicts a 17th-century church in the historic town of Uglich, which sits along the Volga River—the unofficial national river of Russia.

In A Warm Evening (ca. 1963) Alexander Dubinchik combined socialist themes with Impressionistic aesthetics. In this painting, the figure working in the field represents the human element that was central to Soviet art. Dubinchik upholds the principle of productivity and the everyday life of the worker as a primary concern of culture.

Moisey Feigin’s Winter Landscape (before 1964) is the only snowscape in this exhibition. Not surprisingly given its climate, snowscapes are a specific genre in Russian art. As in Dubinchik’s work, Feigin paints impressionistically, presenting a scene populated with several human figures. This is not a picture that encourages the viewer to ponder its purely artistic or formal qualities, but rather, it promotes socialist principles while the content is rendered in a modernist style.

Feigin is of an earlier generation compared to most of the other painters in this exhibition. Both he and Pavel Kuznetsov reached artistic maturity before Stalin came to power. Feigin was affiliated with the Jack of Spades, an avant-garde group that began exhibiting in 1906. However, in 1934, after Socialist Realism was declared the official state style, Feigin adapted by producing works like Winter Landscape. He returned to semi-abstract art later in his career.

Kuznetsov was a prominent figure in the Blue Rose Group, a circle of Russian Symbolist painters who favored tonalism, using color to evoke mood and explore spatial relationships. They also began exhibiting in 1906. Although the rise of Socialist Realism led to a suppression of this style of art, the work included in this exhibition, Moscow Landscape (1956), reflects Kuznetsov’s tonalist sensibilities.

Popov’s stylized treatment of a well-known Russian church in Kizhi, The Cathedral (Preobrazhensky Church) (1963)—located on the rural island of Kizhi in in the district of Karelia in the northwestern part of the country, about 765 miles from Moscow—provides an example of the burgeoning interest in the Russian North during the Thaw. This remote area became synonymous with the quest for authenticity and optimism in reaction against the artificiality and pervasive fear associated with life under Stalin. In 1963, Popov traveled with several other artists to capture the ruddy, rural quality of the Russian North. This work, portraying the famous, 21-domed Preobrazhensky Church, reflects the influence of Post-Impressionism, especially in the simplified geometry and somewhat shallow space. The dark, saturated palette is typical for Northern subjects at this time.

From at least the 1920s, when many artists drew inspiration both from national styles, such as folk art, and from modernist sources, painting in Soviet Armenia was typically characterized by simplified schematic forms painted in vivid, saturated colors.

Unlike in Moscow, where the authorities kept a tight rein on artistic style and content, artists working in Soviet republics like Armenia had somewhat more freedom to experiment. They could also claim that their use of vivid color and stylized form was attributable solely to the influence of indigenous traditions to avoid being accused of working in a modernist idiom. (Bown, 143) Works included in this exhibition by Albert Papikian, Aram Kupetsian and Peter Shlikov depict familiar geographic landmarks that carry strong nationalistic overtones, demonstrating the persistence of this approach into the 1960s.

The 14 works in this exhibition were acquired from the Grosvenor Gallery in London. Founded in 1960 by eminent art collector Eric Estorick (1913-1993) and his wife, Salome (1920-1989), the gallery was a premier venue for Eastern European artists to exhibit in the West. Estorick was born in New York City in 1913, his family having emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905 to escape anti-Semitism. He became a political writer and lecturer in sociology at New York University before settling in London.

Jacob Reingold (1915-1999), the Hebrew Home’s Executive Director for almost four decades, met Estorick through a family connection. In the mid-1970s, with the assistance of donors and Estorick’s support, Reingold, an art lover who established the Home’s renowned art program, was able to acquire many works from Grosvenor Gallery by artists who were mostly unknown in the West. Today, however, many of those artists—both Russian and from former Soviet republics—have become recognized names in the history of Soviet and Russian art. Their works have been “rediscovered” in the Hebrew Home’s collection in recent years.

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Further reading:

Bown, Matthew Cullerne. “Painting in the non-Russian republics.” In Art of the Soviets: Painting, sculpture and architecture in a one-party state, 1917-1992. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993.

Bulanova, Maria, and Dr. Alla Rosenfeld. Soviet Dis-Union: Socialist and Nonconformist Art. Exh. cat. Minneapolis: The Museum of Russian Art, 2006.

Estorick, Eric. Aspects of Contemporary Soviet Art: paintings, drawings and watercolours. Exh. cat. London: Grosvenor Gallery, 1964.

Hillings, Valerie L. “Official Exchanges/Unofficial Representations: The Politics of Contemporary Art in the Soviet Union and the United States, 1956-1977.” In Russia! Exh. cat. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2005.

Sjeklocha, Paul, and Igor Mead. Unofficial Art in the Soviet Union. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967.

Swanson, Vern G. Soviet Impressionist Painting. Woodbridge, Suffolk, United Kingdom: The Antique Collectors’ Club Ltd., 2008.

Exhibition Checklist
All works are part of The Art Collection at The Hebrew Home at Riverdale.

Alexander Dubinchik (Russian, 1922-1997)

A Warm Evening, ca. 1963

Oil on canvas

31 ½ x 20 inches

 

Moisey Feigin (Russian, 1904-2008)

Winter Landscape, before 1964

Oil on canvas

35 ½ x 47 inches

 

Vladimir Gavrilov (Russian, 1923-1970)

Uglich, The Church of Iowan (Church of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist), 1963

Oil on canvas

39 x 33 inches

 

Aram Kupetsian (Russian, b. 1928)

Mountainous Landscape, 1963

Gouache on paper

15 1/2 x 22 1/2 inches

 

Aram Kupetsian (Russian, b. 1928)

Mountains in Garni, 1963

Gouache on paper

13 1/4 x 17 inches

 

Pavel Kuznetsov (Russian, 1878-1968)

Evening Landscape, 1956

Oil on canvas

28 x 35 inches

 

Alexey Morosov (Russian, 1896-1965)

After the Rain, 1960

Oil on board

19 ½ x 28 inches

 

Alexey Morosov (Russian, 1896-1965)

A Sunny Day, ca. 1960

Oil on canvas

19 x 27 ½ inches

 

Albert Papikian (Armenian, 1926-1997)

Aragats, 1962

Oil on board

57 x 63 inches

 

Alexsei Pisarev (Russian, 1909-1970)

On the Volga River, 1960

Gouache on paper on board

29 ½ x 44 inches

 

Alexsei Pisarev (Russian, 1909-1970)

Uglich, 1960

Oil on board

19 ¾ x 27 ½ inches

 

Igor Popov (Russian, b. Ukraine, 1927-1999)

Kizhi, The Cathedral (Preobrazhensky Church), 1963

Gouache on board

40 x 28 ½ inches

 

Peter Shlikov (Russian, 1917-1970)

The Ararat Plain, 1962

Oil on canvas

23 ½ x 29 ½ inches

 

Peter Shlikov (Russian, 1917-1970)

A View of Balaklava, 1963

Oil on board, 15 x 23 inches

This text, which originally appeared in the printed exhibition brochure, was produced in conjunction with the exhibition The Politics of Paint: Landscape Painting in the Soviet Union, 1953-1964 on view in the Elma and Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion Gallery, February 9 – April 20, 2014.

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, The Hebrew Home at Riverdale is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provide educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere. The Home is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 7,000 elderly persons through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday-Thursday, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Art Collection open daily, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
www.hebrewhome.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Lynda Caspe – Biblical Reliefs and Cityscapes
On view September 22, 2013–January 5, 2014

Lynda Caspe and Susan Chevlowe, Director, Derfner Judaica Museum
A Conversation

Susan Chevlowe: What inspired you to begin the biblical scenes? And why in relief sculpture?

Lynda Caspe: I was asked to curate an exhibition for the Synagogue for the Arts in Lower Manhattan. The theme was supposed to be scenes from the Bible. I told the Synagogue I would love to organize the show on the condition that I could participate as well. They agreed. At first I wanted to do a three-dimensional sculpture, but they told me that they couldn’t have sculpture in their gallery. It was then that I thought of creating relief sculpture. The idea intrigued me because I both paint and sculpt and I saw it as a way to combine the two in various ways.

SC: It was the first time you had taken on biblical subject matter. How did you approach this challenge?

LC: The idea of working from the Bible was thrust upon me, but as I began to figure out what I wanted to do with the stories, I realized that I didn’t understand them. I went to the Rabbi of the synagogue and told him my problem. He gave me a book of commentaries, which made all the difference. I fell in love with the stories and their interpretations. For instance, I just finished the relief, The Story of Adam and Eve. I had always thought that the sin the first man and the first woman committed was that they disobeyed God when they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. But after reading the commentary, I realized that eating the apple also describes something essential in the character of human beings that has been there almost from the beginning. By consuming the apple, Adam and Eve internalized both good and evil. The story describes the most important and the most basic struggle of our human nature, a struggle between good and evil that continues in every human being today.

SC: Elsewhere, you’ve mentioned that Will Barnet once commented to you that your landscape paintings are devoid of people, and in your biblical reliefs there is a surfeit of figures. Were you surprised by his remark and what insight did it give you into your own work?

LC: Yes, Will Barnet did mention that my landscapes and cityscapes were devoid of people and that my sculptures, both the three-dimensional work and the reliefs, were all about people. I was surprised by his remark, but I realized immediately that it was true. Some of this has to do with the demands of the two mediums. In painting, the space that is created is illusionary and flattened because it has to relate to the flat canvas. One can indicate three-dimensional space, but at the same time the painter has to reaffirm the flat canvas. An important thing that painting has that sculpture doesn’t is color. Even if the artist paints his sculpture, color on a three-dimensional surface is not the same as color on a flat surface. Color on a flat surface can create the illusion of space, can excite other colors on the canvas, can create mood and can capture and hold the viewer in a way that color on a three-dimensional surface cannot. The human body does not immediately bring color to mind, but it does make me think of touch and form and how different three-dimensional forms relate to each other in space.

SC: In some of the first reliefs that you worked on, you cut away from the wax to model the scenes. In these, there is almost a more subtle and classical progression of space, and then in others you worked in an additive process (for example, in Cain and Abel), sometimes modeling the figures in the round and casting them separately. How did the different strategies evolve?

LC: The very first relief I did was The Binding of Isaac. From the very beginning, I wanted to show the whole scene: Abraham, the trees, Isaac bound, the donkey, and the angel who stopped Abraham. I was interested in having parts of the figures reaching out into the three-dimensional world that we all inhabit. The head and shoulders of Abraham are almost completely conceived in the round, but the other figures are not. The trees are the smallest and least developed. I was interested in translating what could have been a composition in painting into a composition in sculpture, where I didn’t have to relate the three-dimensional aspects of the composition to the flat picture plane. I also created the figures for the relief of Cain and Abel separately. I took them off the base and held them in my hands while I carved them.

SC: Do you feel the two different strategies contribute in different ways to how you interpreted each story—a bas-relief versus something that approaches sculpture in the round?

LC: If the story specifically involves just the figures and less of the scene around the figures, the chances are that I would tend to make the figures more three-dimensional. In The Story of Adam and Eve relief, for example, the snake became very important to me and became more three-dimensional as a result. Jonah is portrayed more three-dimensionally than anything else in The Story of Jonah for a similar reason.

SC: Let’s talk about the cityscapes—how did you come to paint them? How do they express your relationship to the city?

LC: I love using color in painting. The fact that so many buildings are painted different colors is a wonderful opportunity to observe the way the sun affects the color of the buildings in full sun and also in shade. The sky and clouds and the trees that line the streets allow me to deal with the way light affects nature at the same time. I paint out of windows and the relationship of the color and shapes outside to what happens inside the room I am painting in also intrigues me.

SC: You’ve also spoken in the past about your interest in action, which is evident in the reliefs. The action of the sculpture contrasts with the stillness and emptiness of your cityscapes. Can you elaborate on this?

LC: The action of the sculpture has to do with the energy of the humans or animals I portray. That is why I like drawing or sculpting men fighting or a horse rearing up. I am interested in the energy they exude.

 

SC: The Story of Cain and Abel has a particularly complex composition. Can you explain the story and why figures are repeated? How does it reflect the influence of Lorenzo Ghiberti, for example? Also, the composition is unique for the series—with one figure literally balanced on the top edge outside the frame. How did that come about?

LC: In the famous early Renaissance reliefs of Ghiberti in Florence, he repeats the figures over and over in the same piece in order to tell the story. Being able to do that freed me. For The Story of Cain and Abel relief, I drew a simple sketch to clarify my ideas of how to organize it. It was all about the relationship of the brothers and I carved them almost all separately or together away from the relief base. Then I placed them on the base in different positions. In the end I had a figure left over. Among other things, this story is about jealousy and what a deadly emotion it is. It occurred to me that having Cain crawl across the top of the frame to attack his brother was an interesting idea. When I placed the figure on the top, it seemed to work, and I was happy with the way it looked so I left it there.

SC: Though they are very different mediums, color plays important roles in both series (the cityscapes and biblical scenes). In the reliefs, the nuanced tonalities of the bronze and varying patinas have a role in how space is perceived and in shaping other expressive effects, like the radiating gold background in Joseph in the Pit; and in the canvases the pulsing colors play a similar role both constructing space and conveying a mood. How do you see color in your work and what is your relationship to it?

LC: My paintings and my sculpture are really about different things, although since I am so sensitive to color that interest comes out in both. There is no way that I can really express my love of color in sculpture, which is why I have to do both.

About the Artist

Lynda Caspe began the biblical reliefs based on familiar episodes from the Bible in 2007. She has been influenced by interpretations of these stories by the medieval commentator Rashi and other classic and contemporary Rabbinic commentators. Inspired by early Italian Renaissance cast bronze reliefs, Caspe’s modernist practice is evident in the roughness of fish and her emphasis on process. The exhibition in the Derfner Judaica Museum is comprised of 12 reliefs, related drawings and one of her wax maquettes.

A concurrent exhibition of 14 cityscapes is on view in the Gilbert Pavilion Gallery. Most of the paintings offer rooftop views painted from a window. The buildings appear packed tightly together in a shallow space. Unlike the grandeur of more typical skyline views, in these compositions, Caspe offers humble, yet familiar, scenes in colors that reflect the city’s changing light and atmosphere.

A painter, sculptor and published poet, Lynda Caspe was born and raised in New York City, and has lived in Tribeca in Lower Manhattan since 1974. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1961 and earned an M.F.A. in painting at the University of Iowa in 1964. In the 1960s, she studied printmaking with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, and painting and sculpture at the New York Studio School with Esteban Vicente and George Spaventa. In 1969 she was a co-founder of the Bowery Gallery and was its director from 2001 to 2010.

Her work has been exhibited in one-person exhibitions at Sovereign/Santander Bank; Bowery Gallery; Gallery of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and other New York City galleries. She has also been included in group exhibitions at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art; Sideshow Gallery; Hudson Guild; SOHO20 Gallery; A.I.R. Gallery; Salomon Arts Gallery; Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery of the Art Students League of New York; Westbeth Gallery, and the Tribeca Synagogue for the Arts, among other venues. Her work has been shown internationally at Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo. Caspe was on the faculty of Borough of Manhattan Community College from 1978-2013, and has taught at Parsons School of Design, the University of Alberta and the University of Chicago.

Caspe is a member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors and was its co-president in 2005 and 2006. She has been the recipient of grants from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Professional Staff Congress, Union of the City University. She also received a New York State Creative Artist Public Service (CAPS) grant and a Yaddo Fellowship.

Header: The Judgment of Solomon, 2011, bronze, 19 x 24 inches; Rooftops, Summer, 2008, oil on linen, 16 x 20 inches

This text is originally appeared in the brochure produced in conjunction with the exhibitions Lynda Caspe–Biblical Reliefs and Cityscapes on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum and the Elma and Milton A. Gilbert Pavilion Gallery, September 22, 2013–January 5, 2014.

About the Hebrew Home at Riverdale

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provides educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere.  RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
RiverSpringHealth.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Some Things Seen in Israel:
Photographs by Burt Allen Solomon

On view April 14 – July 28, 2013, and marking the 65th anniversary of the State of Israel
Burt Allen Solomon and Susan Chevlowe, Director, Derfner Judaica Museum
A Conversation

Susan Chevlowe: When one thinks of how Israel has been represented in photographs, many images come to mind – heroic soldiers and sabras, workers on the land and in industry, desert shepherds and urban youth culture, religious and secular life. Photojournalists like Robert Capa (1913-1954)– whose images were first published between 1948-1951 – and others have created iconic pictures that chronicle the history of modern Israel. How familiar were you with his or other popular images of Israel before your first visit in the summer of 1968 and do you think such images shaped your expectations?

Burt Allen Solomon: Back then, I had no particular expectations and wasn’t even sure that I wanted to go to Israel for my first trip overseas. At that time, I wasn’t familiar with Capa’s work though I had a copy of Photography Annual 1965, which included four of his images – one of which was taken in Israel. I probably did not have social or political expectations either, other than a generally idealistic concept of the kibbutz and pride and thankfulness that Israel had won the Six Day War the year before. Of course, I loved The Family of Man, the 1955 book documenting the influential Museum of Modern Art exhibition, as well as my father’s US Camera Annual 1947, though that had just two Palestine photos. Even now, having looked at thousands of photographs, my work is basically what I see. I look at what is in my view and some things interest me (subject matter, light, composition). If I have my camera with me and at the ready, I take a photograph. My first trip to Israel was exciting. Everything was new and “exotic,” and there were lots of photographic subjects all the time. By the way, two of my favorite books of photographs of Israel are Israel, The Reality: People, Places, Events in Memorable Photographs, based on an exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, in 1969, organized by Robert Capa’s brother, Cornell Capa, and Micha Bar-Am, and Jerusalem: City of Mankind, also by Cornell Capa, from 1974. Among many other photography books that have struck me is The Concerned Photographer, which Cornell Capa also edited. Along with other wonderful photographers that book included work by Robert Capa, though only one from Israel.

SC: Since you began taking pictures in Israel, what have been the biggest changes that you’ve noticed?

BAS: To a 24-year-old New Yorker, the country seemed very excited about the outcome of the Six Day War. Israelis were at last able to travel freely throughout the West Bank, with the eastern border finally more than 15 kilometers east of the Mediterranean Sea at Netanya. Since then, each time I have been to Israel, I have become more aware of the process of modernization, particularly visually. With each visit, I again have a feeling of being in a place that is at once familiar and strange. For instance, in 1974, I photographed a damaged mosque in southern Tel Aviv with high-rise construction going up in the distance behind it (Tel Aviv, 1974.8). Then, in 1982, my wife and I and our daughters stayed in the very hotel that was built there. Later, in 2009, I found and photographed the mosque again, fully renovated and in use. From today’s perspective, life in Israel in 1968 and 1974 seemed more basic and simpler than it is now. Cafés were simple affairs (“Luki Bar” [Tel Aviv], 1974.4). I find the decline of what seemed “exotic” to be sad, but I recognize that Israel is not a place meant to be a photographic dream.

Rather, it is a lived reality where development means the ability to thrive in a competitive, dangerous world. Since my earliest trip, when Israelis felt free and comfortable traveling around the West Bank, I have found an increasing reluctance to do so. In 1974, the year after the Yom Kippur War, I traveled from Jerusalem to Be’er Sheva, but we made sure not to stop in or around Hebron. And in 1982, we were able to drive in the West Bank along the Jordan River barrier from Jerusalem to Jericho and up north towards Tsefat, but we were warned not to stop for anything anywhere along the way.

SC: Do you think that your photographs are objective? Do you feel that photographs can be objective?

BAS: I suppose that in some sense the photos are “objective,” in that they are basically accurate depictions of what is before my camera lens when I release the shutter. With only rare exceptions, I have not gone out with a preconception of a photograph or group of photographs to take. None of the images included in this exhibition are posed or manipulated, though I have made choices in the darkroom, such as cropping, burning in and dodging, reversing the negative from right to left and printing a photo as a negative to achieve a visual effect (Silwan, 2004). In each case, in a clearly subjective process, I have framed the subject by choosing what to photograph and the moment to release the shutter, excluding the surroundings outside of the frame (sometimes doing this twice, the second time in the darkroom, when I print the image). So the final result is a relatively “objective” portrayal.

SC: You have intentionally chosen not to title your works. What is the significance of that choice?

BAS: My view is that photographs should first stand on their own. Only rarely have I given names to pictures. “Televiziah! Televiziah!” (Tsefat, 1974) is what the kids in the group called out in excitement when they saw me, apparently confusing my still camera with a television camera. I named Luki Bar (Tel Aviv, 1974.4) as a convenient reference; and I titled a photo of new, multi-story luxury housing on the site of the old Tel Aviv Opera House, ironically, after Herzl’s book, Altneuland (Tel Aviv, 2009.3).

SC: Most photographs in this exhibition were taken in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv– cities that have come to symbolize such contrasts as religious vs. secular, old world vs. modern, Eastern vs. Western culture. Did you see these contrasts in your images?

BAS: Generally, Jerusalem is the more traditional city with greater elements of religious and Arab life, and Tel Aviv is the more worldly, but that distinction is certainly not entirely accurate. Both cities are varied, and even Jerusalem has its modern neighborhoods. For many years, I described Tel Aviv as the most charmless city that I loved, though more recently, it has gained in charm. I have certainly been conscious of the contrast of the “old” and the “new” throughout the country, ever since my first visit, when my older cousin, Shlomo Shpiegel, and I walked the streets of Netanya, which he had helped to found. He pointed out to me what was yashan (old) and what was hadash (new). At least subconsciously, I was aware of the hadash and the yashan whenever I aimed my camera to shoot.

About the Photographer

Burt Allen Solomon began photographing in Israel in the summer of 1968 – arriving days after an El Al hijacking. With rare exceptions, his images have only place names, encouraging audiences to look and not to be directed toward a particular point of view. His subjects range from the Tel Aviv skyline along the Mediterranean coast to ancient towns across the Green Line– Israel’s pre-1967 border. This selection of 42 black-and-white photographs captures the ongoing shifts in Israeli culture, fixing what is seen in gestures, lights, shadows and contrasts.

Solomon was born in 1944 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. For more than 50 years, he has taken photographs in a documentary, “street photography” style. Taking, developing and printing photographs since he graduated from high school, he started out on his father’s World-War-II-vintage Kodak Medalist II camera, with its large “medium format” (2 1/4 x 3 1/4) negative size, and has been behind many cameras since then. Among the photography books that have influenced him, Solomon has noted the acclaimed The Family of Man (1955) and US Camera Annual 1947, as well as visits to the Kodak gallery in Grand Central Terminal. His father, a commercial printer by day and hobbyist photographer, introduced him to the darkroom in a corner of their garage in Brooklyn. Solomon lives in South Orange, New Jersey and is a practicing attorney in New York City. His work has been exhibited previously at Vladeck Hall Gallery at the Amalgamated Houses in the Bronx and at the Framing Mill, Maplewood, NJ.

 

Header: Burt Allen Solomon, Tel Aviv, 2009, gelatin silver print, 7 3⁄4 x 9 3⁄4 inches (2009.1)

This text appeared in the brochure printed in conjunction with the exhibition Some Things Seen in Israel: Photographs by Burt Allen Solomon on view in the Derfner Judaica Museum, April 14 – July 28, 2013, and marking the 65th anniversary of the State of Israel.

About the Hebrew Home at Riverdale

As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provides educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs and visitors from elsewhere.  RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Hebrew Home at Riverdale
5901 Palisade Avenue
Riverdale, New York 10471
Tel. 718.581.1596
RiverSpringHealth.org/art

This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.