Pantechnicon; David Aronson: The Real And Unreal: The Double Nature Of Art

The art is isolation and alienation have a long history in Plato's Apology. SOCRATES went to the poets and artists and and asked them to explain some of their more head labrat works. He confessed in embarrassment that there was hardly a bystander who could not have talked better than the artists themselves about these works. Wisdom he said was in no way involved but rather a sort of genius and inspiration. They are like diviners are soothsayers who say many fine things but do not understand the meaning of them. The artist is seen as something between a dextrous visionary and an idiot savant who during the trance like state of artistic creation is the helpless victim of the up rush of the superconscious. His body though subject to the earthy ist of appetites mysteriously becomes the instrument through which

passed the purest and most sublime of divine forces his works no matter. How great are beyond his control or apprehension. And are produced by an emotional disturbance called inspiration. It is come to be believed that any use of knowledge would hinder his imagination that exercise of reason would impede cosmic receptivity and that reflective decision making on his part would contaminate the creative product. One has only to go to the writings of artists like Giannini and surely any Rubens and Ronald's DaVinci and to find that such romantic notions have no basis in fact. That artists have been verbal and sensitively articulate is demonstrated in the letters of Michelangelo Vango the sorrow and so many others. This does not mean that the artist is always able or willing to

transpose essentially non-verbal conceptions and activities into expository phrases. Our methodical systems he may find it on worthwhile and even point to present for public display matters which are of the most personal or private nature. And furthermore the creation of a work of art is not always a very orderly or systematic business remarked. The pen is not my tool. I am conscious of my thought but the need for order to which I am obliged to submit I find quite terrifying. Would you believe it but the thought of writing a page gives me a sick headache. Yet he went on to write in his journal many pages of richly illuminating material which provide extraordinary insights into his creative processes. I prepared this lecture on the occasion of my appointment by Boston University as university

lecturer. In May of 1967 and my discomfort was enormous at the prospect of having to speak about my own work. I was at the point of declining to prepare a lecture and allowing my drawings paintings and sculpture to speak for me instead. I realized however that this invitation was expressive of the university's acceptance of the visual arts as an essential part of the humanities and acknowledged the prominent position within the framework of higher education. It also recognised the performing artists place in the university media and his his verbal observations about his creative world. I will then as I did last May show Landon slides of my work and at the same time make comments which might elucidate to an extent my particular approach to the making of pictures and sculpture. I will not attempt to explain my pictures. They must continue to speak for themselves.

But instead I shall bring up events and ideas which have affected me through the years in one manner or another and have found their way into my work that this will be autobiographical to a degree. It is unavoidable since an artist's current works feed inevitably off the conscious and unconscious experiences from his own past. As a painter a sculptor and a teacher I acknowledge the difficulties of being involved in three such mutually exclusive and consuming activities and the dangers inherent in approaching them in an interdisciplinary way. Yet in the event of failure this condition does offer me an unexpected dividend. Should my words in my works hold up poorly in this venture. I can reason with the sculptor's that I am after all a painter. With the painters. I can claim that I am a sculptor. And with my academic colleagues I can plead the cause of the non-verbal

artist hopelessly lost in the verbal world. It might be useful to give here some historical perspective to the early 1940s the years during which my artistic believes took root and grew into a body of work which expressed publicly through a personal imagery. My private convictions the preceding decade had seen the economic depression and several heart movements which grew from it. The socially conscious painters William Gropper Ben Shon Robert Chua to me Philip ever good rightfield Sawyer and others recorded the American scene. The people the poverty and the politics was great forever. Their work took on the qualities of a nationalistic art which was in part a revolt against the international modernism particularly the French aesthetic. At the same time there was the militant regionalism of painters like Thomas Hart Benton John Stuart Curry and Grant Wood

with their principal spokesman Thomas Craven who ranted against the emasculated tradition of the French modernists and proclaimed the end of American subservience to foreign cultural fashions. Yet alongside this provincial as provincial as an American expression isn't distinctly traceable to European forebears spread widely through this country's art. In the works of men like Max Weber Franklin Watkins JOHN MARSDEN Hartley Yasu Oconee Oshie George Grosz and Abraham rapping in the mid-1930s and early 1940s Boston was the center of an expressionistic style of painting which was influenced by such diverse sources as rules and suit seen in France Kokoschka in Central Europe and Russia go and seek arrows in Mexico. This came about as the result of the presence in Boston of three influential teachers Harold

Zimmerman Denman Ross and Carl Zappy. Along with the coincidental emigration to Boston of the families of three Jewish painters of Baltic Arjen those of Jack Levine Hyman bloom and myself. Zimmerman a Boston high school teacher and Ross a Harvard professor and color theorist with a wide knowledge of art helped Levine and bloom develop their own styles. Several years later Carl's Urbi a fine teacher accomplished painter and technician encouraged me in my preoccupation with this humanistic expressionism and his deep involvement in spiritual and psychological values by the mid-1930s Levine in bloom though very young were making mature artistic statements. I did not begin to produce pictures till a decade later. The early works of all three show a great debt to rule and suiting in terms of their distortions of color.

And paint quality. Beyond that each moved in his own direction. My choice of religious subjects stemmed largely from my proximity to them during the formative years. I grew up in a setting still redolent of the atmosphere of the Eastern European Jewish village. The new world made only slight inroads into a closely ordered family hierarchy and a pattern of living centered around breadwinning the synagogue and religion related scholarship. These were people for whom religion was the main purpose for survival. And for whom figurative art was denied by Scriptural precept. The male child was prepared from the earliest age by means of a rigorous religious education. For entrance into the adult religious community through the ceremony of confirmation at the age of 13.

During my own period of preparation for this ritual. I found that the ceremonial trappings had lost contact with the real meaning of the event. My father was a rabbi and I was destined to be the same and might yet have been except for the fact that I committed the combined prophet nations of refusing confirmation and choosing as my life's work. That which was prohibited in the Second Commandment. The making of graven images. About 25 years ago while studying to become a painter at the Boston Museum School I painted a picture of a group of characters passing the time in a cafe and serving to support of one of the figures arms was a two by three inch panel upon which was hung. A motley collection of jewel like junk.

Here in my first painting which I called the paradox I expressed with the carefree enthusiasm of a second year art student. The brochure a desire or. Desire to produce with the two haired brush minuscule objects with a heightened sense of realism. Against the setting of my Orthodox religious background. And a passing interest in jazz. To ascribe to this curious combination of objects and ideas. Anything more than a flippant observation on society. Would under no stretch of the imagination have occurred to me. With a persisting levity. I felt attracted to works that tweaked the nose of a morally deficient society such as Goya's painting of Charles the fourth in the royal family. The magnificent collection of

idiots. Saddest and perjurers resplendent in silks jewels and medals where the queen licentious and haggard stands beside the good natured boor of a king. I marveled. At these splendid characterizations not the least of which was the remarkable resemblance between her son and her lover on the extreme right. Or I would look with pleasure at Vera in a zes Christ in the house of Simon where during an event destined for the immortality of the ages. Peter who sits at table to the right of Christ is nonchalantly picking his teeth with his fork and while I reveled in anything that punctured convention I recall oiled in the face of a great arc tradition from dignifying my own work with significance. Yet it was the confrontation with the religious subject of seemingly incompatible and income grew and in

Congress things such as I presented quite unconsciously in my first painting that became the recurring theme in my work as a professional artist. My earliest interest in painting centered around the illusion is ticked or fooled by paintings of the 17th century Harlem painters and the magic realism of painters like Carnot Dali and Albright. It was as though I could make plausible the improbabilities of mysterious and vague themes through insistence on an exact technique and a meticulously detailed rendering a decorative detail from a Fontainebleau carving photographed in sharp focus suggested to me the backdrop for a painting called Trinity. Here I visualized my farms the large ones and the profusion of small ones

in raking light to dazzle the vision and along with the heightened focus increase the picture's impact. And my concern with the illusion is ticked properties of light and dark. Went hand in hand with what was for me a great discovery. One I had made many years back which allowed for the materialization of my fantasies. I learned later of course that all artists are aware that exciting images may be found in cloud formations wallpaper designs. Frost on a window. And so forth. Leonardo in his treatise on painting wrote. On the method of awakening in the mind of a variety of inventions. I will not omit to introduce among these precepts a new kind of speculative invention. Which though apparently trifling and almost laughable is never the last and last a great utility in assisting the genius to find a variety for composition. By looking at

handedly at Holden smeared walls. Or stones in vain marbles of various colors. You may fancy that you see in them several compositions landscapes battles figures in quick motion strange countenances and dresses with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the creative genius is excited to new exertions. All the own Woodall. Also spoke of provoking the imagination by looking long enough and veins of marble. Misted windows wallpaper and cloud formations. The fact that I discovered this for myself is important for the phenomenon had that much more meaning. It is worth mentioning too that the timely accident and unexpected development do not require scientific substantiation. To justify their place as part of a valid artistic discipline. Reynolds said

in his discourses. Accident in the hands of an artist who knows how to take advantage of its hands will often produce bold and capricious beauties of handling and facility such as he would not have thought of or ventured under the regular restraint of his hand. And Stravinsky and his poetics of music said if his finger slips he will notice it. On occasion. He may draw a profit from something unforeseen that a momentary lapse reveals to him. Such occurrences in the right place at the right time. And recognized immediately may propel the work toward a new and exciting involvements. Though the title I gave to this early painting did not have specific reference to the Holy Trinity I would not deny its religious implications since I was then in the midst of my own perhaps immature but necessary rebellion against an authoritarian

orthodox environment. Chafed by its claims of exclusive salvation. As an antidote. I explored the subjects of the new rather than the Old Testament. Feeling comfort in their midst both in regard to the common patrimony and in the fact that they supplied rich material for the greatly admired old masters. And yet. As much as I rejected the authoritarian ethos from my own past I did Marlise and presented what I felt to be universal biblical truths against the background of a self-righteous Christianity contained in its bureaucratic institutional shell. Though the grotesque characterizations mirrored to an extent such concerns they represented even more. My abiding wish to work with the human figure in expressing my artistic beliefs and with a human face and hands in particular. I can recollect

that as a child I would draw a variety of facial types and would become fascinated by the limitless variations in the features. Leonardo spoke of 10 different sorts of noses in the profile straight hunched concave some raised above some below the metal. Aqua line flat. Round and sharp. In the front view he continued. There are 11 different sorts. Even think in the middle. Thin in the middle. Think of the temp. Then at the beginning thin at the tip and think at the beginning. Broad narrow. High and Low nostrils some with a large opening and some shot toward the tip. To these I added quite a few of my own doing the same with eyes mouths chin ears foreheads necks cheeks and skull shapes. While a very young art student. I would take my drawing pad into the subway and

ride for hours while studying and drawing the passengers. Each car had its own dramatics person I. With such experiences began a continuing interest in characterization through endless reassembling of seen and imagined facial features. As we pass our days carrying on simultaneously two different lives the personal private one and the common all public one. We know that for the duration of our earthly existence we are all terribly untuned in a prison the flesh. Along with our savage appetites our natural virtues our secret vices our hidden thoughts and all that is base and lofty within us. Most often we are able to conceal this existence as we look out upon other prisoners similarly confine and conduct our commune no

lives these two lives seriously affect one another. They interact and post perpetual problems in adjustment. It is only after our public lives are protected by the appropriate inscrutability that we submit ourselves to public view. Only when we are alone do we allow ourselves to remain unguarded. And incautious. But in the company of others our manners do change. They change in differing ways when we are among friends our families strangers recent acquaintances or even someone very close. And as these manners change so do our faces. Raymond Markham are sad. If we really had modesty modesty it is our faces that we should conceal by comparison. Our legs are anonymous. Our bellies and eventful. Rodin

in his sculptured portraits of the great personalities of his time left us some of the most intensely revealing characterizations to be found in the history of art. And enthusiastic student of physiognomy. He confidently believed that from the shape and configuration of the head and face the formation and proportion of the features and the set of the head. On the neck. He was able to read in our character. And that the artist. Quote has only to look into the human face in order to read there. The soul within not a feature deceives him and quote. He further believes that in addition to discovering a subject subjects psychology and personal character traits he could when doing a portrait bust reveal his ethnic geographical historical professional and

cultural background before Carlisle would proceed at a biographical study. He would first obtain a contemporary picture of the person he was to deal with. This he felt gave him more information than historical facts and documents as he put it. All that a man does is physiognomy. Of him. In my earlier works I used distortions freely for they serve the dual purpose of registering my youthful rebellion and also heightening the characterizations of the biblical personages into symbols of human emotions and behavior. Good to describes a favorite project to work away at a canon of masculine and feminine proportions to seek the variations out of which character arises. I was not interested as much in the transient distortions produced in the face by an ephemeral emotion or mood. I was fascinated

more by the modification of the physical appearance with maturity. After repeated recurrences of such moods and emotions. That internal disorders and diseases will manifest themselves in the face is well known. But that states of mind and traits of personality and character affect our external flash appears to be harder to accept. Medical science in its studies of constitutional psychology sanctions a physical approach to the understanding of individuality. It considers the way in which the head neck trunk arms legs and extremities are structured to be the first and most important clues to what the human being is and will be. Based on bodily measurements this science covers every aspect of human behavior and tendencies to behave in certain ways are largely pre-determined.

Most of us fall predominantly into one or another of the three physical components and i'm our feet as a Morphy and act them our feet and we are told to behave and react in preordained ways to every life situation. Hand speak to me as persuasively as heads. Their attitudes can express effectively all manner of moods or feelings. Actions are emotional states of being. And yet Mark can be seen in the hand. Its shape and its markings. According to the criminologists are permanent signs of a person's uniqueness and individuality. Researches in the burgeoning field of medical genetics tell us that certain mental conditions are pretty determined in the chromosome o structure of the cell to the point where these swirls of the fingers and the lines of the power take on

certain identifiable configurations. At the least. This recalls the words from the Book of Joel. God Because signs and seals on the hands of every man. That all might that all men might know his works. And at most it corresponds to what the pumice have been saying all along. We are generally outraged by application of the deterministic and pseudo sciences such as astrology phonology physiognomy Kyra graffiti and Cairo Nancy. Yet in the hands of a creative artist through strange and abstruse transformations and permutations such interests may result in significant works. At this point it ceases to be important or relevant whether or not such systems are true or false right or wrong scientific or unverifiable.

But more of this later. I painted resurrections carnations of the Virgin crowning as with origins and pondered the inevitable questions of good and evil. Whether they are absolute values or relative ones. Whether one can be known without the contrast of the other. I admire the work of the pessimistic moralist Khurana MS Bosch who saw the world as inhabited by a horde of delusive phantoms where no border line exists between good and evil or fantasy and reality. He mistrusted both God and man. And revealed against a setting a false security and empty dogma. The unholy alliance between man and the devil. Though convinced about the ideal. I feared that extravagant moralizing in art had something comical but downtick and even platitudinous about it. My confusion was not lessened by the knowledge that it had been and could be

done well but the real question remained. Was it for me. Berenson applauded this function in art and wrote. No matter how little the artist means to influence character and conduct he yet does influence them. While on the other hand Thomas mine is speaking about art as a Marl forus said. Art is the last to cherish illusions about her influence on the fate of men. Intent on and dolling life with reason and dignity. She has never been able to put a stop to the most arrant nonsense. She is not a force not a power. She is only a comfort. Playing a game of the profoundest seriousness. She symbol symbolizes men's eternal striving after perfection. Art has been granted to him as his companion from the very beginning of time

and from her unplowed an innocence man will never be able to turn away his guilt darkened. My dilemma really centered around the relationship and conflict between the saint and the organized church. The priest and the prophet. The burden of the church is power and its hierarchical nature would provide perpetual tension between it and its prophetic member. This is I am sure an extension of the artist's essential concern between himself and his society. I was able to accept the rationale that every few centuries religion and the society in which it exists undergone a cataclysmic transformation. Most often under great pain. And with the benefit of the New Vision reshapes its structure to withstand better the hard cold light of the present. Beyond this I was content to leave

such speculations to the theologians and the philosophers. My interests ranged from the marl concerns of good and evil to the aesthetic ones of beauty and ugliness. Our conceptions of these overlap. And usually good is associated with beauty and evil with ugliness. Though in aesthetic matters. This certainly is not always true. Thomas Mann speaks of the artists striving after perfection. Yet I'm sure that this is not limited to the perfection of a simple symmetrical order. I believe there is a hierarchy of perfections not at the bottom of which is the one that may appear as the result of skilfully controlled departures from the obvious and the familiar. My distortions heretofore called up by intense emotional demands could not be introduced more far as Thetic considerations with less need to

rebel. The images became less grotesque as I sought more to discover the physical and spiritual aspects of the religious subject and the essential beauty of the painting itself. I was attracted to the mystical and physical splendor of Catholic ritual and Pomp with its processional and pageantry magnificent ceremonial objects pontifical miters ecclesiastical vestments and precious embroideries. I marveled at the displays of sheer physical brilliance which were hypnotically beautiful and served as a proper background to a liturgy that abounded in unfathomable mysteries and converted to it such highly creative minds as Val Mala Berenson Max Jakob and so forth. All the while my preoccupation with New Testament texts was neither devotional nor anecdotal. It did not burlesque nor did it mock.

Yet. My paintings were bitterly attacked by the Jewish press as the blatant apostasy of a rabbi son. And by the secular and institutional Christian press as the heretical work of a religious renegade who was heaping profit nation and sacrilege upon sacred soil. I experienced for a while it least the condition of the artist are cast flavored with the added distinction of being a Jew among Christians and a Christian among Jews. My painting the Last Supper when first shown in this city. Drew the following critique from one of the leading Boston critics. This oil is an abomination of cartoon portraiture. It might have made a foot board for the devils that. I had apparently transgressed and paid no heed to the

Anglo-Saxon maxim shalt not commit irony. 10 years later. After the painting had been purchased by the Art Institute of Chicago and after my work had received recognition in New York the following was written about the same painting. When shown in Boston for the second time. It has tremendous religious fervor not entirely not entirely an orthodox way but. In shining ways of the soul and the spirit. I could take neither offense nor comfort. From either of these evaluations for both alas were written by the same man. In my search for a more speculative approach to scripture I consider the place of the Talmud with its parochial definitions rigid disputations and rational systems. This certainly had little

relation to what I was doing nor did it suggest the pantheistic tendencies of religion with which I wished my work to identify. I did find such a source in the Kabala. An esoteric doctrine concerning God and the universe which branched out as an extensive literature from the 13th century onward alongside. And in opposition to the Talmud. It contained a symbolic commentary on the Bible around the Zohar its holy book. The Kabbalah meaning the received our traditional law are. Is asserted to have come down as a revelation to elect Saints from a remote past. And it's preserved today by a privileged few members of the Hasidic sect. It is a complex and poetic interpretation of the universe diagrammed as a cosmic chain consisting

of tense fears with the essence of pure divinity at the top. Descending spheres of values in gradual transition from the infinite to the finite. Join with the sphere of the kingdom at the bottom. Containing man. And all forms of matter. The pious in proportion to the degree to which they carry out the teachings of the Torah bring that much closer. The ultimate union of man and God. Piety became joyous ritual became spiritualistic instead a formalistic taught. That man is not a spoke in a wheel. A small insignificant fragment of the universe but the center around which everything moves. Its philosophy stood out in shop contrast against Christian and Hindu doctrines of self-renunciation. I was overwhelmed with the artistic possibilities in

both theoretical and practical capitalism. Here both primitive and highly centralized ideas and ideals mingled with sparkling displays of logic steeped in the Platonic philosophy blended with Persian beliefs and superstition and magic and focused themselves on the Bible. There were the Cabalists who believed that Jewish Saints could become masters of holy combinations of letters and numbers and could by their manipulation. Affect miracles in the upper spheres. This numeral logical jugglery along with the writing of amulets trust in the efficacy of charms conjuration of devils frenzied rituals and sublime levitation has provoked dazzling images and provided a wealth of visual material. For my work.

Again such a background. The belief arose in the possibility of infusing life into a clade. Our wooden figure of a human being. This figure called a golem. Meaning embryo thing not fully formed or in a state of incompletion. Would be created by a wonder working rabbi. Or Saint. Called a Baal sham. Our master of the name. He would insert into the mouth of forehead of the golem a piece of paper inscribed with a combination of letters forming a Shan which signifies any one of the names of God. This Gollum would obey mechanically any order of the master and as a benevolent Frankenstein he could be the instrument to alleviate the oppressive situations of mediæval Jews. I painted a large

picture of Rabbi Judah law of 16th century Prague in the process of creating a goal of. All the props were there. While the apprentices properly adorned with amulets and charms chant to mediæval magical incantations the sorcerer in a state of ecstatic levitation hovers over the figure of the emerging golem. Solomon IBN Gabi roll the eleventh century poet philosopher a capitalist while still fairly young. Is said to have created a maidservant in this manner. But the King quickly put a stop to that. Forcing Solomon to restart every one of the creatures parts to its original form. This cub Allah raised to the rank of dogma is the doctrine of metempsychosis the transmigration of souls. It explains that the soul after being freed from bodily

trammels passes into the region of the dead and remains there till it is sent back into this world to inhabit some other body. Human or animal. When it is in a sufficiently purified state having undergone various trials and purgation as it returns to the eternal source from which it first proceeded. This explained for the Cabalists the otherwise an answerable question of why God often permits the wicked to lead a happy life while many of the righteous live in misery. It also describes a cruel infliction of pain on children as an opposed in punishment for a crime committed by the Saul in a previous state. There was widespread belief in the theory of impregnation of souls and legends of the Dubuque him meaning literally things which Cleave on to something else.

Here are souls which are condemned to wander in this world for a time. And they are everywhere watched and tormented by evil spirits to escape the term ending demons. These souls take refuge in the bodies of pious men and women over whom the evil spirits have no power. Interestingly enough it was made clear that the souls of men. Trans migrate into the bodies of man and those of women into the bodies of women with rare exceptions being made only as a punishment for the commission of the most heinous sins. A person to whom such a soul cleans loses his individuality and suffers the tortures of the Damned. Only the Baal sham the miracle working rabbi can expel this devil by eggs are cism and amulets forcing him to leave through the small toe in order that the least possible damage be done to the afflicted body.

The Qabalah exhibits a thorough knowledge of astrology which was practiced by Jews throughout the Middle Ages both as a professional art and as a science. Coming from the east they were looked upon as the heirs of the Caledonians the ancient castors of horoscopes. Throughout the period multitude were filled with awe and fear at the supposed power of the position of the planets at birth to influence the destiny of man. In the canon of the brethren of purity of Arabia in the ninth and tenth centuries there was developed a schematic method for rendering pictorially the human figure for the purpose of revealing a vast harmonious cosmology unified by numerical and musical correspondences. The Italian Renaissance fused astrological doctrine with theories of human proportions less for technical purposes than for purposes of metaphysical speculation on the

existence of a god. A predestined Carman mystic relationship between the universe and man. It is this search for basic qualitative patterns that commonly underlie every unit of whatever entity that is irresistible to the philosopher the theist the scientist and the artist. He will superimpose the features of one phenomenon upon those of another and will often indulge his thoughts in the most irrational subjective peregrinations in the hope that some gears will mesh or that something will click such as super in position of astrological doctrines and symbols on the Bible offers some fascinating correspondences. The zodiacal signs seem to fall into place as descriptive of the character psychology and chronology of biblical figures and events. Each of the 12 signs

offers revelations through its own emblem. And is also symbolic of one of the four elements of Genesis fire water air or earth. The sign to be observed is seen not only by itself. But also in relation to the sign at the opposite end of that particular diameter of the zodiacal circle. We can take as a random example Libre which might represent Moses. And in direct relation. On the other side of the circle is Aries the sign of the Lamb. Libre with its scales which symbolize the law which was given to Moses the Aries lamb which signified the blood of the Lamb and the lentils and side posts of the last plague prior to the Exodus. Aries is also a fire sign which calls to

mind the burning bush out of the midst of which God revealed Himself to Moses. There is also the pillar of fire by night which led Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt. There are the innumerable references to sacrificial offerings made by fire unto the Lord and Aaron's remark to Moses of the golden earrings of the Hebrews which he cast into the fire. And there came out this calf. And God told Moses that a perpetual fire shall be burning upon the altar it shall not go out. One is hard put to find other references to fire in the entire 1:50. Outside of Moses lifetime. Aries with its lamb would also symbolize Jesus and his iconic graphic of him whose birth was preceded by the appearance in the heavens of a cataclysmic supernova which guided the three wise man who incidentally were astrologers.

Whereas in Libre Moses receives the law and gives it to the people. Jesus co-exists in Aries having stated that he was the fulfillment of the law. This is but one of the curious correspondences cosmic pre Arden nations are common coincidences. Call them what you will to be found within the vast complex of astrological systems. As an artist I find such speculation rich in productive fantasy and provocative image farming possibilities. It discloses a meaningful iconography to be found within interdependent worlds. Creative Artists have often concerned themselves with these outer limits of man's perception for Mozart's Magic Flute to Yeats vision for Michelangelo's neoplatonic symbols and prophets to Rembrandts Faust. A number of years ago all Oskar Kokoschka talk to a group of painting students in

Boston and he referred constantly to the fact that his prophetic visions and second sight played an important part in the conception and painting of his pictures. He showed color slides of many of his portraits including a number of well-known European personalities and told that all the sitters met their death. Shortly after completion of the paintings. One would ordinarily dismiss apocalyptic statements of this art except for the fact that this was made by one of the great painters of our time. One whose substantial contribution included some of the finest psychological put which ever painted. I talked with Kokoschka later. He said he knew my work and liked it. Or mark which meant a great deal to me. Coming from one of the giants of art whom I admired greatly. I was at the point of asking him where he had seen my work. But I didn't allow the conversation to continue for as I looked into those eyes that clearly had in them the

wisdom of the ages. I couldn't help but get the unsettling feeling that he was going to ask me to sit for a portrait. My drawings continued to picture sages scholars Saints Bible Students moon worshippers visionaries and false messiahs. The intention as in my early paintings was not so much the imposition of a three dimensional effect upon a two dimensional surface but an intense effort to pull the farm's physically away from the surface and with the help of a highly contrast in values and achieve an actual presence. Benvenuto Cellini wrote of this in his treatise on sculpture and said to say of a certain painting that it detaches itself in such a way that it seems to be an relieve. Is not that the greatest praise.

Though the drawing and painting illustrated my subjects satisfactorily I felt a sense of failure in the realization of a more substantial space. And the only answer was to draw with the material that had more substance to it such as Clay. Now I had often resorted to making clay studies of figures there parts and drapery. Since I rarely use live models. I would play a light on them to materialize an imaginary lighting situation and I would study their perspective. For purposes of solving painting problems. But the thought of doing sculpture is an end in itself stunned me. The artistic and emotional ramifications were enormous. Would there be stylistic changes. Formal readjustments and even more important to complete a people of artistic sensibilities with the involvement in another dimension. There were of course painters who were

excellent sculptors digga for example. Yet he neither dared in a carriage to cast his own waxes or even show them in his lifetime. I saw it clearly. I would be producing magnificent monuments to artistic pretense preserved forever in living bronze. As I worked on the first pieces I saw myself as a defector from the ranks of painters and an interloper among sculptors producing works which exist in some artistically questionable no man's land that is neither painting nor sculpture like the works in the cemetery of the star you know in general. Yet I could see visual logic in a reciprocal relationship between the graphic and the plastic arts particularly in regard to my own problems. The Egyptian wall paintings are as much sculpture reliefs as they are paintings. The Greek pediment are leaves and the doors of give back the feel are right and monsoon are as much paintings as they are sculpture.

At the proper viewing distance they are divested of their inherent weight and take on the appearance of pictures. The artist of the Renaissance were well aware that draftsmanship is the underpinning of all the visual arts and so many of these artists practiced several simultaneously wrote down and spoke often of the primacy of the contours and sculpture. I approach sculpture much as I did drawing and painting and the transition was natural and developmental. The possibilities were exciting and I began to feel reasonably secure in the results I was unravelled. I'm willing as the work developed to accept the gospel of the monolithic form spawn by Michelangelo was highly favored dictum that in order for a sculpture to be good it must be able to roll down a hill. This would not have applied to oil to the lay AKA one group which Michelangelo himself called a miracle of art. So great was his

respect and admiration for this sculpture which was excavated in 15 0 6 that he declined modestly to restore the work and its missing arms which apparently were broken off on the way down the hill. The pattern of my career appears to have been fairly consistent. Having grown up in a religion that rejected the figurative in image I have found it necessary to fashion graven forms. And having developed as an artist in a period when the figurative image was no longer taken seriously I have found it necessary to use it as the essential focus of my work. I continue to make paintings and sculpture with the hope that my work will be judged not for how it satisfies the pre-determined demands of any philosophy or religion but rather for its value as objects made of visions perceived Stravinsky says in his poetics and living illusion is more valuable in

such matters than a dead reality bodiless writes that the artist is an artist only on the condition that he is double and that he neglects no aspect of his double nature. His split being allows him to live in two different worlds simultaneously one which is illusory and another which is real. With his artistry he can make real the illusion he can reconcile the opposites and in congruity eyes which confound us. And with an instinct that is infallible he creates with us phantoms and his fictions. A new existence one that becomes increasingly transparent and plausible as we periodically reassess our values. I had to give vent said the name of any artist is to produce a persuasive figment. And if he succeeds why call that

his failure. Thank you. For to all.