Ancestral Image

Painted in the early sixties during my San Antonio years, I have come to regard Ancestral Image as my first mature work expressing a Jewish religious theme. As I think about it, its unusual history is virtually an echo of its subject, the proverbial Jew wandering through history. He clings lovingly and ferociously to this covenantal heritage while eliciting all manner of ridicule, taunting, rejection, accusation and admiration in his journeying as does the people he represents. Of all my works, this one has always been in the presence of viewers, Jewish and Christian, young and old, in my home and in the homes of others. The reactions it evokes, again in both Jews and non-Jews is full of contradictions, surprises, and satisfaction.  I chose to do a painting of an image as quintessentially Jewish as a painting of the crucifixion is Christian. Breathing new life into stereotype images seems to me a worthy challenge to the talent and integrity of an artist. If it comes out with no feeling, the integrity and the faith is not there.  I have always loved this work and so have my artist friends who felt immediately its expressive merits and intensity. It was for years the first thing people saw as they entered our front door. One young man, a university student, saw it in a faculty show and rented it. A non-Jew, he said that he ͞drew strength from it,͟a compliment I deeply appreciated.  Its inspiration came early in an evening likely near the time of the High Holy Days. I remember working into the night. I had made several sketches of the cantor of our synagogue, a kindly soul. Cantor Immanuel Barkan took an interest in my work and supported it. He visited me in my dusty little house. He had something of the artist spirit in him and dramatic features. He commissioned a mural from me for his office, and I also designed the label, a linoleum cut, for the prayer books of our synagogue.   I don’t remember making sketches for this painting, but probably there are some, as I almost always make them.  But the work went quickly and into the night. Perhaps the next day there were some touches, but overall it was one of those works that went from start to finish with rightness and fire that seemed as much predestination as inspiration. And flashes of his recently sketched face passed through my mind. The face you see here is far from a portrait or even a likeness of the cantor. It is more an evocation of his face, and a memory of the cantorial chant itself, whose endless soaring melodies unfettered by the rhythmic beat of instruments seem not a part of the Earth but more like the smoke of offerings lifting heavenward.Soon after I finished it, I sent it off to the Whitney Annual at the Whitney Museum in New York. This was the most prestigeous national exhibit at the time, open to all artists in America. Of all my works, I was somehow most certain of the quality of this one. It was crated and sent, no cheap proposition. And back it came. Rejection is part of the life of every artist, but this was the sixties and naïve, I could not nor could anyone grasp what this portended for figurative art?  For young and middle aged Jews then the work was too harsh, too sad. For a reform Rabbi, the prayer shawl (talit) and head covering (yarmulke) were unacceptable. It was shown in group shows in San Antonio, again praised by my artist friends, and ignored by regular patrons. It never won a prize. It has been thought of as irrelevant to the modern sensibility and yet over time captured the heart of many individuals of all faiths and of those even who rejected their Jewish or Christian roots or had grown cool to them.  It is a favorite of my son’s and I have noted, as times have changed, that it is more appealing to today’s young generation than to my own.  Its journey, like its subject has been rather a Biblical journey. Its provenance is a biblical one, not one of uproarious acclaim and worldly aggrandizement, but rather of worldly struggle met with covenantal faith. It is a struggle that goes on and will go on until all the covenants inscribed on this scroll in the arms of this image are fulfilled.