Newsletter #7

#7 ANGELORENSANZFOUNDATI ON

NEWSLETTER Augus t12, 2011

_ cont ent s Der ekBent l y As e mi ol ogi s t i n ThePr a doMus e um

Looki ngBack TheJ e wi s hDa i l yFor wa r d

Cul t ur ei nt heLES LMAKGa l l e r y

Angel Or ens anz Pe nz aEx hi bi t

Derek Bently A Semiologist in The Prado Museum The Utopia of the Redeemer and the Extermination of the Unredeemed

T

he Museo del Prado is presenting fourteen key paintings of the late Renaissance and the Baroque periods within the show The Painted Word.

Christ’s Paintings in the Museo del Prado. The masterpieces are: Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation (ca. 1550); Rogier Van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross (1435); The Last Supper (1560) by Juan de Juanes; The Pantocrator supported by four Angeles, a mural painting transferred on canvas; Descent of Christ into Limbo (1516) by Sebastiano del Piombo; The Adoration of the Magi by Peter Paul Rubens (1609), The Good Shepherd Boy by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1660); Jesus Among the Doctors in the Temple (1556) by Paolo Veronese; Tintoretto’s Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples (1547); Jesus Crucified, by Diego de Velázquez (1632); Descent from the Cross by Caravaggio (1602-1604); Francisco de Zurbaran’s Agnus Dei (1635-1640); The Holy Trinity

by José de Ribera (1635) and The Resurrection by El Greco (1595). They are part of a major show that the Prado Museum has mounted to mark the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI to Madrid this August.

The Vatican has cooperated by lending a painting

by Caravaggio’s Descent from the Cross (1602-4) that hanged on the walls of the Vatican Museums.

There are a series of constants in this sample of the best Western painting of the 16th and 17th centuries. For one, both men and women surround Christ, who is usually the center of the image. He is often naked and is almost always the protagonist of a large narrative. Standing as a prototype of all men, he radiates a mesmerizing, electrifying materialization of himself which the surrounding party seems to be unaware of.

These fourteen paintings are on view at El Prado Museum from now through next October. In all of them, the image of Christ conveys a symbolic message within a multilevel narrative. Christ is always the central point of the image and as result he relates to all other surrounding bodies. Every body has a history, encapsulating a time and place. The artists are telling us that this Man is the central ideal man.

Caravaggio, Descent from the Cross, 1602-4

The Enlightenment of the 18th century, as in Jean Jacques Rousseau, focused on the citizen as the heart of all the narratives of his time. So did the English Pragmatist philosophers. They divest each and all men of any transcendence.

The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David is considered the epitome of the 18th century revolutionary painting, and many art critics have noticed the religious undertone in which the body of Marat is displayed and delivered by David. The radical politician and journalist Jean-Paul Marat is depicted in his bath after being murdered by Charlotte Corday.

She famously claimed “I have killed one man to save 100,000,” which further emphasizes the parallelism between Marat and the Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

David, the master of the French Neoclassicism, was able to give indelible expression to this attribute.

For the dialectical philosophy of the 19th century, from Hegel to Karl Marx, and from Freud to Nietzsche, the common citizen occupies the center of the narrative without heroes or superheroes. The art of the revolution is the painting and the literature not the theater. The 20th century saw the human body first through the premises of a humanism condemned to its alienation, only redeemable through a selfawareness of the nothingness, as Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus would codify short after with the existentialist philosophy.

The opposite of this high-minded Existentialism was the totalitarianisms of death. As their ultimate expression of degradation: the gas chambers and other forms of mechanical, massive destruction. Some one hundred million human bodies were massacred

and annihilated during the 20th century in stateplanned executed programs. That horrific, continuous annihilation was developed with systematic planning and execution protocols, as precise as new agricultural industrialized developments, Heidegger pointed out hideously. During the 20th century we went well above all the victims that humankind had accumulated since its appearance on earth.

The last time I visited its galleries, about twenty five years ago, they weren’t too different from the condition in which the museum was left by the Spanish Civil War. The conflict forced it to close and its treasures had to be moved temporarily throughout Europe.

During the Spanish War about a million people were eradicated.

The Museo del Prado’s current exhibition curators deserve all our gratitude and admiration. It would be great to leave the steamy heat of Manhattan and wake up in Barajas for a weekend. Once one gets to the stately entrance doors, if the eyes are raised up, they are welcomed in the front by Goya’s statue, which always smiles with a malevolent smirk to the crowds. The last time I visited El Prado I mistook Goya for Goethe. Doesn’t he have a resemblance?

Well, both could be perfectly asked for “Mehr Licht: More Light.”

Derek Bentley

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793

Culture in the LES LMAK Gallery A Childs Game

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mongst the overwhelmingly bold red and yellow Mandarin calligraphy of Chinatown, lays a hidden treasure. If not for the large orange insignia on the door, the building would have been unrecognizable, even to the eager eye. Behind the orange circle stands the LMAK Projects gallery space. A contemporary art gallery located at 139 Eldridge Street with a special, and rather unconventional, summer exhibition. The space is long and narrow and the floor resembles the creaky wooden floorboards of an attic. LMAK Projects was originally founded in Chelsea in 2005, and relocated in 2008 to their current location.

Louky and Bart Keijsers Koning, a natively Dutch couple, own this quaint gallery that straddles Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The new space is blessed with the gift of malleability. Although we often forget, summer is a time to regale in family activities and embrace the lighthearted temperament that floats in the air. Bart Keijsers Koning envisioned devoting his entire gallery space to a new kind of artist.

His three-year-old daughter served as his inspiration.

The children from the Preschool of America just down the road are now the stars of the art show.

Within the halls of the preschool, teachers carefully selected various class projects. Each child was able to channel their creativity into their own masterpiece.

Walking through the gallery, I was reminded of my childhood. Papers decorated with finger paintings, watercolors, and black magic lined the walls of this small gallery. The art was youthful and colorful, yet distinctively beautiful. Bart explained, “Allowing a child the ability to see their efforts in a new environment instantly broadens their horizons.” His intention was to fill these children with pride, to introduce culture and its innovations to the children. He was surprised, and overjoyed, to admit that the preschool teachers were almost as giddy about the exhibition as the students were.

Louky Keijsers Koning, the founder of the gallery explains: “art cannot be confined by boundaries.”

After all, age is but a number. Some of these young and budding artists are already published. For ten dollars apiece, you could own one of the first artworks by the next Modigliani or Picasso. Thus far, three of the paintings have been sold, and all profits go to the preschool. On Saturday, August 6, the exhibition

Installation views of Eldridge Express, an exhibit of the students from Preschool of America, 2011

closed with a small reception and raffle. For five dollars a ticket, the children came and admired their artwork, indulged in arts and crafts, played games, and won prizes. The gallery essentially brought a community together, through art and culture.

Jeff Grant is the next artist LMAK Projects is featuring. Last summer Grant transformed the space into his studio. Passersby were given the privilege of peeking behind the curtain and watching the artist at work. His style is known for its minimalism, simplicity, and precision. His work interacts with nature, giving it a playful vibe. He will be working in the LMAK Gallery starting in mid-August and the exhibition will open September 7th 2011.

Louky and Bart Keijsers Koning generally represent fourteen artists. Each time the gallery transforms itself into the perfect space for the artist. Elana Herzog, for example, works with fabrics. She modified the space by stapling and draping her artistic fabric pieces all over the walls of the gallery. Andy Graydon dimmed the lights in the gallery and let his sound piece speak for itself. Jen Stark works with paper. Although we

often think of paper maché and cut out snowflakes as a child’s sport, Stark has an amazing eye for shape and color. Although she uses simple cutting techniques, the final product is a remarkably complex work of art. Russell Nachman, an American painter fixated on social outcasts, paints normal figures and tops them with traditional Black Metal faces. It’s like looking in the mirror of the Kiss Band.

Louky jokingly mentioned that she prefers to “showcase artists that she personally finds interesting and intriguing.” Art is a field in which individuality is revered. The LMAK Projects has collected a wide variety of artists whose work exudes this precise characteristic. The owners improvise, and think on their feet. After all, at the root of every artist is a child experimenting.

Alyx Rimberg

Looking Back The Jewish Daily Forward Conecting a Community

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ith just the click of a button, instant gratification.

Whether you are in China for a business trip or Costa Rica for a brief vacation, the comfort of home is only seconds away. Newspapers, magazines, and personal correspondences are all available via a computer. Even as you travel uncharted territory, or grapple with a business deal, the familiarity of your community is never far away.

Upon their arrival, the immigrants encountered a tremendous cultural shock. American thought and practice had little correlation with their own traditional customs. Without technology, and the instant benefits it has to offer, they were essentially left alone to contend with the trials and tribulations of their new, and supposedly improved, lifestyle.

Acclimation proved to be a difficult feat.

In the late nineteenth century, flocks of Eastern European Jews came to America. Many of them left their families behind as they surged forward courageously into an unknown cultural abyss.

Collectively, many of these new immigrants settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Remnants of their community are still visible today as you walk through the angular streets of the neighborhood: Katz’s Delicatessen, Yonah Schimmel’s Knishes, and our very own Angel Orensanz Foundation was once the prestigious Ansche Chessed Synagogue.

Abraham Cahan, a Lithuanian immigrant came to New York in June 1882. He quickly became an active member of the Social Labor Party of America. By 1903, he started the first American Yiddish newspaper called The Jewish Daily Forward, through which he peddled his fervent ideas about unionism and labor laws. His newspaper included a vast array of articles that gave these newly settled immigrants a taste of home. The newspaper was written in their native tongue, Yiddish, and the humor tingled with the familiar taste of home. Although only a newspaper,

The Jewish Daily Forward Building, photo by The Tenement Museum

The Jewish Daily Forward served as a unifier for Eastern European Jews. Having a central newspaper proved to more vital than one could have ever expected.

Before long, Cahan’s paper became the leading Yiddish newspaper in the world, and the most successful non-English newspaper in America. Even in the dead of winter, men from the neighborhood huddled together in front of the entrance of the grandiose neo-classic Jewish Daily Forward building located on East Broadway. Imagine smoke emanating from their lips as their hot breath hit the brisk cold air, all in order to receive a hot off the press copy of the paper before work.

Cahan’s passion and energy led the paper until 1946.

The community was thriving, and at the epicenter of this rejuvenation was a simple newspaper. The lonely immigrants of the Lower East Side found a best friend, in a newspaper, just when they really needed one.

Within the newspaper was a section called, “A Bintel Brief.” The literal Yiddish translation is, “A Bundle of Letters.” Throughout Jewish history, Jews have united themselves through letter correspondences.

In Medieval Europe, letters circulated with questions for the Rebbe, a man of esteemed religious authority.

These letters were the start of what is now known as the Responsa System. Correspondence provided Jews with a sense of unity that had been greatly lacking.

Records of these letters documented cultural shifts and developments in the Jewish community over the decades. Years later, “A Bintel Brief” was founded on a similar premise; Eastern European immigrants were floundering. They needed help, and guidance, acclimating to American culture. The Jewish Daily Forward provided an older brother, a confidant, to hold their hand and jump. It is no wonder that the author of the column was nicknamed, “The Rebbe.”

Although it would have been easy to segregate the newspapers devotion to Yiddishkeit (Jewishness), and the outside American world, Cahan attained the perfect balance between old world comfort and new world developments. As a young girl, an elderly woman remembers watching her father at the dining room table, sipping the classic Jewish “mazo-ballsoup” with a tarnished silver spoon in one hand and indulging in The Jewish Daily Forward with the other. She remembers her father’s hearty laugh reverberating through the room as he chuckled at an old Yiddish pun.

Cahan probed his readers to immerse themselves in American culture. He wanted them to partake in the battle of the working class American to transform society. His newspaper provided them with guidelines of adaptation. In fact, through his own articles he helped influence a change in American Labor Laws.

His pro-active demeanor made him one of the most powerful men of his generation.

These letters, paper, and articles, documented the harsh realities of Jewish life in America. The letters were filled with sorrowful tales of broken families, anti-Semitic encounters, and jobless and homeless individuals whose last beacon of hope was The Jewish Daily Forward. Despite all grievances, they finally knew that they were not alone in their struggles.

Isaac Metzker, author of A Bintel Brief wrote in his book: “The newcomers, who were lonely, clung to the Forward as a newfound friend.” The community needed the paper; it was the heart of the American Yiddish community. Even before Internet and email, humanity was the same; sometimes all you need to move forward is a little taste of home.

Alyx Rimberg

The Jewish Daily Forward Building, photo by flickr.com

Angel Orensanz Penza Exhibit

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ast Friday, August 5th Angel Orensanz opened a retrospective of his work in the three halls of the Savitsky Regional Picture Gallery (Penza). The exhibition will run for one month. The region’s arts officers: those of the Spanish Embassy in Moscow and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, filled the gallery halls with the work of Angel Orensanz.

His sculptures, multimedia installations, photographs, and video art are displayed in an organic reinforcement both conceptual and visual. The wealth of media, concepts, and materials that Angel Orensanz brings to the Savitsky Regional Picture Gallery conveys a sense of total, unparalleled harmony.

Orensanz’s work resonates quite well with the inner tradition of the Russian Revolutionary Art. The exhibition was introduced by the Director of the Museum, Dr. Valery Pavlovich Sazonov and the Ambassador of Spain Dr. Javier Larrache. Valery Pavlovich Sazonov has curated and installed the Orensanz exhibition that occupies large expanses of the Gallery.

The sculpture work consists of a large display of lycra drenched in fiery colors. The original photographs, done by Yuri Barikin, capture Angel Orensanz’s

installations in various cities and natural settings of Russia. The drawings in the exhibition have been created during his many years of residence in Russia.

Angel Orensanz has developed eight retrospective shows in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He was made an honorary member of the National Academy of Arts and the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

Orensanz has developed a strong friendship with Andrei Voznesensky as well as other poets. Some of the most significant art writers of the country have extensively analyzed his work, such as Alexander Borovski, Nikolai Blagodatov, Vasili Tseretelli, besides other renown art critics such as Achille Bonito Oliva, John Spike, Pierre Restany or Sir Roland Penrose.

In honor of this exhibition, a catalogue will be published including many significant texts and illustrations by Angel Orensanz.

On view throughout August, 2011.

Savitsky Regional Picture Gallery Ulitsa Sovetskaya, 3.

Penza. Russia.

Tel: (8412) 565-600 E-Mail: penza-art@mail.ru

Opening reception last Friday August 5th in the Savitsky Regional Picture Gallery

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