Kitaj cites heavily from Kabbalah: Scholem, Dvekut, the BeSHT (Bal Shem Tov), and Rabbi Nachman, and he knows the ideas of Tikun Olam and of completing G-d’s creation. He “ends” his discourse with “Work in progress to be continued (No end in sight),” and he often leaves his painting unfinished to suggest that there is still much work to be done. Kitaj does not take the never-ending aspect of the fight lightly, and neither should his viewers. The hopelessness of the movement and the loss of identity in the struggle, capture an aspect of the conflict that is uniquely Kitaj, especially with his extensive citation of Derrida and his deconstructionist notions of dualities and paradoxes. Just as the Midrash records Esau’s attempt to strangle Jacob, only to find himself hugging his brother instead, the Arabs and Jews in Kitaj’s painting seem also stuck somewhere between an embrace and a struggle, eerily reflecting current Israeli politics. This notion of the interchangeability of the players, the notion of a hopeless struggle where the identities of the wrestlers are trumped by the struggle itself, also carries the duality of the hug that Jacob and Esau share. This picture is based on Ensor’s painting ‘The Fight.’ You may choose which is Arab and which is Jew.” Kitaj writes, “This is my third painting called ‘Arabs and Jews,’ a fight I expect will never end. The composition is simple, the coloration unremarkable and the lines are rough and generalized. One bears a knife in one hand and pushes the other’s forehead with his second hand, while the second man bearing a hat (kippa?) strangles his antagonist with his two hands. If the Freud portrait is theoretical and intellectual, “Arabs and Jews (After Ensor), 2004” carries more of a pragmatic aura to it. Kitaj appropriates Freud – certainly one of the most historically controversial Jews – as a Jewish symbol of his art, and by implementing a Freudian technique in his drawing of Freud, he turns Freud into a Jewish symbol of his own, as a paradigm of his Jewish experience. An ambiguous form above Freud’s nose weighs down on the face. All the strokes are energetic and free, to mimic Freud’s notion of free association – or letting the mind wander so as to arrive at lurking truths. All 17 were Jews.” Here, we see Kitaj talk of his “Jewish brushstrokes” relating to Freud’s “Free Association.” The artist captures Freud in loose marks, rendering a few white whiskers, here, and Freud’s trademark nose-moustache alignment, there. In “The Psychoanalyst (Freud), 2004,” a small charcoal drawing on paper, Kitaj writes, “The last few years I’ve been reading Freud again – especially the Jewish Freud and his amazing early circle of 17 psychoanalysts. This aesthetic energy draws much inspiration from psychoanalysis. If these don’t quite make sense and seem to epitomize most artists’ inability to put their art into words, don’t worry, because phrases of this sort – and of “a Modernist Golem, called Jewish Art, at this scary time before World War IV” – reveal more of an energetic, emotive trajectory of Kitaj’s, rather than a linear, concrete meditation on Jewish aesthetics. “And so my strange Jewish delirium, its Diasporism, became very unusual for art and sometimes other-worldly and threatening to friend and foe,” he continues. “My art experiments are Taboo in many quarters because a new Jewish Art is too avant-garde for the gardists,” he writes. He even writes Diasporist Manifestos, the second volume of which he begins, “I’ve got Jew on the Brain.” Kitaj is the paradigm of the Jewish artist who comes up big, even in a secular gallery scene that generally has little use for, or interest in Jewish work.Īdam Phillips puts it brilliantly, describing Kitaj’s paintings in his introduction to the catalog, “Something is going on, and there is something shocking about it.” If Kitaj’s paintings are opaque – intense, thick paintings that evoke Matisse’s pink and green coloration at times, Kokoschka’s thick, expressionist lines at other times and even occasionally, Bearden’s collage-like forms – his writing relies on cliché and generalization as its literary currency. The accompanying notes in the exhibit catalog are stuffed with Jewish references. Many of his portraits depict Jews, while many of his narrative scenes depict the Bible. His exhibit at the Marlborough Gallery hails as “How to Reach 72 in Jewish Art,” a reference to the artist’s age and Jewish identity.
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