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The Art of Aging
Old Woman in Red
(1957-2003) oil on canvas (55 x 42) by Hyman Bloom
Courtesy of the artist
Hyman Bloom's haunting painting Old Woman in
Red presents us with a central paradigm of aging; its universality.
Our past and inevitable future are frequently seen in depictions of
the very old. In image after image the exhibition "The Art of
Aging" mercilessly presents the undeniable connection between
a communal past and our future. The old are living witnesses to the
past, to lives lived remarkably like ours. Conversely, the hunched
back, wrinkled face and slowed gait is a sure forecast of our future.
While many of us will grow old with depressingly similar symptoms
this exhibition expansively affirms that old age is considerably more
than the portal to death, rather it is seen as expressing every aspect
of a vital and creative life.
"The Art of Aging," curated by Laura Kruger, presents
one hundred and forty-one works of painting, sculpture, photography,
installation and mixed media by eighty-three artists from Israel
and America. This impressive and diverse survey of the myriad aspects
of aging includes many major artists including Samuel Bak, Hyman
Bloom, Audrey Flack, Ben Katchor, Schwebel, George Segal, Kiki Smith,
Joan Snyder, and Art Spiegelman among many others.
Bloom's painting, painted over a period of sixty-six years and finished this year, shows a seated old woman resting on her cane in a luminous Goyaesque landscape. She has traversed a very long way and yet her firm grasp of the cane implies she will soon rise up and stride further still. Her red garment, a lively incongruous color for such an old lady, reminds us of her youth and vigor. Bloom's woman may look ancient but her spirit and determination shine through in every brushstroke.
Who Can Forget How Blue the Sky Was Beforehand
(2001) oil on canvas ( 60 x 68) by Sigmund Abeles
Courtesy of the artist
Among the many ideas explored is the confrontation
with old age. Sigmund Abeles' Who Can Forget How Blue the Sky Was
Beforehand (2001) presents the struggle of the artist himself,
growing gray. He rails at the sky, stretching with clenched fists
in protest against the inevitable diminution of physical ability.
The simultaneous front and back views extend his protest into the
depth of the painting and project it out to the audience like two
towers of defiance. A similar confrontation,
Helen V
(1996) Pastel on paper (38 x 50) by George Segal
Courtesy of the George and Helen Segal Foundation
Carroll Janis, Inc.
seen from an entirely different perspective, is George Segal's Helen
V (1996). This large (38 X 50) pastel on paper is a penetrating
portrait of his wife done only a few years before both he and his
wife passed away. Her gaze rivets us in accusation while her pursed
lips seem to demand that we provide a satisfactory accounting of our
lives. The cropped image engages the viewer unlike any other in the
show.
Some of the images elegantly depict the old, as
in the masterful series of four black and white photographs by Aliza
Auerbach of elderly kibbutz workers; useful and still creative after
many years of hard toil. The connections with the land of Israel and
its productivity reminds us of the effort required to maintain a country.
Other artists take a more philosophical approach reflecting the entire
process of life, cradle to grave. Audrey Flack's sculpture of her
one hundred-year-old mother, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is
the Hand That Rolls the Dice (2003) plays with irony and visual
puns. She crowns her mom's wrinkled face with a set of five dice that
evoke the element of chance and our scant control over life's vicissitudes.
Carol Hamoy's Six Months (2002) presents a mixed media landscape
of one person's life. A fractured photograph of a baby boy on a bearskin
rug is contrasted with nine pages of his diary kept in the last six
months of his life. The long years between are inevitably evoked as
we ponder the beginning and end.
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
is the Hand That Rolls the Dice
(2003) composite plaster by Audrey Flack
Courtesy of the artist
Biblical themes address old age in distinctly unfamiliar formats.
Joyce Ellen Weinstein explores the death of Moses in Behold Thy
Days Approach (2003). It is a mixed media unique book that ponders
the complex relationship between God and His faithful servant, Moses,
prohibited from fulfilling his overwhelming desire to enter the Land
of Israel. Combining biblical texts, midrashim, references to Honi
the Circle Drawer and poetry the work protests the seeming injustice
even as it accepts the notion that when God decrees, even the hour
of our death, we must obediently comply. Natan Nuchi's Binding
of Isaac (1984) is seen in an even more radical light as a nocturnal
meditation on the unnatural death of a son before his father. Isaac
is cradled in the arms of Abraham as they stare imploringly into each
other's eyes, trying to understand the incomprehensible decree of
sacrifice. It is said the mourning for one's child is never ending.
The exhibition does not shy away from confrontation with the termination
of old age in death. Box (1993) by Norma Minkowitz is an
unsettling representation of the very concept of death. The form
of a head, actually a crocheted mask, rests in a small rectangular
box that is lined with dried autumn leaves. The outside of the box
is laminated with newspaper obituaries, creating a macabre faux
funerary monument that deftly combines the symbolism of fallen leaves
with a very real text and the impression of a shell-like mask left
behind by the departed. In an equally evocative manner Jane Logemann's
pencil drawing Kaddish (1995) uses the Hebrew alphabet primitively
lettered to slowly and hesitantly spell out the Mourner's Kaddish,
first in the center surrounding an English translation and then
in Aramaic over and over again to the bottom of the page. This subtle
work summons the first uncomfortable experience of saying Kaddish
for a loved one. The words, like the writing in the drawing, come
with difficulty, and only slowly comfort as they praise God and
look forward to His reign even in our time of sorrow.
Old Man's Departure (1977)
charcoal & chalk on paper by Samuel Bak
Courtesy of the Pucker Gallery, Boston
Samuel Bak's Old Man's Departure flows
effortlessly from Psalm 90; "The days of our years among them
are seventy years, and if with strength, eighty years; their proudest
success is but toil and pain, for it is cut off swiftly and we fly
away." Bak pictures an old man seated in a bizarre contraption.
It is wooden mechanical bird with levers and flaps for wings and a
comical beaked head that expects to take flight at any moment. The
drawing is dedicated to “the restless spirit of my stepfather, a
survivor of Dachau...” who was tortured by memories and nightmares
until the final last journey brought him "his first deep and
peaceful sleep in over twenty-five years." Aging is the journey
that brings us all to a final departure. "The Art of Aging"
shows us in our past and in our futures many of the ways to get there.
The Art of Aging
Hebrew Union Collage - Jewish Institute of Religion Museum
One West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012; 212 824 2205
Mon. - Thurs. 9am - 5pm; Friday, 9am - 3pm; Selected Sundays
Free Admission: Until June 25, 2004
Richard McBee
September 11, 2003
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