Page 294 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Introduction to the sculpture

not illustrated. Described as made of wood and fourteen inches high,
it cannot readily be identified with any of the works catalogued here.
The 1961 exhibition, however, included no. 24, “Co-existence or No-
existence”, and the brochure does provide a photograph
(unfortunately, the curators scrambled the work’s title—see the
catalogue entry below).
The catalogue raisonné following this introduction describes the
unique features (when evident) of individual pieces. The present
overview of the entire opus provides more general statements about
AR and his carvings. The categories into which the catalogue is
organized (based on an analysis of similarities and differences) and
the frequency with which the works occur in them, is as follows:

Category Number of pieces

Studies: human 33
Studies: animal 21
Genre: shtetl 18
Genre: modern 29
Genre: other 7
Portraits: biblical 11
Portraits: literary 5
Portraits: historical 9
Portraits: familial 4
Fantastic and allegorical figures 9
Utilitarian objects 22

The value, good or bad, of these categories resides partially in
their attempt to resolve the ambiguity of identification inherent in a
body of work with minimal labeling and no living informant able to
give the missing definitions. David Rothstein’s theory that AR
himself was loath to name his sculptures for emotional reasons may
be reinforced with two other possibilities: the sculptor may have
retained the traces of folk-religious superstition about human
representation, or have felt presenting a work as a portrait of anyone
known would invite criticism of his ability to create an exact likeness.
Yet the suspicion remains that many of the pieces here called “study”

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