Page 298 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text
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Introduction to the sculpture
reading had instilled in him a fascination for the sensuality of the
former type and the scholarship of the latter. Literary associations
seem to be the primary trigger in his mind for carving these works;
they could almost be categorized as fantasies, in which imagination
complements not memory but whimsy. Two of the fantasy pieces
(nos. 15 and 24) bear titular inscriptions revealing a high level of
verbal wit and visual punning—as well as social criticism. The “2020
letter” and some of the letters to grandchildren show what AR’s
imagination could do in a literary context; it is unfortunate that he did
not get to exercise it more often.
It is in the human studies that the artist’s unconscious concerns
are most in evidence; as argued above, it is precisely when specific
design or “content” is least present in the artist’s mind that he
expresses most clearly his deepest concerns. AR repeated the same
“study” many times: the head of a man of mature years, bearded,
serious, with no identifiable costume detail other than an occasional
yarmulke. These pieces are discussed in more detail in the catalogue;
suffice it here to say that AR must have been recreating a complex of
human and cultural characteristics retaining a powerful hold on his
psyche: the image of patriarchal authority, as manifest in the persons
of his .father, grandfathers, uncles and (by proxy) teachers.
That theme runs through AR’s life and works like a vein of iron:
the family and society he grew up in, rebelled against, and was a
refugee from, were based on the traditional Judaic paternal model of
filial respect and obedience—if not trust. His descriptions of Moshe
Itzel and life under his rule reveal the depth of this phenomenon in
the Rothstein compound. And then America, particularly postwar
Los Angeles, where all forms of authority were in retreat, eroded by
social change and challenged by deprived classes of people: AR,
having achieved the age and position of a grandfather, was powerless.
It may well be that this incongruous development, manifest in his
own life history, from the past (oppression of body and mind for the
young, power and status for the old) to the present (freedom and
irresponsibility for the young, abandonment and isolation for the old,
set up a ferment in AR’s unconscious expressed most forcefully in
the mute stone and wood heads of his ancestors.
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