Page 339 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Genre: modern

This piece is a genuine curiosity, owing to its format: a cameo
relief on top of a flat oval, the bottom of which is a ring of six
wooden balls around a short section of cylindrical wood drilled
out like a hollow dowel. It sits like an ornamental ashtray on
this bizarre base, leaving the viewer to wonder why this crude
little figure of a captain at the wheel (see no. 38 for the same
motif) should have been finished in such a fashion. The
number of balls (probably obtained from his son-in-law Max)
repeats the number of spokes in the wheel, but that may be an
accident of geometry rather than a conscious restatement. Its
idiosyncrasy marks the carving as a kind of mysterious “folk
art” whose true function will never be known. The incised date
is rare in AR’s work.

59 Cook *
Wood
20.25” x 4.5”

This slightly portly cook (his shirt pops open at the waist)
holds a frying pan by the handle and a whole fish by the tail.
He has a narrow chef’s hat on his head and a broad grin on his
clean-shaven face—all in all, not the image of a cordon bleu; on
the verge of grotesquerie, the piece might (or might not) have
been intended by AR as satire. His limitation in rendering an
animated expression or posture is painfully evident here,
tipping the balance toward “folk art” in the sense of crudeness
and naiveté.

101 Head of a baseball player
Wood
5.25” x 4.5”

Although carved in the Fifties or Sixties, this prognathous low-
browed ballplayer sports a pre-WWII baseball cap. Could he
represent Babe Ruth? AR paid little attention to sports figures,
so only the best-known athletes would have come to his mind
when searching for a model. Why he chose such a subject in
the first place remains a mystery; the man is smiling and, even
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