Page 342 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Genre: modern

124 Crippled beggar *
Wood
14.25” x 4.5”
Inscription: Feb 50 (?) (in hair)

AR found a rare piece of wood: a branch with three parallel
forking extensions. Two of these became a man’s legs; the
third a crutch on which he is leaning. This hulking
hunchbacked beggar evokes both pathos and horror, like the
characters portrayed by Lon Chaney. One hand is on the
crutch under his armpit, the other extended palm up. AR left
about an inch of bark at the ends of the cylindrical legs,
strongly suggesting clubfeet. The man’s heavily lined face is a
study in pain and anxiety. He wears a shirt with no tie and a
jacket appearing to blow open at the waist—AR’s indication of
an outdoor setting. The power of the work leaves the viewer to
wonder if the artist was reproducing a specific memory rather
than a stereotype. This piece appears in a photograph dated
March 1959.

82 Scholar
Wood
10.5” x 2.25”
Inscription: Abraham (Hebrew) Rothstein (English, with
backward “S”), on back of base.

A scholar in academic cape, gown and mortarboard stands in a
frozen pose, holding a book and looking straight ahead. The
man’s head is not oversized, as AR often rendered intellectuals,
but this thinker appears circumscribed by his role and status—
an implicit conflict producing little tension here. AR may have
been inspired by a matriculation within the family, but‹ the date
of the piece is unknown. The bilingual inscription could reflect
the sculptor’s awareness of himself as a self-educated man, in
contrast to his subject (in which case the unusual instance of an
incorrectly shaped letter may be an ironic commentary on his
command of English), or might simply be a bit of playfulness.
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