Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

"Entering Darkness: Dorothy Wahlstrom, Nurse At Dachau," 1945, 2001, oil On Canvas, 130”x387” inches (six panels)

Jerome Witkin’s art begins with cityscapes, landscapes, individual portraits, but, then soars when he creates monumental depictions of cataclysmic and heroic events that span multiple canvasses. In each painting, he takes us through a powerful visual journey narrated through meaningful mark-making, colors, shapes, and textures. Even after viewing a painting many times, there is still much to discover; because Witkin’s art is not a depiction nor is it meant to be a likeness. The work demands to be contemplated, digested, experienced, and felt on a soul level. Witkin, now 71, has developed a masterful body of work.

The subject this writer finds most captivating is how Witkin gives us an x-ray view into the nature of good and evil and, most importantly, how he portrays the enormous efforts it takes for good to prevail. In an interview, and speaking off the cuff, he revealed what makes his art stand out above others. He said he: “searches for the noble in ignoble times.” Through his passionate art, Witkin conveys the limitless capacity of the human spirit, its individual holiness even in the midst of its tremors, tragedies, and bliss.

Ensconced as a professor of art at Syracuse University for 40 years, 2011 will initiate a traveling exhibition of 40 years of Witkin’s art. The retrospective will begin at Syracuse University and will be shown across the US. His primary dealer, Jack Rutberg, of the Jack Rutberg Gallery in Los Angeles, orchestrates many of his exhibitions. But while other artists clamor to be in the center of art, Witkin creates his unique body of work far from mainstream influences. The distance from New York City or from any major art center, allows him to work independently with greater freedom, be master of his convictions, and undeterred by trends and fashions. Yet, whenever Witkin exhibits his art, and he continually does, his paintings dominate whatever gallery or museum they are in. Add to this his enormous following of people who travel great distances to see whatever Witkin exhibits.

"Taken," 2002-03, oil on can-vas, 108”x348” (4 panels)

Witkin’s sensitivity to social issues of justice and injustice was formed early. In Brooklyn, he was born one of triplets. His sister died at birth, but he grew up with his identical twin brother Joel. Unheard of in 1939, Witkin’s father was Jewish and his mother Catholic. The schism made the intelligent child question who he was, where he owed his allegiance, and how he fit in. The dilemma raised conflicts and questions, particularly because the marriage broke up and his youth was spent during the Holocaust era when news of the war and what was happening to Jews by non-Jews was a never ending topic.

Drawn to art to express the unexplainable, at seven Witkin went to a Catholic after-school art program run by nuns. Although he continued for several years, the child questioned their rigid approach to art-making and their offering a conformist point-of-view for a boundless activity. As a teen he attended the prestigious Music and Art High School composed largely of Jewish students and Jewish teachers where he was impressed with feeling comfortable in this highly intellectual and freely inquiring atmosphere. With a Catholic upbringing, he struggled to choose which belief system suited him. Finally, he resolved the conflict into a valuable salvo; “arrive at your own ideals and stick to them.”

Top: "Rocco’s Garage: The Light Before Rain," 2001, oil on canvas, 36”x56”

Botom: "The German Girl," 1997, oil on canvas, 80”x124” overall (2 panels)

Witkin grew into the quintessential promising young art student, winning a scholarship to the then fairly new Skowhegan School of Art in Maine. Never being out of Greenpoint, the Brooklyn boy rubbed elbows with such greats and social-minded artists as Isabel Bishop, George Grosz, Jack Levine, Rafael Soyer, and Ben Shahn. For the first time, he saw how professional, committed artists conduct their lives, pursue their art, and were undaunted in expressing their beliefs.

Excelling in art, as an older teen, Witkin became complacent until, as an undergraduate, he met at Cooper Union his instructor the painter Victor Candell. Witkin, now a bit smug and lacking humility, was ignored by his instructor, who never invited him for a crit as he did other students. Realizing that something was wrong, Witkin asked Candel for a crit. Candel, a very small man with a thick accent left to go to the library, returning with a huge art history book. He opened it to Michelangelo’s Pieta. The two stared in silence, until Candel said: “Vitkin, do you think she is babysitting?” This perceptive statement caused an immediate paradigm shift, as Witkin, realizing the shallowness of what he had been creating, understood the message. Never again did he make art that was meaningless.

Today Witkin spends from two to three years to complete a painting. They are not only large in size, but immense in concept, context, and spirit. He works on a series and rotates the work, spending a great deal of time in contemplation and down and dirty paint work. A characteristic of Witkin’s brush is how the marks change depending on what he paints. In scenes of goodness and perfection, his strokes sing, lovingly applied, glistening with grandeur. But when he deals with unsettling subjects of human aberrations, the brush begins to growl, strokes become distorted, and colors are duller. Witkin’s paintings are never uniform in expression. Seen in a larger context of paint applications -- brushstrokes, colors, textures, and composition -- they each respond to the narrative as powerful voices that insist on being heard.

"Vincent Van Gogh and Death," 1987, mixed media drawing, 84”x48”

Witkin has taken on difficult, even impossible subjects of a lone individual or a group of individuals who display superhuman courage to right a wrong: the Holocaust, Black History, Martin Luther King, the Trial of Adolph Eichmann, Hiroshima, 9/11, and obscure saints and heroes, as well as homage to artists he admires -- Käthe Kollwitz and Rembrandt Van Rijn. The apex of Witkin’s talents is when his heroic protagonist intuits the need to fearlessly stand up for principles, even against all odds. And in the end, he triumphs. With honest yet wry humor, Witkin states: “I don’t know how to make polite paintings.”

In 2001, Witkin created six irregularly shaped panels on the theme of the Holocaust shown at the 2006 Broken Beauty exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA. The exhibition, a theme rarely examined, looked at the dark side of suffering. But there was a lighter side too, as artists, selected for the exhibition, showed that the human spirit always moves towards resolution, even when beauty is broken. Like the Hebrew language, Witkin’s paintings, entitled Entering Darkness, is read from right to left. The narrative is based on a diary of a little known Christian nurse from Minnesota, Dorothy Wahlstrom, who, in 1945, was among the first liberators to enter Dachau, the infamous concentration camp. Witkin places the nurse in every panel, except the third. Wahlstrom moves through the panels; dressed in her angelic white uniform. Flashlight in hand, her healthy purity is a sharp contrast to the filth surrounding her and the hell that was the camp. For Witkin creating the series was his response to atrocities, portraying horrors at their most glaring, ultimately to shed light on truth. Witkin’s contribution to the Broken Beauty exhibition is his conviction that evil can never be eradicated unless it is recognized and exposed. In the last panel, evil now blatantly revealed, changes Wahlstrom. She sits meditatively alone on a cot wearing her military jacket as the freed survivors leave healthy and renewed.

In conclusion, Witkin creates for those among us who realize that art can be a powerful weapon. Wrenching subjects in the hands of a lesser artist would be impossible to reduce to a canvas or a series of canvasses. But here is where Witkin is master. Through his forthright paintings, he tackles, head on, the nature of ignobility, plowing deeply through the muck that is hell until he arrives at portraying, in epic proportions, the noble soul of a rare few. For this alone, Jerome Witkin’s art will stand the test of time, become classic, and will be appreciated far into the future.

"The Insult And Young Martin," 2004-2007, oil on canvas, 25’ 6” (five panels)