"Keep Me in your Heart for Awhile," 2003-04

Map of the Human Heart
American master Jerome Witkin arrives at RCC’s Quad Gallery for a one-month tour
By: Nancy Powell

As I walk through the gallery doors, past portraits of altars and self-images, what greets me is a life-size black-and-white image of a man sprawled helplessly against a wall, fists clenched in agony, the charcoal and ink lines sputtered angrily into the shadows of the walls. Yet in what most certainly appears to be a confrontation of his own mortality, through a skull no less that leans threateningly close to the man through an open window of a door, the man himself seems devoid of emotion, haunted, a quiet but shocking acceptance of death.

Vincent and Death is just one of several thought-provoking pieces on loan from Jack Rutberg Fine Arts and currently showing at the Quad Gallery at RCC. Jerome Witkin, the virtuoso auteur for whom this display celebrates, reigns as the modern master, an American figurative artist whose talent evokes that of the old masters of surrealism and abstract expressionism, artists like Goya or Manet who transcended their respective mediums. This landmark exhibit is a first of its kind for this part of Southern California and is the hard-won result of ardent admirer and gallery coordinator Leslie Brown, who actively pursued Witkin until the artist and his pieces arrived in her studio, albeit at great personal cost to the college. There is a one million dollar price tag for insurance costs, not to mention the cost to package and transport the pieces from Los Angeles to the Inland Empire. Gallery assistant Jose Flores relates how Brown once had the opportunity to grab one of Witkin’s original pieces for a paltry $2,000, but hesitated to do so. Today’s price tag runs well into the $65,000 range, with the larger and more respected pieces comfortably fetching a six-figure purse.

Born and raised Catholic in New York, Witkin began to explore the subject of mortality, pain and the Holocaust after the death of his Jewish father. Witkin captures many of his subjects in mid-thought or in pain, as in his oil-on-canvas portrait Lari Edward with its blue pain shadow on the bridge between his nose and cheek, or the mixed media wonder of Rebecca Stronger, whose contemplative expression with her shaved head and charcoal gray, oversized turtleneck recalls Holocaust-like heartbreak. Stark and more disturbing is the 16-figure composition called The German Girl, whose young heroine distributes potatoes to concentration camp inmates despite her minimalist surroundings—a vessel made from a skull, swastikas on shirts, books, and a bare mattress.

Yet intermingling with death and dying are the more life-affirming graphics of small town life as in The Circus or the quiet but charming Keep Me In Your Heart for Awhile. Witkin places so much sentiment with each piece that it is hard to walk away and not feel something emotional, something transcendent after the viewing.

“I wish to be remembered as a religious artist who attempted to portray the most intimate range of human feelings and the meetings of the human with life’s demons and deities,” ruminates Witkin. “Art and the holy are twins. Rembrandt, Kollwitz pray with muddy and bloody hands.”

Do come and take a gander. A man of such artistic caliber (Witkin himself will be at the gallery’s Nov. 4 opening) comes around once in a lifetime.

“The Works of Jerome Witkin,” Riverside Community College Quad Gallery, 4800 Magnolia Ave., Quad Room 140, Riverside, (951) 222-8358; http://academic.rcc.edu/art/exhibitions.jsp. Opens 10AM-3PM Mon-Fri, 5:30PM-8PM Thurs. Thru Dec. 7. Free.