This image is certainly not the light and lilting “a spoonful of sugar”! The normally comforting and refreshing aspect of teacups and spoons has been replaced by oppressive enlargement and threatening positioning. The monumental cups display the colors of Israel but also the stripes concentration camp clothing. Are these the distorted memories of a Jewish heritage strewn out onto the landscape of rocky uncertainty?
The bowl of the oversized spoon in the foreground contains inert rocks which substitute for the traditional sugar cubes to sweeten tea. In the midportion of this painting a couple appear to be hiding behind the bowl of another enormous and weighty spoon. The man is struggling to keep the spoon aloft as his female partner supports him from behind. The position of the spoon and the location of the couple would indicate danger comes from the skies above. Why? Who? What? is the danger?
The pleasant environs of a commodious tearoom, delicate porcelain cups and demitasse spoons shared with family and friends have been replaced by a desolate land of barren rocks, unmanageably oversized tableware and useless gravel sweetener for a lone desperate couple trying to function or perhaps just survive. The scale Bak uses for this painting makes the couple diminutive relative to the relics of times past.
To emotionally cope after your world is destroyed, memory may become larger, more important, than reality.
However, the memory of those joys is simultaneously a burden, a constant psychologically poignant reminder of the misery you now suffer. As our good friend Brother Thomas has written, ” Memory is more permanent than matter.” to which we add,
” For better or for worse!”
Dr. Carl M. Herbert (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, August 4, 2022
Contribute
You are in possession of valuable information about this artwork and want it published on the website in the catalogue raisonné?
Please write to us:
.jpg)
Contribute
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest