Samuel Bak

Othyoth / Letters

1992
Oil on canvas
78 ³⁄₄ × 63 inches(200 × 160 cm)
Signed and dated lower right: BAK 92
Othyoth depicts the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments as floating in space and shattered into pieces, yet unmistakably bound as if by magnetic attraction.
“I’m not interested so much in the man that God created, but in the God that man created,” says Bak. “I’m interested in the moral structure to human consciousness, and the tablets of the Ten Commandments represent this symbol. These laws are very important to keep the human person in a state of dignity, and in a state of protection, protected from their animal impulses. Now this moral consciousness has constantly been destroyed, reborn and destroyed. This sort of thing was represented again in the time of the Holocaust, and it still goes on, because wars go on, slaughter goes on, crimes go on.”
Samuel Bak, Interview in Stuff Magazine, 1995
Themes: Symbol/Letter