Nestled in a protective cluster of trees on an isolated hilltop are a couple with diminutive stature relative to their silvan and structural surroundings. The man is dressed as a partisan fighter and rests on a large piece of cloth or tarp which provides a visual allusion to a shroud. The presentational table seen in most still-life paintings has been removed with all objects now reduced to resting on the ground. The woman sitting in a chair facing her companion holds an open book. What is she reading? Is she reading to him or to herself?
The enormous structure behind this couple has some elements of a still-life painting (reference the title) such as the pitcher, the tea pot, the goblet and some (mostly red) brighter colors. However, the amalgamated shelter providing modest protection at best is mostly composed of reassembled broken pieces of Bak’s iconic visual metaphors. The numerous faded wooden arc fragments including part of a tree trunk, either without color or tinted red, represent pieces of a fractured rainbow metaphorically depicting the degradation of G-d’s covenant. The prominent wall of this roofless building includes several dice blocks to remind viewers of the role chance has played and likely will continue to play in the lives of this secluded couple.
Attached to this wall with red rope is a piece covered with the linear stripes found on concentration camp internee’s clothing and a shroud-like fabric floating above it. Suspended together against this same wall with two separate noosed ropes are a pair of large blue “question mark” forms. This is a classic visual overture to consider any number of interrogatives starting with what, where, how, why etc. Finally, at the base rests an unattached nonfunctional wooden wheel going nowhere.
Directly above the seated woman and the entrance to her shelter rises a tower formation with steps on the right and capped by a rough approximation of a Jewish star. Bak’s Jewish heritage and his experience of surviving the Holocaust inform his paintings but the universality of a refugee couple seeking survival by living a very tenuous still life away from those who would harm them remains a poignant reality even in the world of today.
Dr. Carl M. Herbert (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, April 12, 2024
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