With a title alluding to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, Bak’s "Study for the Four Readers of the Apocalypse" depicts four men absorbed in their respective books. Bak has bisected the bodies of each of his four readers, leaving only the top halves of their bodies visible. In a typical, thought-provoking decision on Bak’s part, he has included little — if any – visual evidence to connect his figures to the original descriptions of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death. Instead, he relies on his viewers to make the connections and decipher the work for themselves.
For those who are unable to insert the four horsemen of the apocalypse and their grisly connotations into Bak’s aesthetic painting, the sight of readers positioned in a post-apocalyptic world may instead recall “Time Enough at Last,” a 1959 episode of The Twilight Zone. Similar to Bak’s painting, the television episode tells "the story of a man who seeks salvation in the rubble of a ruined world,” as creator and presenter of the television series, Rod Sterling explained.
“Time Enough at Last” follows Henry Bemis, a bank teller whose colleagues and family mock him for his favorite pastime, reading. Henry, who takes his lunch in the bank’s vault, survives the dropping of an H-Bomb that kills everyone and destroys nearly everything. Upon discovering the rubble, Henry realizes that because he is left with no responsibilities, he is free to read as long as he likes. Overcome with elation, he discovers the ruins of a library, and as he bends over to reach for a novel, his glasses drop and shatter. All alone and miserable, he weakly cries, “That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was…was all the time I needed.”
Unlike Henry Bemis’s tremendous misfortune, Bak’s four readers are immortalized in their interest in their reads. On a hilltop overlooking a thriving forest, they seem at peace. But as always in the world of Bak, not everything is as it seems.
Lucy McGing (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, November 24, 2023
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With a nod to homonymous irony, Bak has relabeled the four riders (horsemen) of the apocalypse described in the New Testament Book of Revelations as four readers. He has painted them atop a high hill, wounded and improbably constructed, half buried, separately reading with large piles of books available. These are not the four threatening figures, Conquest, War, Famine and Death, astride their steeds as depicted in Albrecht Durer’s classic woodcut from 1496-98.
This image is more consistent with a post-apocalyptic reality in which victims with dogged unreal persistence, try to retain the intellectual pursuit afforded by books. Are they reading about their own history?
Similar to Bak’s series of paintings depicting musical quartets, is this a representation of vestigial hope that maybe not all is lost because these four (or perhaps their spirits,) are still turning to books and there are many to read? Of interest, Bak spent weeks hiding from the Germans in a room which was filled with books within a Benedictine convent. The volumes provided concealment, entertainment, adaptive necessities which allowed him, his mother, and others to survive. These four, like six million others, seem less fortunate but are still not forgotten.
Dr. Carl M. Herbert (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, January 6, 2023
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