Time moves steadily, dependably, by degrees, little by little, bit by bit. Our relationship with it, however, does not—from having too much of it that we want to make it pass, or not having enough so that we feel we must chase.
In Samuel Bak’s "With Time" we are presented with a scene in disarray: broken clocks, broken bodies, broken trees, all composed within a broken landscape. An attempt has been made to put them back together with straps, branches, pieces of wood, and nails; a bid to reverse time and bring back to life that which was shattered. On the left side of the frame, a fabrication of the human form seems frozen in time, while in the center, a fragmented person is upside down, going nowhere. To the right of the canvas, a concentration camp prisoner moves toward a clock with a branch pointed at the number six, evoking the commandment, “Thou shalt not murder.” In Nazi camps, prisoners generally did not serve specific sentences; they never knew when they would be released.
Time, like the camp itself, imprisoned them in endless misery. Meanwhile, the roll call, the appell, could last for hours with the inmates being counted and recounted endlessly. Time can both heal and destroy. It can also move with us or without us. It is art that allows us to suspend time and contemplate. As Bak’s piece demonstrates, we cannot escape time, nor our past. What do we do with the time we are given? Regardless of our answer, time moves steadily, dependably, by degrees, little by little, bit by bit.
Dr. Mark Celinscak, Department of History, University of Nebraska at Omaha,
BAK a Day, April 8, 2023
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What do we make of time? Across the ages, humans have found different ways to measure time. A slow-moving shadow cast on a sundial. The revolutions of hands on a clock face. The oscillations of a caesium-133 atom. We often speak of clock time as something we control: we take time or grab it, save time or spend it, run out of time or have too much on our hands. But the experience of personal trauma or social disaster – war, genocide, the death of a family member, a debilitating illness, a world falling apart – occasions a different, more profound, sense of time.
“With Time” invites us to consider this alternative sense. Three figures are arrayed around a broken clock face, a frequent Bak image. At nine o’clock a tree-carved man races; at three o’clock a fractured figure dressed in striped garb rushes headlong, and at twelve and six o’clock a figure caught upside-down spins his legs. In the distance, a figure is in full flight. Urgency and instability are palpable. What are these figures running from or maybe toward?
In vivid color and broken forms, Bak pictures a fragmented, frenetic world but maybe something even more concerning. He freezes the action, as the painter’s brush can, for us to ponder what it means to be human in an inhumane age of catastrophe and commodification.
Is there more to this bleak picture of modern human life than arboreal segmentation, blank faces, and broken timepiece? Bak’s title hints at possibilities. One is the hope that with the passage of time our world will change for the better. By running out the clock, lost order returns to our lives as we rebuild a new job, marriage, or community. Sometimes this happens. A different possibility is that Bak presses us to rethink time in terms other than moving shadow, hand, or atom and instead as our relationships with others. Consider treasured moments of prolonged conversation, whether joyous or painful, when we lose all sense of clock time in giving ourselves over to time with others. Time with, in this sense, opens up moments of ethical response to and responsibility for the refugee or the displaced, the widow, orphan, and the poor, whoever may be hurting. Broken worlds and lives, as Bak paints them, present the possibility, although never the assurance, of such human response, and he asks if that may be the better measure of time.
Professor of Religion emeritus Gary A. Phillips (Guest Writer)
BAK a Day, June 20, 2022
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