Chaim Soutine at the Jewish Museum

I'm writing to recommend the exhibition, "Chaim Soutine:  Flesh," at the Jewish Museum.  The subject matter, flesh from dead fish, birds, oxen, rabbits, you name it, it not something that makes you want to rush out the door, but do.  You'd be surprised how seduced you become by the richness of the colors and paint handling that make these works rather beautiful.  Perhaps that's the point---the beauty in death and decomposition.  

Not only do his expressionistic colors make the work vivid, but the richly applied paint, and fluid edges enliven the subjects, as apparently did the artist when he applied fresh blood to carcasses before painting them.  These are sumptuous, the way Dutch Baroque painters handled still-life, making them just that, still alive with realism to the point that you want to reach out and grab an orange.  They were also evocative of economic abundance that came with their expanded trade routes.  Soutine painted these images during a less prosperous inter-war period that make these images connect to those of human death and suffering.  His own experience as a Russian Jew (born in present day, Belarus) fleeing the Pograms and later the Nazis, also informs the work.  To me, these also evoke the sense of anonymous suffering, particularly the meat carcasses, because these animals are merely food sources and lack individual identity; however, the artist's selection of them as subjects particularizes them and elevates them.  


The artist work reflects his knowledge of art history (he spent years in Paris), and one can recognize the impact of artists such as Rembrandt, Cardin. . . whom he uses for inspiration and sometimes out and out appropriation, but his work also reveals the impact of modernism with the compressed and flattened space that pushes the flesh out towards the viewer and its use of vivid colors favored by the expressionists.  His life in Paris, where he received additional training at the  École des Beaux-Arts would have introduced the idea of looking to the masters for inspiration, as would his exposure to French Modernism and museums.  

I was fortunate enough to see the exhibition of his portraits of cooks, waiters and bellboys at the Courtauld Institute in London this past winter, and it once again reveals his focus on the unseen, not uncooked flesh, but members of the service industry that often escape notice.  Like the images of flesh, the figures are centrally positioned and set against flat backdrops that isolate them and project them into our space.  Seen today, they have a special resonance because these unskilled and underpaid jobs are often occupied by foreigners, and likely the same was true between the world wars when refugees were re-settling in cities.

So, I urge you to catch this show before it closes.  It is small, manageable show that resonates with our contemporary world and, once again, points to the importance of art in calling our attention to the unseen.