Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist

Ruach

Ruach Ruach, palimpsest of letters at the JFK airport Jewish chapel, 1966. Helene_ebook.indd 53 4/11/12 3:38 PM JFK airport Jewish chapel, 1966. Helene_ebook.indd 54 4/11/12 3:38 PM Ad Reinhardt had come to see my work in the airport chapel. He remained an important influence on my way of looking at art, seeking a revelation. You look at a Reinhardt black painting, and after staring a while, you can discern a glimmer of color emerging, as confounding as the first glimmer of light in the black of night. I later would seek a revelation in my own work, painting partially on layers of glass, so that depending on the position of the viewer, an elusive shine of the metal backing might peep through. I held a Bunsen burner to ten-foot sheets of metal until the paint cracked from the heat, revealing the metal’s shiny iconography beneath. I showed these works at the Max Hutchinson Gallery in Soho in 1970 and 1972. Mother brought cookies to both openings. REINHARDT SENT me postcards, wanting to know why I never confided more about the controversy over the doors, why I never invited him to my home in Brooklyn, why I was so secretive. Of course I could not get myself to invite him into my home on Avenue R and East Twenty-fourth street in Flatbush, with all those still life paintings of challah and kiddush cups. I had to keep this Jewishy life away from my avant-garde guru. Somehow, I had to hide the fact of my frummy origins, although the mystical leanings were apparent to him in Ruach. Postcards from Ad Reinhardt, 1966. Helene_ebook.indd 55 4/11/12 3:38 PM MOTHER HAD RAVED about my art attempts when as a child of eleven I drew my youngest sister as she slept. That was sisterly, she said. In midrasha days, when I copied the photos of frowning rabbis that hung on the walls, Mother thought this showed nice feeling. She nearly fainted with appreciation for all the Mother’s Day, birthday, and Chanuka cards I made for her. And in my adolescence, she thought my being artistic would improve my stature as a wife someday. It was clear that she was rapturously supportive of my art as long as she saw either family or Yiddishkeit in the works. “You are the spirit of the house,” she’d say to me when I gave her paintings to hang in the dining room, the living room, or the indoor porch. She’d introduce me to everyone she knew as “my daughter, the artist.” She would see what she wanted to see in the works and refer to them by her own titles. When I gave her an abstract piece titled Oval with Diagonal Furrow, she turned to Uncle Abe, now her new husband, and cooed, “Sweetheart, look, Helène brought us a painting of Mt. Sinai for our anniversary!” I painted a smaller version of the Ruach mural for her. Mother chose to see the word chai (life) instead of the word ruach. She would walk guests toward “Chai,” holding their hand, navigating them toward the “blessing of life.“ But once the art began to rock the boat, she did not know what to make of it. As I began creating installations with oil meant to drip and splatter and spill, she warned me that dripping oils make a mess. And years later when I boasted that I could teach Moses about feminist consciousness, I was not merely being an ordinary knaka (an obnoxious show off); in her eyes, I was trouble. What do you need this for? She’d ask. I’d explain but she’d ask the question again the next day as though it was a fresh new thought that just came into her head. To be fair, Mother’s queries partly stemmed from her worries for my security. I was earning only a little money now and then from sales of the art. The occasional grants were coming in sporadically. But her insistent questioning propelled me to assert myself. Someone once said all decisions in life can be relegated to two choices: do you want to eat well or sleep well? I chose to sleep well in my own dream world; I’d never imagined I could make this choice as an Orthodox housewife. From the...