Sunday August 22, 2009

I was at the Orazio Salati gallery in  Binghamton NY, to view paintings 
from amateur artists connected with a 
health program. The gallery owner asked if I would like to see another 
exhibition being shown in the gallery's back rooms. Of course I would. I 
breezed by large landscapes done in watercolors, intricate Rube Goldberg 
mechanical sculptures with embedded clocks, and various pieces that didn't 
make any connection with my rough sensibilities regarding art and its 
meaning(s).

Then, in the back of the gallery was a small grouping of 
portraits, of women, the canvases all about 16" X 16", all by the same 
Boston artist,  Miriam Ruchames. Each canvas showed only their heads, 
sometimes singly, sometimes two women in the frame. All different save 
one thing; none of the women looked directly toward the viewer. 
Universally, they all looked to the side, or down, avoiding eye contact with the viewer, all 
withdrawing to some internal space, yet all inviting speculation regarding 
the cause of their discomfort, their reticence, the root of their avoiding 
natures. They made you think. 

I thought about them as I turned the corner and there on the wall was a large 
portrait of a nude, posed frontally, lying on a table on her right side, her 
knees drawn halfway up, her left arm softly touching her left thigh, her head 
resting in her right hand with her elbow angled against the table. On her 
head was a round hat with a small curled brim and a red flower abstractly set 
into the front of the hat. 

The artist's brushwork was broad and suggestive rather than defining yet the 
female form was perfection. 
It was the face that drew me in; her eyes that stared away, her enigmatic 
expression. She was telling the viewer... you have my body but you don't 
have me, you will never really know me. 

There was no question that the small portraits I saw previously and this nude 
were done by the same artist, Ms. Ruchames. 
I stared at the nude  for minutes, thinking and wondering. After a time, the gallery 
owner approached and we talked about the faces in the smaller portraits and the nude, 
the feelings they evoked in both of us. 
He asked if I knew anything about the painter; of course I didn't, 
my uneducated appreciation of art being limited to base emotions that are 
triggered by what I see. 

He told me the painter was 86 years old, a survivor of the Holocaust 
and the camps, a highly educated woman who raised 2 daughters 
who are psychotherapists in Boston. 
He said she lives to paint, every day, all day long. 

I wonder I wonder I wonder about what the artist is telling me.


Fifty four years ago (1955) I visited Dachau concentration camp, 
stood, silent, breathless,  my hands trembling,
underneath the pseudo showers in the gas chamber of that horrible place. 
I went outside and stood where the selection process was made, 
workers to one side, those to be gassed to the other. 
When you were in that line, did you dare look into the eyes of the Gestapo 
soldier making the decision if you live or die? 
Or did you refuse eye contact, hoping to avoid the face of death?  
 
 
The gallery owner continued, saying he has sold many of her works, 
mostly the nudes that she does, rarely the small portraits. 
I asked if all the nudes had the same deflected eyes we see in this piece. 
He pondered, then said he never had thought about it before 
but yes, it did seem that way. 

I made a bid to purchase this painting, to bring this provocatrix home 
and put her on my wall, to sit and stare at her as she refuses to do to me, 
to work on deciphering what she is about, this epitome of the mystery that is woman, 
that is the life force.
Part of me hopes that she will be mine.
Part of me hopes my bid is refused.
I know I will not own her even if she is in my home. 
I thought with a smile, she will drive me nuts.