New York's Jewish Museum presented a host of works that reflected the rich history of Jewish culture. In this context, Abshalom Jac Lahav's six selections from their series "48 Jews" featured portraiture that felt reminiscent of Francis Bacon's 70s self-portraits. The blurring of facial and other details, while retaining the realism of featured objects, reflects this. Lahav's featured figures are "Jews with very public media profiles"; they are in this presentation Monica Lewinsky, Anne Frank, Alan Greenspan, Noam Chomsky, Lee Krasner, and Bob Dylan.
Lahav's process is one that rides against the idea of the definitive, single portrait of an individual, which often reflects solidification and permanence. Lahav continually works on his portraits - adding, discarding, or entirely remaking his paintings of these chosen individuals as the work "...explores[s] the ways the mass media shapes or distorts identity," according to the exhibition's wall text.
The paintings of Anne Frank and Marcia Gay Harden (portraying Lee Krasner) emphasize these words. Lahav's portrait of Anne Frank is heavily blurred, as if put through a scanner and shaken side-to-side for intended distortion. The viewer, if familiar with the heroine, recognizes the facial features of the young girl but pauses at her blurred image and is pulled in. Another of Lahav's works adds to this visual narrative of distortion, his portrait of Marcia Gay Harden portraying Lee Krasner. Her face in black and white contrasts with the colored background and the ceiling fan and the mirror that she holds. The subject's face is slightly less blurred than Frank's but still carries a distortion that holds the series together in Lahav's deliberate concept for the works.
I love the comparison to Francis Bacon, I think comparing the themes of Bacon’s and the artists’ work, aside from the visuals, might be an interesting discussion too. How do they use the same visual elements to different/ similar thematic effect? The visual description reminds me alot of Andy Warhol too, especially because of his underlying message in his works. One suggestion I have for this write up is about its organization. I would look at each paragraph and see if they might be laid out a bit more clearly, I think the last one in particular could use a topic sentence to introduce the point you are making.
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