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Spotlight ReviewsMASSACHUSETTSBoston University Art Gallery/Boston www.bu.edu/art;
A member of the Boston Expressionist group of painters in the 1940s, David Aronson has also played a significant role in art education at several Boston institutions. The Aronson retrospective at the Boston University Art Gallery brings together a generous selection of the artist’s works from 1942 to 2001, while the jointly organized Pucker Gallery show consists mainly of recent work and is accompanied by a full-scale monograph. Aronson clearly has a fondness for art historical subjects and techniques. For much of his career he has executed his paintings in the ancient medium of encaustic, in which the colors are embedded in melted wax. Their painterly effect comes not from raised impasto but from alternations of layered glazes and scraped areas within the smooth surface. The overall mood tends to be somber, though Aronson’s adoption in recent years of oil pastel has led to a significant brightening in tonality. Since the 1960s Aronson has added bronze sculpture cast by the traditional cire-perdue (lost wax) technique. The influence of Benin bronzes from Nigeria, acknowledged by the artist, is evident in the elongated, armor-plated necks and bulging eyelids of some of the figures.
After an early series of large paintings on Christian subjects, Aronson began in the 1950s to treat Old Testament stories such as that of Joseph. He has continued from time to time to depict specifically Jewish subjects, often involving outsiders: the blinded Samson about to pull down the temple of the Philistines; the Baal Shem, an adept of the mystical Kabala; Rabbi Loew of Prague creating the Frankenstein-like Golem; or a bust of the excommunicated philosopher Spinoza. Nevertheless, most of Aronson’s figures fall into generic categories that are not specifically Jewish, such as musicians and other performers, members of various occupations, or teachers and students. Many appear youthful, and nearly all have sober, unemotional expressions. The almost unrelieved seriousness of mood is part of Aronson’s approach to representing spiritual life. These faces remind one of Aronson’s account, quoted in the monograph, of a visit as an adult to his rabbi father: “I don’t think I had ever seen him smile before.” Hints of humor may be found, however, in some of the larger bronzes, which are bursting with an almost caricatured energy: the Three Singers, with their sharply observed stances and gestures; or the massively volumetric Prophet II (2001), who, except for his ecstatically raised hands, is almost completely muffled in his cloak and hat. Eroticism has its place in the Jewish literary tradition (as in the Song of Songs) but is little in evidence in Aronson’s painting. The female nude, a staple of training in the academies in which Aronson spent his teaching career, makes an appearance only late in the show. Many of Aronson’s young protagonists are sexually ambiguous in features and clothing, though their androgyny seems intended, not an erotic category but an erasure of their sexuality, in the interest of heightened spirituality. Aronson’s remarkable consistency of subjects and tone over a period of six decades delineates a tightly focused yet distinctive artistic personality. Donald Rosenthal |
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