TEXT:
I learned about great meals one Saturday night before
Rosh Hashonah. The bakery opened after sundown
and we picked up a round raisin challah still so warm
the lady behind the counter didn’t dare put it
in the slicer. At home the butter melted on it just like that.
We sat around the table until it was gone. After Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin, La Brioche, 1763
TEXT: I’m six years old and hiding behind my hands. “The Evil Eye’s gonna get you!” my big sister shrieks. “It can see-e-e-e you!” Of course I have to look. After supper I watch snowflakes fall and make the street slippery. It’s Saturday. I’m waiting at the kitchen table while Mom helps Dad get dressed for the Bar Mitzvah he’s got tonight. He plays cornet in a band. After he drives off, she teaches us to make hanukkah decorations with glitter and glue and colored cellophane. She used to be an Art Teacher. We tape them to the window like Jewish stained glass. I have a knack for it, but my mother seems worried. I see it in her eye. “Keynahora,” she says in Yiddish meaning the Evil Eye should only not be watching. “Such a surgeon you’ll make with those hands, keynahora, and on the weekend you can be artistic.”
After Francois Boucher, Allegory of Painting, 1765,
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art
After work attributed to Bichitr (Moghul court painter active c. 1610-C.1650), Shah Shuja and Maharaja Gaj Singh, Shah Jahan period, c. 1638
In the painting Shah Shuja offers a prepared betel leaf to Gaj Singh.
TEXT:
My parents say people are starving all
over the world, finish your dinner. So I
become a member of the clean your plate club.
Nobody in India will be getting my Kosher
salami on rye, no kasha knish for the Chinese.
After Pieter Claesz (1597/8-1660), Still Life with Wine Glass and Silver Bowl, undated
TEXT:
“People all over are starving,” my parents report.
Africa, China, God knows where. If I leave one
forkful of brisket on my plate, a solitary green bean,
some naked child in the Congo will drop dead.
After Francois Boucher, Landscape with a pond, 1746
TEXT: We only made bacon on breakfast cookouts
by the lake. The stove in our kitchen vented
on the side of the house facing the Klopmans
who kept Kosher.
TEXT: When I announce my plans in 1983 to marry a Marxist, my parents worry. Bringing up a family in the 50’s in Detroit, they bought (and paid for) the Cold War. At the wedding, we raise the kiddush cups as we stand beneath the chuppa. Looking up from the wine into each other’s loving eyes, we taste the 1970 Pomerol, moan slightly, and share in ecstasy the joys of red.
After Hans von Aachen, Allegory of Peace, Art, & Abundance, 1602, St. Petersburg, Russia, The Hermitage
TEXT: Years ago I’d see red at the drop of a hat. After I became a full-time artist, I stopped exploding like I used to at the sight of a cabby tossing out crumpled McDonald’s trash while stopped for a light. Back then, I’d scoop the litter up and shove the goddamn wrapper back in the open window of the yellow cab. Nowadays I’m making pastoral landscapes, and I see less red.
After Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-1862), View of a park, (1835), The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
TEXT: I’ve always had a hard time reading. My mind wanders. I rarely calm down enough to get absorbed in a book. I know this is about betrayal. If I read, I’m being anti-social, neglecting my family; I’m acting selfish. So I make reading an unavoidable part of my work. For a picture I’m working on, I find a painting by John Singer Sargent in an art museum in Pennsylvania, in a town called Reading (red-ing).
After John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), Man Reading, Reading, Reading Public Art Museum, Pennsylvania