Roy Strassberg: Some thoughts on Holocaust Bone Structures

This body of work, although if has its genesis in specific subject matter, functions as a tension filled bridge between artistic intent and the creative process.This process knows no intent, can not be controlled to any great degree, and has an awesome power of its own.

In 1993 I applied to Mankato State University, where I teach, for a Faculty Research grant to study the Holocaust through a series of related pieces. At the time it seemed to be a good idea to do this as it was a subject area I have been intensely interested in for a long period of time. The idea was to change the methodology of process and create work that because of a fundamental change of how it was constructed and even conceived, would be significantly different than anything I had made previously. For years I had relied on the drawing/designing process as a documentation of ideas that I would then execute in the studio. The creative part seemed to lie in the planning and the work was often characterized by a drudgery of process. In about 1991 I became bored to the extent that I knew some unusually powerful changes had to occur or I might walk away from my work. I created a few different series of pieces, none that I respected to any great degree and for obvious reasons were received with a lukewarm response by those who saw them. For the most part the work has not been exhibited. Although much of the work was not ultimately successful it functioned as a bridge to a way of working I had not experienced in a significant way since my undergraduate days in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Without strong preconceptions, other than the knowledge that I wanted to deal with some kind of vague notion of structure and nature simultaneously, a body of work emerged that integrated the generic house form with floral and/or plant like forms in an unusual and sometimes torturous relationship. My own reaction to this work in retrospect was not positive. So, filled with anxiety regarding my having given up forever that which I was "good" at, I returned to the work that, like a drug, gave me the greatest comfort. A subsequent group of four Jazz house Structures emerged , a body of work that was probably the best work I had done. At that point I decided to focus upon the Holocaust and the work in this exhibit is what has emerged.

I grew up in New York city and Long Island in the 1950s and 1960s, a product of second generation Jewish parents who, thank God, are still living and in good health in Florida. Although my father had attended Yeshiva and even considered the rabbinate, we were not particularly religious compared to others in my Queens, New York, neighborhood. I attended Hebrew school with great dispassion, but soon, because of my lack of interest and typically bad behavior, quit the school and went about the business of growing up. When I was close to thirteen of course I had to have a Bar Mitzvah, so my father did what tutoring he or I had the patience to withstand. I was taken to a huge orthodox shul (synagogue) in Brooklyn where my grandfather was the Shamas and I read from the Torah in a very limited and unceremonious way. I was thankful that I was not forced as all my friends were to have a huge "affair" with all its social and familial complexities. At any rate that pretty much describes my Jewish training. All of my grandparents came from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century and my fathers parents were particularly devout, while my mothers parents were not but still were good Jews and strongly identified with the culture. Many of my grandparents siblings, however, were not so fortunate, especially on my paternal grandmothers side. Not having the means, the interest, nor the foresight , most of them stayed in Europe and were murdered by the Germans. A humorous exchange I recently had with my father pertaining to his grandfather who lived to be about ninety four, went something like this. I asked him what my great grandfather had done for a living and he told me that he essentially did nothing. Apparently, being pious was his vocation. I had grown up thinking that is how my grandfather also made a living. It was my impression that is what old Jewish men did, just as my father worked twelve to fourteen hour days as a small manufacturing furrier in Manhattan on seventh avenue in the fur district. Apparently my great grandfather had so many children that there was more than ample support from his family in order for him to survive.

When I was about eight or ten years old my father and I sat down to watch some television on what was then called Metromedia WNEW Channel 5 in New York. Television was still relatively new in 1958 or so and there often was documentary/history type programming on the smaller networks. The show we sat down to watch was called Remember Us, a show about the concentration camps and the destruction of the Jews of Europe. This was particularly unusual for my father because in retrospect I know that he is not a big fan of watching or reading things that make him unhappy and this show definitely had that potential. The most powerful images for me were pictures of naked Jewish women being forced to run through the streets of Germany while soldiers and others jeered, threw rocks,and insulted them. I had never seen a naked woman before, so embarassed, I laughed; which of course infuriated my father. It was here that I was being introduced to a new way of seeing the world. I was growing up in a loving,nurturing, Jewish household with kind although somewhat neurotic parents and here on television were images of middle aged women, not unlike my own mother, running naked, being forced to scrub streets, and subsequently tortured, gassed, and cremated. Welcome to the world. My father and mother did not like to speak of the Holocaust so I was forced to learn what I could on my own about the nature of anti-semitism. While in school I realized that although there were many Jewish children in our neighborhoods, there were several gentiles that had a particularly strong dislike for us. I remember specifically two incidents in school where a disagreement led to name calling and eventually the name calling escalated to Jew bastard, kike,or some other epithet. It seemed to be the ultimate insult to be called a Jew with descriptive adjective preceding Jew. These discussions unfortunately led to fisticuffs and my mother would bail me out of the principals office with the warning to the non Jewish principal that I wouldn't be taking that stuff from my classmates. She is an argumentative sort, somewhat combative as is my father, an interesting marriage combination and quite volatile.

Throughout my artistic career I have intermittently returned to imagery that reflected upon my cultural background and subsequent reaction to the unfortunate events that have occurred throughout our history. In the early 1980s I made a group of guard towers and roll call pieces; simple white structures with abstract surface markings. I would typically make some work relative to Holocaust imagery and then return to the business of making art that was not particularly offensive to the viewer. When I decided to undertake the current work I was determined to find a simple symbolic language that could provide a degree of universal appeal in the sense that the image was easily identifiable but was placed in contexts that were unusual, eccentric, and peculiar to ordinary experience. The bone image emerged as a way of suggesting to the viewer that this work implied information not readily available upon first viewing, but could easily be construed by any viewer as a symbol of death on an absolutely gigantic scale; in a word, genocide. The work is consciously ambiguous so as to avoid specific narrative, but the complex assembling that occurs in most of the pieces is of course reflective of the huge undertaking that the final solution actually was. There was a great degree of cooperation with the government that conceived and executed the plan, the business community, many of whom were immensely profitable as a result of the use of Jewish slave labor, and the general populace who for the most part turned a deaf ear or were intimidated into ignoring the events that occurred. The use of color was an interesting question in the work. Perhaps this is a general cliche but my recollection of the Holocaust is in black and white. It seemed particularly inappropriate to make the work "attractive" in a traditional sense. As I have stated to my students on occasion, sometimes you have to give yourself permission to make "ugly" work when it is driven by events that are not particularly appealing.

Some of the titles for pieces in the show may have the potential to offend my audience. Let me explain. As I settle into middle age I find myself, to use the popular expression, mellowing. I also feel a sense of deep, pervasive sadness for at least two specific reasons. First is my alienation from a culture that I deeply love and respect, because of the geographical isolation I have had to endure in order to make a living, and secondarily because of my complete and utter lack of understanding of the kind of individual and institutional hatred that could culminate in a Holocaust. At times this sadness manifests itself in anger and anger often leads to decision making that can be indelicate at best.The anger does not recede and the desire to be direct is strong. A recent conversation that I had with a gallery owner in another state can illustrate my feelings about this work. She wondered why at this point, fifty years after the fact, would I bother to make work about the Holocaust and I politely ( I have been in Minnesota a long time) suggested to her that I had for a long while been interested in this as a source for my work. After further reflection I wondered why I had not asked her if anti-semitism was over and did issues of ethnicity no longer have pertinence in this imperfect world?

Last Updated: 28 February 1998;
Digital media by: MRT