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Angel and Prophet
Artist's Statement Aspiration for a miracle in Russian culture derives from the
prophetical-Messianic tendencies of Judeo-Christian religion.
Many miracles had happened amidst the biblical land of Israel
long before the Christian miracles took place there. Today, a computer operator prosaically installs a software
into a hardware, and a computer starts working in compliance with
the given problem. Similar to that, an identical act of passing
information from the God's Angel to the to-be-prophet Ezekiel has
been described in the Book of Ezekiel. But this even assumed the
look of cosmic mystery, when the sworded Angel was throwing
Ezekiel down to his knees and forced him to "cause his belly
[soul --- A. R.] to eat" the roll, covered with Divine
writings. With his forehead "as an adamant,"
turned into the Prophet, Ezekiel made his way to the people of
Israel in order to prophesy and transform this chosen but
mutinous people. So, I tried to imbue my ANGEL & PROPHET with a sense of miracle of regeneration. In fact, each work of art ought to carry out a "miracle" of transformation and amelioration of the perceiver. Alek Rapoport Curator's Statement It is with pleasure and gratitude, as well as sadness, that I
present Alek Rapoport's Angel and Prophet to the Wesley
community. The pleasure is that this beautiful, troubling,
inspiring painting will grace the Dadian Gallery for the entire
summer, turning it into a kind of sanctuary, a place for quiet,
cool reflection amid the summer's heat. The gratitude is to
Rapoport's wife, Irina, who has given this work to the Seminary
as a gesture of thanks for our recognition of his talent, and our
invitation to him to spend a year with us as Artist-in-Residence.
And the sadness is that we were denied the opportunity to know
Alek Rapoport in person because of the illness that first
postponed his visit, and finally made it impossible. Born to Jewish parents in a Russia that prohibited religious
education, Alek Rapoport rejected the official style known as
"social realism" and sought instead to combine in his
art his Jewish heritage, the ideas of the Russian avant-garde,
and the timeless beauty of Byzantine icons. Unable to exhibit
openly in the Soviet Union, he emigrated to San Francisco in
1977, hoping to find his audience there. His dealer and friend,
Michael Dunev, wrote "Alek's role as an outsider was
primarily due to his unwillingness to compromise the integrity of
this vision to the fashion whims of a fickle art market. . .
painting instead about conscience, about alienation in a
materialistic world and the dialogue between the soul and the
creative spirit." Prolific and intense, Rapoport created works of power and insight. It may be significant that in 1990 and 1991, he made at least three works on the subject of Ezekiel 2:10. In the swirling masses of thick paint, the prophet subdued by the fiery angel looks a little like Rapoport himself, compelled by the heavenly messenger to bring God's visible word to the people. Deborah Sokolove |
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The artists who created the works of art shown here own the
copyrights to them. send comments or questions about the gallery to
the curator at: |
