How to Recognize a Jewish Painter (RIP Joseph Solman)
April 18th, 2008 by Menachem Wecker
Here’s an exercise in reading from Michael Kimmelman’s great obituary in the NY Times, “Joseph Solman, Painter, Is Dead at 99.” The column never mentions that Solman was Jewish, but consider the following selections:
1. His studio was above the Second Avenue Deli in New York.
2. He formed “The Ten.”
3. He was born in 1909 in Vitebsk (think Chagall).
4. “His family fled the Cossacks and landed in Queens, where his father became a tailor.”
Wikipedia is usually good about these sorts of things, but there is no mention of his religion. In terms of the other usual suspects: the Forward assumes he was Jewish, as does Kimmelman in an earlier Times column.
Image: artnet.
For kicks, check out the interview after the jump, conducted by Avis Berman on the Smithsonian site, which provides the artist’s own comments on his faith:
MS. BERMAN: Well, speaking of something related to politics is that many of The Ten and various permutations were Eastern European, Russian, Jewish and did you find that there was any sort of anti-Semitic feeling toward the group, or did this make a great deal of difference?
MR. SOLMAN: On the part of critics, you mean?
MS. BERMAN: Well, any - you know - I don’t know who would -
MR. SOLMAN: No, I’ll tell you why I don’t think that - don’t forget, you’re in New York City where the Jewish population is so large. You take the Project and I’ve already indicated the wide variety of people. After all, you couldn’t want more of a tough philosophical character than Stuart Davis or let’s say Marsden Hartley and Milton Avery, or on the other side, the Jewish side Walkowitz or the group of The Ten and others. There wasn’t the faintest feeling of prejudice. As a matter of fact, I think I liked - certainly in those days I liked the art world very much because as I entered it, you take Milton Avery who was married to a Jewish woman, Sally Avery. You take my friend Miriam Vague who is Jewish, married to a gentile. The sculptor, John Vague who is not alive now and there was continual inter-marriage like that or Byron Browne who was - he looked like a Norman Rockwell rustic American character married to this Jewish Zaftig blonde, you know - Rosalind Bengelsdorf. Looked like a young Shelly Winters, that’s what she looked like. So, I mean we all got along so well together. There was never sort of - in the art world and I imagine in the literary world that plays a very tiny part if at all, and I like that world for that matter. Whereas I’m sure that in other worlds, in brokerage houses, I don’t know. I never worked in those, but it could be a very different story.
MS. BERMAN: I’m glad to hear that and one reason I asked that because at the time, because there were people - these people, of course, were more associated with the American scene, but if you take say an ideologue like Thomas Craven, champion of say Benton, would say things, that Stieglitz was a Hoboken Jew in print, in his book, and there were other -
MR. SOLMAN: Benton said that?
MS. BERMAN: No, Thomas Craven said that in his book.
MR. SOLMAN: Craven? That son of a bitch. Well, you know - he came along at a period of super patriotism. You know what I’m always surprised at? That the Modern Museum at one time knuckled under to, not to Craven, but to some of that crowd with a few American shows. I’m really surprised. I think in the ’40s. I don’t remember exactly when and I was really surprised to see them show such a lack of courage. But in the art world itself - I never met Craven in my life. Pollock was a student of Benton, you know.
MS. BERMAN: Oh, certainly.
MR. SOLMAN: But, no, no, no. There was no - there wasn’t the faintest semblance to my mind of prejudice on the Project amongst the painters and sculptors. Maybe there was on the part of the dealers, but I couldn’t read their minds. Now we had a group when we worked on Reality magazine. There were quite a group of Jewish fellows like myself, Soyer, Sol Wilson, Jack Levine, and there were gentiles like Hopper and his wife, Isabel Bishop and Anthony Tony was Italian. And you know, Kuniyoshi. Well, he could feel like a stranger, too being Japanese, you know.