Arthur Yanoff grew up on the ocean in a small town just north of Boston. He attended the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston and has had more than seventy-five exhibitions throughout the country. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where he had a one-man show, the Maine Jewish Museum, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, the Currier Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Arts. In recent years, he has worked on multimedia collaborations with artists from other disciplines, including dance companies.

Image: You come from a venerable lineage of Hasidic rabbis. In Chaim Potok’s Asher Lev novels, a talented painter is born to a Hasidic family who at first distrust his gifts, which seem to draw him into the secular world. Did you experience any similar tensions?

AY: Looking back, I don’t recall any mention of art in my family when I was very young. My family was much more involved in books. My mother seemed to have a talent for drawing, and a natural sense of color, judging by the afghans and scarves she knitted. I suspect my lifelong obsession with painting began when I was ill and had to remain in bed when I was about five or six years old. My mother, to keep me occupied, drew a cartoon of Mickey Mouse. I, in turn, copied her Mickey Mouse. That started me. I could not stop drawing. My family provided me with art supplies. They seemed to have no recognition that an artist’s life was precarious, difficult. I think they expected me to become a chazzan (cantor), doctor, or lawyer. The first museum I visited was the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, when I was twelve or thirteen. The blue in a Cézanne stuck with me. It was unforgettable.

Image: You’ve mentioned that your spiritual disposition is one of “unsettled wonder.” Can you explain how the spiritual grammar of Judaism resonates for you?

AY: When I grew up, a long time ago, we Jews were all Jews. Now we are separated into categories: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and so on. My mother, alava shulim (peace be upon her), would only say frum (observant) or not frum.

Even when it comes to Jewish atheists, the operative word is Jewish. Jewish precedes atheist. Like my relative, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, I don’t consider any Jew to be secular. A Hasid with whom I collaborated on my Western Wall project once visited a man in a hospital who had been blind since birth. The man said to the Hasid that he knew that he was Jewish but had no idea what it meant. He did not practice any rituals or study any Jewish tracts. The Hasid responded, “Don’t worry, you’re in.”

Years ago, on a day trip to Maine, I davened (prayed) at a Bangor shul. I remarked that I was intimidated because some of the men could daven much faster than I. One of them piped up, “But we can’t paint as good as you.” I learned, to each his own.

Image: It seems to me that Jewishness isn’t so much inscribed in your canvases as infused or poured into them. Sometimes it swims closer to the surface, but often it’s in the depths.

AY: That takes me back to Picasso and Braque’s analytical Cubist paintings, which look similar. When people asked how to tell which work was by whom, I think Picasso responded, “It’s easy. I am

Spanish and Braque is French.” On the one hand, that sounds like identity is deeply encoded in the work. On the other hand, I think he was asking people to pay more attention to the paintings, not the painters’ identities.

Having said this, Modigliani, Soutine, and Chagall were three Jewish painters. With Soutine, I immediately sensed a ravished Yiddishe neshama (Jewish soul). For all three, even if their identities were a contributing factor, their work—like all other great art—must stand on its own. It is true that we act out of our identity, yet the depth, the transformative power of a painting or other work, is transcendent.

Image: You use many different mark-making techniques, sometimes within a single piece. How do you go about making a canvas?

AY: To begin with, painting is physical. Whatever else goes into it, I am dealing with concrete components. In effect, I impose my temperament on a resisting physical entity.

There are painters who can work from their heads—Pollock, for example. I have been in abstract painters’ studios in which they not only covered their walls and windows but removed most objects, save for art supplies. If I did something similar, I would become terribly depressed. I need the windows, the various objects I place on the shelves, which change with each series.

I abstract from what I see, as though I were drinking in the subject. It is not theoretical, not mental acuity. Actually, I don’t know what it is. On some level I have to internalize the subject, feel it in the painting. Otherwise, it is only paint and collage on canvas. I need to work from something I see to avoid as much as possible making paintings that are contrived, self-conscious, or mechanical. This is about me. I can’t stress enough that some of our greatest abstract painters could do magnificent paintings from their heads without having to look at objects. I can’t.

Image: Can you say a bit more about your studio?

AY: Marcia and I arrived in the Berkshires one September. The open landscapes felt like color field paintings. My studio is an old New England barn that was a ninety-year-old painter’s summer studio. Fortunately, I got a grant to make some repairs and winterize it. I heat it with a wood stove. In winter, trying to negotiate the icy path to the studio can be challenging. Once I’m inside, my mind goes blank. It is only painting. Gone are the worries of the day or the news bulletins.

Image: You’ve mentioned that painting is a physical rather than conceptual process for you. What does that look like in practice?

AY: At some point, I could no longer paint realistically with authenticity. I went to the local dump, salvaged a few discarded car parts, set them up in my studio, and did a series of small oil abstractions in which I both compressed and filled out space.

Another turning point for me was a workshop I did in Baie-Saint-Paul in Quebec. Karen Wilkin was one of the invited critics. As part of the workshop, all the invited painters had to undertake a large canvas. She urged me to do mine on the floor, because it would disorient space. Karen’s wise advice set me free from the easel. I have been painting on the floor or table ever since.

Sometimes I first play around with collage elements on cut canvas that has been primed. Often I begin anew with collage on top of paint. After the painting dries, I use clear pushpins to affix the collaged elements, then put the painting up to see what I’ve done.

Image: How long do you tend to spend working on a painting?

AY: Often just making sure that the collage will stick permanently can take weeks or a month. This process requires patience. I call Mark Golden of Golden Artist Colors, the paint company, my painting psychiatrist. When I visit his acrylic operation for technical advice, I meet with Mark in his office, tell him my problem, he takes notes, then comes up with the solution to ensure that my collage is archival.

Acrylics as acrylics, not trumped up as an oil substitute, are truly new color. They are unlike anything in this world or the world to come. While every medium has its own properties, acrylics technically afford me the ability to make collage more durable.

Image: How do you know when a painting is finished?

AY: In Judaism, we are taught to not fully complete an object, to leave a sliver incomplete until Moshiach (the Messiah) comes to help us rebuild the Temple. As I relate this to my paintings, I am not sure they are truly finished. All I can say is that I reach a stage at which I worry that if I do more, I will overcook the canvas. Matisse, talking about the completed painting, said that his paintings were completed by the viewer. In effect, the viewer was a part of the process.

 

 

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