September 27, 2019

 

A boy, strangely distended in some parts and sinewy in others, stands beside a black cloaked and beady-eyed angel. A fish droops from the child's hand, while a dog postures itself protectively behind him. The scene represents the story of Tobias and the angel Raphael; main characters featured in the apocryphal book of Tobit. In it, a recently blinded Tobit, and a young woman Sarah plagued by the demon Asmodeus, are saved through God’s sending of the angel Raphael. Raphael, disguised as a human, journeys with Tobit’s son Tobias and his dog to Media. Along the way, a fish in the river Tigris attempts to eat Tobias’s foot and Raphael instructs him to catch the fish and remove its gall bladder, heart, and liver. Raphael tells Tobias of the beautiful woman Sarah in Media and instructs him to marry her and burn the heart and liver of the fish on the wedding night in order to drive away the demon. After the wedding, Tobias, along with Sarah and Raphael, return to Tobit and cure his blindness by applying the pulverized fish bladder.

Leonard Baskin’s unearthly illustration style marries perfectly with the supernatural story of Tobias. The two figures are uneasily set against the barren landscape, exemplifying their in-between state. They are between their origin and destination, as well as the spiritual and the physical. In an image that is already unsettling, the viewer is aware of Raphael’s true form, while Tobias himself is not, gazing quietly outward, unaware of his fate.

As art grew increasingly more abstracted throughout the 1940s and 50s, Leonard Baskin remained adamant in his use of the human figure. Although Baskin considered himself a sculptor, he was best known for his prints and illustrations, which exhibited his signature black and white, graphic contours. Baskin was fascinated with mythology and spirituality associated with both his Jewish background as well as other religions. He believed strongly in the portrayal of human mortality, resulting in a style that could be considered rather macabre. For Baskin, the physical body was something fleeting, deteriorating with time or the onset of sickness. Still, Baskin’s heavy linework that methodically encircles his bizarre figures endows them with a certain introspective energy; perhaps in an effort to capture the grace of the underlying soul. Arguably, Baskin describes his obsession with the figure the best: ''Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory. Glorious in defining our universal sodality and glorious in defining our utter uniqueness. The human figure is the image of all men and of one man. It contains all and can express all.''

Born August 12, 1922 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Baskin was the son of a rabbi. He was educated at a yeshiva, or Jewish religious college, later going on to attend the New York University of Applied Arts from 1939 to 1941, and eventually studying at the Yale School of Fine Arts where he would establish the esteemed Gehenna Press in 1942. Throughout his life, he received numerous honors such as the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design and Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Visual Arts in 2000.

Written by Samantha Hohmann

Return to archive