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Variations on a Theme - The Warsaw Ghetto Boy
contributor: Professor Lawrence Langer
Since no single vision could contain its complexity, Bak decided to expand the possibilities for imagining the impact of murdered innocence on his postwar generation by multiplying the figure of the victimized child from the Warsaw Ghetto that appears on “Self Portrait.” Over a period of three years, 1995 to 1998, he painted numerous variations on this theme, inviting viewers to wander through the world of Jewish loss in pursuit of some usable truth behind that recurrent image. By differentiating the visual metaphors that surround the boy’s unearned destiny, by providing alternative scenarios for perceiving his story, Bak reaffirms a central paradox of the catastrophe: its dead have not been eclipsed by time but survive to roam the landscape of memory like the ghost of Hamlet’s father until some means are found to pacify their troubled spirits. It may be a futile task, but for Bak it remains an essential one. Forgetting would be the original sin of the post-Holocaust generation. In this series of paintings Bak creates new perspectives for interpretation, compelling us to view and review the question of how we are to manage the scarred heritage that the disaster has bequeathed us.
Bak knows how easy it is to strike a false note when addressing this theme, so in his visual texts, Bak tries to avoid giving the impression that Holocaust art celebrates the triumph of form over the chaos of mass murder. Instead, he offers alternatives: in Children’s Corner (1997), ironically named after Debussy’s famous suite, we are invited to choose among at least three variations, as if the artist himself were uncertain how best to record for posterity a genuine rendition of the murdered child. Perhaps a simple portrait of the real boy, fear still imprinted in his eyes, will suffice. Or maybe a full-length statue on a pedestal, in the classical style, would be better. As a final possibility, Bak presents a grim surrealistic semblance, the hand detached from the bloodied head, reflecting the violence that led to the disintegration of the physical self.
The authentic impact of the Holocaust requires a permanent impermanence of the imagination, as the mind seeks to grasp an elusive significance by constantly changing its perspective. The principle of portable monuments summons us to a quest rather than an arrival. Bak’s varied explorations of a single image over a period of years confirm this strategy for confronting the Holocaust: a search for memorial forms that never brings with it a sense of closure.
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