An Interview with Alexander Aizenshtat, or the Revelation of the Artist
Without doubt Alexander Aizenshtat is an outstanding artist, although he is not well known. In consequence of his primary occupation of teaching Torah, he is respectfully known as Rabbi Alexander. So, Aizenshtat is a rabbi, a teacher. He teaches Jews to be Jews who keep the Law. It is really a complicated task: one should remember the simple fact that, according to Jewish prophesy, Mashiach (the Messiah) will come when all the Jews turn to the Torah, forget their atheist past and finally realize that being Jewish is the fate of not only one particular man but the entire nation.
Aizenshtat is an artist who contains great spiritual energy. It is bursting through, leaving its marks on his canvases, which witness that G-d's gift hasn't been lost or forgotten, but has been accepted with much gratitude and is being used to inspire people. This confirms the old rule that a talent is a responsibility. But he can't give up his life work and be just an artist. I would even dare to suggest that both vocations are closely intertwined: he is such an outstanding artist because of his daily prayers to G-d, he is a religious man because he feels in his thoughts and emerging images the unspeakable grace of the One to Whom he prays...
Aizenshtat left Russia 32 years ago. He married a Jewish girl from Paris. Today he has 11 children, lives in Jerusalem and often comes to Moscow, where he works in a Jewish academy.
According to Aizenshtat, he was leaving Russia with an uncertain sensation of another life somewhere 'there', without a clear understanding of his fate. Emigrants' discussions in 1974 are engraved in his memory because they sounded very unusual. Joy and sadness weaved in one yearning, the feeling of life passing by, leaving you apart from the world full of amazing things. The fragments of talks that he heard were so astonishing that he could hardly understand why the emigrants kept speaking so anxiously of slavery in Egypt and the Exodus with Moses.
Aizenshtat doesn't try to brighten up his previous life. On the contrary he doesn't have mercy on the rippled surface of the past and denies the calming mood of the bygone years, searching for the truth about himself; he just wanted another life, nothing more. Even when he got that life, leaving for Israel, he didn't realize at once that well-stocked stores and self-satisfied smiles are not substitute for spiritual harmony. "What am I looking for?" I don't know if he consciously asked himself this or this question carried on pulsing in his temples involuntary, but gradually and under the influence of many people he started to realize that the only permanent values are spiritual ones.
Among Aizenshtat's paintings there is one which is very autobiographical and profound: on a dark night a man at the car dump is feeling the blue of the skies that has enveloped him. Alexander watched the skies too, feeling that 'amazing things' are not found not in the shops but in the soul and in Heaven. Isn't it strange that he, an ordinary Moscow lad, the son of a famous Moscow lawyer, who used to live near Krasnye Vorota in Furmann side-street, was sitting at night amongst the wrecks of cars, watching the skies of Israel?
Aizenshtat likes old things. This shouldn't be taken literally - he likes things, experienced by time and not dead but living on. Religion for him is what is alive and old, both old and alive: this feeling he obtained in his searches. He found that the world is diverse, many-sided but it satisfies only part of man's needs. The spiritual thirst can't be satiated with Pepsi-Cola.
Instead of vain joy of passing everyday life he chose asceticism...
A true biography of the artist is in his pictures. Overcoming the limits of the natural world by movements of his brush he conveys to people what he would like to explain but fails to. I feel, as he does, the inexplicable warmth of a coffee house where an old Jew is sitting, I catch the harmony of an incredible fuss in a musician's movements, I understand that a real dacha in the outskirts of Moscow isn't beyond the Moscow ring-road but here - on the canvas, overshadowed by dark colors...
However, Aizenshtat himself will tell us more about his life and art. He is laconic but, one can be sure, very sincere.
I posed him the following questions:
What do you use in the process of painting more often - memories of things and places or images that emerge in your fantasy? On some canvases one can see a view of the same house - in such cases do you recreate the same town-landscape or create an image that must embody some artistic idea?
In some pictures you can find the same things, houses or anything like that. Usually it goes like that. I look for some subjects in my imagination - the subjects that must suit some internal idea. Usually it is an uncertain idea either of color or philosophical character. Often the matters are combined. Finding a particular subject I examine how good it is for this idea. Observing some things in life I try to use them for this aim too. Sometimes, if a generalized image of these things suits the idea it gets repeated in a few pictures.
Does a painted object matter to you? If yes, how and how does the object and the way of painting it on canvas correlate with each other?
Representation of something correctly and close to reality isn't important for me, on the contrary it is a problem. Painting objects I want to paint them symbolically.
Many artists attach a special significance to their way of painting, connecting it directly with the basic targets of art. How would you define your artistic philosophy?
As far as the ways of painting are concerned I seek after extreme simplification, which helps to express the essence of the main idea very directly.
What will you willingly not paint? What would you like to paint in future?
There are natural restrictions to subjects, which are connected with Judaism. But they practically don't bother me.
Some of your pictures have something in common with Chagall's paintings. Do you feel a link between your and his painting? Did he (or any other artist) have any influence on you? What artists and genres of painting are intimate to you?
Sometimes, very rarely, people tell me about the resemblance of my paintings to Chagall's works. I appreciate his art but I can't say that my painting is close to his in any way. Maybe sometimes you can trace some similarity. Perhaps it is rooted in the fact that he drew emotions and mood from mainly the same source as me.
What place does painting take in your life? What does it mean to you? Who is your art addressed to?
Art takes a very important place in my life, but the main meaning of life remains service to G-d. One can say that the Jewish tradition places art on the more proper and natural place. I don't need art as a way of spiritual living but I need it as a craft of beauty, as some window through which I watch the plastic side of the world, the reflection of the high matters in the low ones. But the high matters remain above.
How do your pictures get born? Do you know beforehand what you are going to paint and follow the plan, or allow yourself to get carried away by free fantasy? Do you start a picture with a visual image or an idea?
Usually I invent my works before painting. Everything that concerns fantasy takes place before the work. Sometimes something changes in the process of painting, some general idea gets embodied in a visual image, and often in my imagination I have a finished canvas.
Do you usually think of your audience, is their reaction to your pictures important for you?
I don't think of the audience. After finishing a picture I'm not indifferent to the reaction of people. But in the process of painting I don't think of the audience.
What artist had the greatest influence on you? Who is really close to you?
It may sound banal, but Van Gogh is my most kindred painter. Perhaps it's not obvious in my canvases but emotionally it is so.
How did you come to painting? Didn't you have a temptation to express yourself in other forms of art: literature, sculpture etc.?
In my youth I was drawn by sculptures. But one can't seize everything. Literature is close to me too. But it is a separate form of art; there isn't time and strength enough for everything.
What is the aim of your art: self-expression of a painter or service (to an idea or to G-d), what are the relations of art and faith?
The aim of art is doubtlessly self-expression. In this sense there is a contradiction to the service to G-d. A religious man must really separate art and faith.
Why and when did you turn to the concentration camp theme?
This is a recent development. The extremities of concentration camp life attract me. Besides, it seems to me that unconsciousness of the camp's reality lies as a stumbling block on the way of normal life of people. Monstrosities that took place in the past remain as a hidden load in the hearts of the descendants and in some moment or another, an even uglier plant will grow from this root.
What do arms or hands that one can often see on your canvases mean?
How did you find this image and why is it so intimate to you?
In a man's image the most expressive things are hands and face. A face depiction draws attention of a viewer too much. When you paint a face, you - willingly or not - get taken a prisoner of its expressiveness and it is very hard to give the equal formal harmony to the whole picture. It is much easier with hands. Hands are a man himself, but not his face.
Aizenshtat's paintings are a real challenge for our time. In every picture I see the moment of "existence-collecting". When I look at the artist's works I apprehend not chaos but an order of things, filled with sense. In some point of view they are not pictures but peculiar clots of being, an art in which the form has formed once and for all in perfection of its semantic evidence.