August 31, 2009
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Annals of Religion:
Ask a Stupid Questioncontinued from
last Wednesday…“Did you see more glass?”
Wednesday, August 26,
was the date of death
for Hyman Bloom.Bloom, described in
today’s New York Times
as “a painter of the
mystical,” died at 96.Bloom often painted portraits of imaginary rabbis; an article titled “American Mystic” describes“… the mesmerizing paradox at the heart of the rabbi portraits– they remember keepers of a tradition in a method that tradition expressly forbids. As Bloom explains, age and illness endowing his voice with a hoarse, prophetic quality, ‘Jewish culture has nothing to do with painting. That’s a rule, “Thou shalt not make an image of anything in the air or on the earth.”‘”– Stephen Vider, Tablet Magazine, February 28. 2007
Related material:An entry in this journal linked to twice on the date of Bloom’s death–
and an illustrated entry from this journal on the date of the “Mystic” article–
Elements of Geometry.“So, there is one place
where modernism triumphs.
As in the cases of the pyramids
and the Taj Mahal, the Siegfried line
and the Atlantic wall, death always
calls on the very best architects.”— J. G. Ballard,
“A Handful of Dust“
