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Home > Virtual Museum > Artistic Responses : Fay Grajower

Fay Grajower

Introduction

Today the world is uneasy. It is the duty of a Holocaust Museum to remind people about the threat of war, about the horror of death and violence, and to tell them about the delight of a peaceful life. The Holocaust has become the subject of countless works of art, as individuals as well as communities, seek to memorialize victims and to make sense of a senseless event.

Art that raises awareness of the personal experience of even a single victim of the Nazi regime helps one to grasp the ultimate consequence of racial hatred and intolerance. Art of the Holocaust crosses boundaries between young and old and this coming together not only transmits knowledge, but will have a lasting and emotional influence on everyone who experiences it.

Those of you who view artist Fay Grajower’s outstanding exhibit in the Neftali and Edith Frankel Conference Center at the El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center will use this opportunity to save the events of the past from silence and take the feeling that this exhibit evokes, with you.

Leslie Novick
Executive Director
El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center

Arks and Shadows

Boston artist Fay Grajower’s paintings provide viewers with some essential questions about art by the “second generation” of Holocaust survivors and also about art related to the Holocaust in general. The appearance of art in museum space such as El Paso’s Holocaust Museum suggests some of the complications. A space dedicated to a narrative history of the Holocaust complete with artifacts is quite comprehensible to viewers—or so we think. Philosopher Arthur Cohen, however, posed the problematic issue of knowing and understanding when he wrote in his book, The Tremendum, “The Holocaust cannot be thought because it cannot be exhausted by historical narration. It remains elusive, uncontained, a putative mystery because the categories by which such immensities are grasped seem inadequate and trivial.”

If the Holocaust remains elusive after historical narration through books, professorial discourse, survivor testimonies, international court proceedings or even walks through museum spaces, maybe art can help with the question of knowing and understanding. Consider, for example, Berlin’s memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, ultimately built by Peter Eisenmann, which went through a twelve-year process of discourse about its form and even whether such a monument is possible.

Grajower’s family history is important in knowing how she approaches a negative past and uses art as a palliative. Her mother and two of her siblings escaped from the Netherlands on a ship called The Excambion to the United States via Lisbon. A boat that appears in her paintings however, is the Volendam 48. One of the last to leave Rotterdam, VD 48 carried a friend who was the family’s physician. Both of these boats have become metaphors for the period—arks for saving the Jewish people from Europe’s descent into the abyss under German occupation. A dramatically colored image of this boat appears in Volendam 6, situated as it might be floating in the River Styx, between the civilized world and Hades. In Grajower’s painting, the world surrounding the boat appears per haps in flames, confirming this association with ancient myths. Volendam 8 shows the boat in more blue waters, with figurative images in green on the left side, those who were saved, and per haps some decimation in the center, recalling those who were drowned. A ghostly figure on the right seems to welcome the boat, presumably to a safe port.

Volendam 8, oil on canvas, 65" x 48" 2007

Volendam 6, oil on canvas, 50 " x 42" 1992


The artist’s acquired memories of her family’s survival, plus the increase in discourse about the Holocaust by the 2nd Generation, led her to work through these issues of the past in painting and in the building of Holocaust monuments at various sites in the United States. A 1993 exhibition entitled Lift the Fog, suggested an evolution within this encounter with the past, while several exhibitions entitled Inherited Memory suggested the burdens were not, and perhaps are not resolved.

History of the Memory of a Photograph,
acrylic, oil, photographs on vinyl,
50” x 65” 1990

Grajower’s paintings, however, are not literal or narrative, and need decoding. They are usually beautiful and color ful, which immediately creates a disconnect between the subject of the Holocaust and the concept of beauty usually associated, sometimes naïvely, by audiences, with what art is “supposed to be.” Grajower herself admitted “In an effort to understand why I paint the way I do I challenged myself to combine photography with painting to see if my work is about abstraction or imagery. I came to realize that the more pertinent question is how do I deal with the Holocaust.” Implicit in this statement is the issue of remembering an event that did not happen in one’s lifetime. Author Eva Hoffman has suggested the logic of this for the 2nd generation, and she noted that the children of survivors have been more affected by the shadow of the Holocaust than being themselves survivors.

The paintings in this exhibition may be described as abstract and mixed media. The layering effect of collage is a good metaphor for the issue of mixed and layered memories transferred to a canvas, paper or even wood. True to the Jewish tradition, texts and phrases sometimes intrude into her works, suggesting a dialectic of sorts between image and text. All of her paintings have potential open-ended interpretations, suggesting, of course, that there is per haps no end to the discourse about this event and confirming Arthur Cohen’s view about it as a “tremendum,” a rip in the cosmic energy field that keeps humanity together on this planet.

Lift the Fog, oil and mixed media on canvas, 46" x 46" 2007

Lift the Fog, for example, is a color ful work with blues, pinks and ochre that suggests two towers or buildings on the right and a ghostly figure in white peering at them over a wall. An earlier version from 1995 with the same title had the wall higher and the figure on the right rather than left. In that painting, the figures beyond the wall might be said to resemble abstract torah scrolls as a metaphor for the Jews. Obviously, the wall is a more dramatic symbol of displacement and separation and implies the desire to know. The title originally came from a project for the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, which is often shrouded in fog in winter because of its geographical setting. Upon seeing Buchenwald in fog, Grajower remarked, “If we could only lift the fog!” That fog, of course, was not only the weather induced situation, but the fog of memory and understanding. In this painting, one may ask, for example, if the structures on the right are buildings, or ladders, or per haps metaphorical forms for lost relatives and friends? Each structure is capped with a triangle outlined in blue, a color not used by the Nazis and usually identified with Judaism and Israel. This may suggest the desire for a closure on negative memory; such a desire may be illusory, as trauma is well known to be inter-generational and sometimes toxic. Writing in 1995, Professor Musya Glants suggested Lifting the Fog might mean removing tension, negative darkness, clearing the air and renewing people’s lives.

Like a Firebrand Saved from the Flames is an engaging piece that evokes some forms connected with the Austrian painter, Friedensreich Hundertwasser (whose Jewish mother lost 69 relatives in the Holocaust and he himself was hidden in Vienna) as it uses a field of small blue rectangles that appear to be floating in a sea trying to save themselves. Hundertwasser used these small forms as a symbol of a paradise destroyed by a straight line.”

For Grajower, an ambiguous form in the center of Like a Firebrand Saved from the Flames outlined in a muddy orange, brown, red and black is suggestive of a boat, per haps the Volendam 48, with a meditation of those who were lost in the crossing from Rotterdam. That boat, in fact, was attacked; half of the refugees were killed. The painting evokes a quote from the Bible, Zachariah 3:2, which says: “Yahweh said to Satan, “Yahweh rebuke you, Satan! Yes, Yahweh who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Isn’t this a burning stick plucked out of the fire?” and suggests another important theme for Grajower, that of Israel and the fate of the Jewish people.

Like a Firebrand Saved From the Flames, oil on paper, 25” x 31” 2007

The Vast Blue, oil oncanvas, 46” x 46” 2007

The Vast Blue may evoke also a bit of family history, when salvation came from the sea, not from hiding on land. This work, however, does not show merely the blue on the left clashing with the pinkish-red mass on the right. In the upper third of the painting is an explosion of yellow and vertical lines suggestive of a battle at sea.

Myth and Memory poses some interesting intellectual questions on the issue of narrative and understanding. The main image is a pink ghostly form or malicious spirit, a soul of one of the dead, per haps a Dybbuk with a big eye peering down at what appears to be a disappearing figure, or a wisp of smoke. The background is punctuated with a punch card like text, purple with reddish-pink border on the left, solid white on the right. Is this the artist looking at a disappearing past who is frightened by the possible disappearance of memory of the Holocaust—and per haps her own memory.

Myth and Memory, oil and plaster on canvas, 48" x 24" 2007

A Bessere Velt, (A Better World), the title in Yiddish, the partially destroyed language of a destroyed people, is a triptych that moves vertically from top to bottom or vice-versa according to how one reads it. Its form suggests the opposite of a traditional triptych, which is based on the form of a Christian altar in a church, which is horizontal. Grajower’s use of a vertical form suggests a ladder, such as in the story of Jacob’s Dream, and the metaphors of rescue and salvation. An image of the Volendam 48 appears in the center panel, and brighter colors with light at the top, suggesting a better world—per haps a note of optimism by the artist and a suggestion that something has been learned from the negativity of the Holocaust. The image of the boat in vertical position also takes on the image of an ark of the covenant or the familiar Gothic vault in Medieval Churches, both suggesting that belief in
God has not ebbed despite the fact that “God’s chosen people” were those who were indeed chosen for the fire. Falling into the Future, a mixed media work on wood, repeats the same ark-like/Gothic image, almost as if filled with multi-colored stained glass. An abstract figure stands on the left as if questioning the presence and absence of God within the world between 1933 and 1945, and per haps afterwards as well.

A Bessere Velt, Triptych, oil on canvas, 93” x 47” 2007

Falling into the Future, mixed media on wood, 35" x 30" 2006

In looking at Grajower’s paintings in the space of a Holocaust Museum, the admonition is not to seek confirmation of answers that are easy. For no matter how the story is told, the answers are never complete. One final work to mention is If These Stones Could Speak, depicting two black ghostly figures amid a complex mixed-media and collages grid. Indeed, stones do not speak, so we ourselves are left to attempt to understand the complexity of Jewish history and the Holocaust.

If These Stones Could Talk, oil, pencil and collage on paper, 18" x 25" 2006

Dr. Stephen Feinstein
Director, Center for Holocaust and
Genocide Studies
University of Minnesota
December, 2007

Symphony of Stones, oil, plaster and wood on canvas, 48" x 79" 2001

Indifference, oil and collage on paper, 25" x 18" 2007

Jerusalem Encounters, oil and collage on canvas, 67" x 74"

A Better World, mixed media on handmade paper, 32" x 24" 2006

Just One Wish, mixed media on canvas, 52" x 37" 2006

How Does One Remember

How does one remember what one never knew?
How does one forget what one never knew?

traces of photographs
recall the never seen
snatches of words
revive the never heard

history of memory
memory of history

It is the history of the future
and the future of history
that is the present.

How does one remember?
How dare one forget!

fay grajower©

VD 48

About the Artist

Fay Grajower studied at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts and holds an MA in Studio Art from New York University. Her works have been featured in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and Mexico, including Boston, Washington, DC, New York, Morelia, Guadalajara and Mexico City. Grajower also exhibited in Lugano, Switzerland and Berlin, Bielefeld, Gera and Potsdam in Germany. She was an artist-in-residence in Florida, Israel and Germany and has several commissioned pieces including a painted sculpted glass installation at the Jewish Community Center of Wilmington, Delaware; a Holocaust Memorial Sculpture Installation at the B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton and an installation for The International Women’s Research Center at Brandeis University. She is currently completing a Holocaust Memorial for the new Young Israel of New Rochelle in New York and preparing for her forthcoming exhibit at the Galicia Museum in Krakow, Poland, where the past meets the future.