Putative Lives of Great European Thinkers
Hannah Arendt is not chosen for the school play, 2014, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
Suitcase used by Tante Ezie, from “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” installation at the Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
“A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” installation view, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
“A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” west wall, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
“A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” installation view, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
“A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” installation view with lyre and mirror, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
“Strange Bedfellows: Hannah Arendt and Religion,” from “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt” installation at the Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
Hannah Arendt’s first Purim. She was a butterfly. 2014, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
“Hoppe, Hoppe, Reiter: Hannah Arendt’s Love of Sports,” from “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt” installation at the Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
Hannah Arendt won the junior fencing title in the Pomeranian Nationals, 2014, charcoal, 15×11
The Lions of Zion were undefeated. Hannah Arendt came to all their meets. 2016, watercolor stick, 15×11
Wer ist der Mann da, auf der Verandah: the men in Hannah Arendt’s Life
Horst and Hans. They both loved Hannah Arendt. 2015, 15×11, watercolor stick
A Mixed Blessing: Childhood and the Mediation of Power. From “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018
Hannah Arendt does not want to go. 2016, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
Ina Schmidt, the Arendt family’s maid. She secretly baptised Hannah with water from the convent of the Ursuline sisters in Bamberg. 2014, 15×11, watercolor stick
“A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University, 2018. Detail showing Tante Etzie, Madame Solinka, a Krummelsammler (crumb collector) and an embroidery made by Hannah Arendt’s mother
Ashtray that inspired the phrase “the banality of evil,” and the Lions of Zion’s lucky seal rib. Detail of “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel Center, Boston University 2018.
Hannah Arendt’s favorite paring knife, given to her by Golda Meir. “I don’t need it anymore,” Golda is reported to have said. From “A Putative Life of Hannah Arendt,” Eli Wiesel Center, 2018
Putative Lives of Great European Thinkers, The Bear Awakens, Bakhtin in Moscow. Detail of installation at Brown University, Sarah Doyle Gallery, Providence, RI, 2014
Bakhtin learned to read late. Scholars suspect undiagnosed dyslexia. 2014, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
Svetlana Akhbarkovna, Bakhtin’s Upstairs Neighbor, 2014, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
Zdenek, the former stevedore who became famous as the voice of Papa Bear in the popular radio show “Brave Little Pioneer.”, 2014, watercolor stick, 15″x11″
Mendel Nussbaum, a Trotskyite friend. He escaped Europe and reinvented himself as a crossword puzzle creator in Australia. 2013, charcoal, 15″x11″
Walter Benjamin’s Hungarian Swimming Instructor, 2013, charcoal & crayon, 15” x 11”
Walter Benjamin’s Turkish barber Mehmet, 2013, charcoal, 15″x11″
Walter Benjamin making faces in the bathroom mirror, 2013, charcoal, 15” x 11”
Walter Benjamin’s mother worrying about him, 2013, charcoal, 15″x11″
I have been drawing the putative lives of three Great European Thinkers: Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Why these three, and why “putative”?
Well, they are certainly important figures. As a woman who makes art, as a thinking woman who makes art, I am supposed to have read their works, at least the works of Walter Benjamin, if not the others. But I haven’t. And what’s good about this is that while it leaves me ignorant, on the one hand, it gives me a certain freedom, on the other. The freedom to imagine their lives, to draw out of a kind of “visual pantry” the images that would seem to fit these figures. Why do I have this storehouse of almost generic images from which to draw? Because of my background as a child of Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe, because of my childhood hearing about the Soviet Union from refusnik mathematicians who stayed in our Toronto home, because I have been swimming in this grey-toned world of the past for my whole life, without necessarily wanting to. And humour is what has kept me from going under.
People often think that I have researched these figures, and that the images are “true.” They could be. Sometimes they turn out to be.