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Part Marc Chagall, part Bruno Schulz—and even a little Maira Kalman—the artist (a.k.a. Mayer Kirshenblatt, born in 1916) provides a fascinating, humorous, and poignant record of Polish village life, in the years leading up to the Second World War. There are weddings (the marriage of the tailor’s pregnant hunchback daughter) and funerals (the Christian burial of the artist’s boyhood friend). An adulterer is discovered, zealous flagellants offer their backs for caning, and a “human fly” scales a local building. Incredibly, the artist, who emigrated to Canada in 1934, didn’t start painting until the age of seventy-three, and then only at the urging of his wife and daughter. Whether Kirshenblatt’s visual account is accurate or embellished hardly matters; it’s the remarkable results that count. Through Oct. 1. (Open Saturdays through Wednesdays, 11 to 5:45, and Thursdays, 11 to 8.) The New Yorker, June 22, 2009.
Order
They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust by Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. University of California Press, 2007.
Exhibitions: The Jewish Museum (New York), May 10-October 1, 2009 | Jewish Historical Museum (Amsterdam), fall 2009.
Email: [email protected]
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June 15, 2009
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Pages
- About this book
- Authors: interview
- Cellphone tour of exhibition and book
- Contacts / Book orders
- Daughter's Afterword
- Events
- Excerpt: Boy with a Herring
- Exhibitions
- For book clubs: Discussion guide
- For teachers: Resources
- Interview a loved one of your own
- Press kit
- Reviews
- Toy theater
- Video
- Words of thanks
Recent Posts
- Award for Mayer July Acoustiguide from American Association of Museums
- Canadian premiere of Paint What You Can Remember, Tuesday April 20
- Lives Lived: Mayer in the Globe and Mail
- Anna Sheftel reviews Mayer July
- Bonny V. Fetterman reviews Mayer July in Reform Judaism Online, Spring 2010
- Amy Shuman reviews Mayer July
- Mayer z"l: The unfinished painting
- Mayer featured in the Globe and Mail, February 1, 2010, in Lives Lived
- Mayer July exhibition opens at the National Yiddish Book Center in April 2010
- Mayer July opens in Amsterdam June 3, 2010
April 2010
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