They Called Me Mayer July

La Repubblica reviews Mayer July

Il pittore del mondo scomparso

Repubblica — 19 luglio 2009   pagina 36   sezione: CULTURA

NEW YORK C' è chi ricorda ma non vuole raccontare. C' è chi racconta ma non vuole ricordare. C' è chi non può più né ricordare né raccontare. Mayer Kirshenblatt ricorda e racconta dipingendo. Racconta un mondo che non esiste più: una cittadina della Polonia dove, quando era nato lui, vivevano 5.462 ebrei e 2.365 cristiani. Lo racconta visto con gli occhi di un bambino. Ha cominciato a raccontarlo che aveva già compiuto settantatré anni. Continua a raccontarlo ora che ne ha quasi novantaquattro. Lo racconta metodicamente, sistematicamente, con un' attenzione maniacale, quasi ossessiva ai dettagli. Compresi, anzi soprattutto, quelli che un adulto sarebbe portato a dimenticare, ignorare, trascurare. Ai particolari che non si trovano nei libri di storia, neppure nei memoriali e nei diari, neppure nella pur grande letteratura ebraica che ci ha raccontato gli shtetl dell' Europa orientale. Nei suoi tratti naif non ci sono i sogni di Marc Chagall o gli incubi di Franz Kafka. Ci sono invece i dettagli terra terra, l' odore di come si mangia e si dorme, il quotidiano del come si cibavano, si lavavano, facevano i propri bisogni, sudavano, vivevano, sopravvivevano, giocavano, amavano, macellavano, si imbrogliavano, si tradivano, pregavano, morivano. Ci sono, descritti con minuzia, i mestieri, gli strumenti, i lavori domestici, i pettegolezzi, le distrazioni attorno a cui si svolgeva la vita di ogni giorno. 

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July: 2-for-1 admission (and July 4 FREE) to the Jewish Museum!

Fans on Amazon: 5 stars!

Here are the reviews from fans on Amazon. Five fans and all give the book a five star rating.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:  A Look At A Lost World, October 17, 2007 By  Lydia Kaplan - See all my reviews     They Called Me Mayer July is a beautiful book, both in the written word and the art work. It details the day-to-day lives of the Jewish people who lived in their 'schtetles' before the Holocaust and it goes into the various personalities, nick names, and jobs that were done during those years. Artistically, the detail is stunning and a joy to behold. For those of us whose ancestors came from these places, it gives us the opportunity to see and read what life was like, both the good and the difficult. I was so impressed that I bought a book as a gift for a friend and have recommended it to others. We owe a debt of gratitude to the author and his daughter for giving us this wonderful gift. Help other customers find the most helpful reviews   Was this review helpful to you?     Report this | Permalink  Comment

Dads are free this Father's Day at The Jewish Museum

Take Dad and the whole family!

http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/core/uploaded/enews/FathersDay/fathersday09.html

"...fascinating, humorous, and poignant..." The New Yorker

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.

Painting a Jewish Memory Book

May 29th, 2009
Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. pbs.org

The Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust by Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

by Juliana Ochs Dweck

“Hey! There was a big world out there before the Holocaust,” Mayer Kirshenblatt calls out in his recent book about Jewish life in Poland before World War II.

Passover Seder at My Paternal Grandfather’s, 1992

In 1990, when Kirshenblatt was 73, he began to draw to ensure that people would remember how Eastern European Jews once flourished before so many perished. At the urging of his family, he sketched his memories of life in Apt (Opatów in Polish), the small town he grew up in before World War II and eventually left. He painted his mother and the town’s wigmaker, men praying in the besmedresh (study house), and prostitutes in the marketplace. As a child, Kirshenblatt spent his mornings in kheder (Hebrew school) and his afternoons in the town’s Polish public school, but he devoted almost as much time to playing hooky and exploring everyday activity in Apt. In an exceptional exhibition and ambitious companion book of the same title, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust (University of California Press), we join Kirshenblatt as a young boy. We go on meandering walks with him, taking in the spectacle of the livestock market, eavesdropping on gossiping women, inspecting the components of a shoe and the workings of a whistle.

Timeout Kids recommends the Mayer July exhibition

Time Out New York Kids / Issue 43 : May 1–31, 2009

The Jewish Museum presents an exhibition of paintings by Mayer Kirshenblatt, based on his childhood memories of prewar Poland.

Boy with Herring (Mayer Kirshenblatt, 1993). Photograph: Courtesy of The Jewish Museum

Your little genius can’t remember where he put his backpack five minutes ago, but Mayer Kirshenblatt, 93, recalls minute details from his childhood in Apt (now Opatów), Poland.

At age 73 Kirshenblatt taught himself to paint and began composing scenes based on his early memories for his daughter, Barbara, who’d requested stories about his youth. Dozens of his works will be on view starting this month at the Jewish Museum.

Wiser than God vs Younger than Jesus, Mayer featured in exhibition of artists over 83

Expect a ferocious battle of the generations raging across New York's Bowery . . . As two group exhibitions pitch the very centuries against each other.

At The New Museum a show entitled "Younger Than Jesus" gathers artists born in or after 1976, making them 33 at oldest . . .

Directly across from the museum at BLT Gallery, 270 Bowery, 2nd Floor, New York, 212 260 4129

"Wiser Than God" presents worldwide working artists born in or before 1926, making them 83 at very youngest . . .

Some are considerably older, many born before the First World War, and several are amongst the most famous artists at work today including Hyman Bloom, Dorothea Tanning and Carlo Nangeroni, currently the most expensive living artist.

Indeed with a set of artists whose cumulative age might add up to a total of almost 5,000 years, the opening vernissage should hop.

"Wiser Than God" runs from May 27th until July 31st overlapping with the current blockbuster Gagosian Picasso show, featuring work made by that artist between the age of 83 and 92.

Paint What You Can Remember (Namaluj co pamietasz), new film just released

Slawomir Grunberg (LogTV) has just completed a 30-minutes documentary about Mayer. Copies can be purchased directly from LogTV or at The Jewish Museum's gift shop. Here is the synopsis.

Mayer Kirshenblatt left Poland for Canada in 1934. Fifty-six years later, at age 73 Mayer began to paint his childhood memories of prewar life in Opatow. Before Second World War Opatow (or Apt in Yiddish) had 10 thousand inhabitants, more than half of them Jewish. Nowadays, little is remembered of the shtetl character of the town and of its Jewish population wiped out entirely by the Holocaust.

When in the summer of 2007 91 year old Mayer came to Opatow and organized a public showing of the images he paints, he was welcomed with incredible enthusiasm. The town officials were astounded by the reaction of the crowd, as no event had ever attracted so many people, who simply could not get enough of Mayer’s stories about a lost Jewish world. Today, there are no Jews living in Opatow and there are hardly any signs of its Jewish heritage.