From Generation to Generation: Paintings by Samuel Bak

Samuel Bak’s recent collection considers the hidden dialogue of generations, with the secret entanglement of different ages. It is indeed a playful cycle, whose playfulness, and even parody, becomes apparent to the beholder literate in Jewish memory and religious imagination. Bak’s images are replete with allusions, citations, intimate references, playing with themes that are as intuitive as they are rooted in Jewish learning and tradition. In his illuminating essay, Lawrence Langer reminds us that Bak thinks of his work as ‘learned paintings’ disclosing themselves, like sacred texts, in layers of meaning corresponding to the layers of learning. Langer beautifully unravels some of their themes, taking us through the worlds of Torah and Chassidism, to the ‘elsewhere’ of the modern age. -Asher D. Biemann, professor of religious studies, University of Virginia