A Son's Grief
Hyfler/Rosner
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS NY Times
WHAT color is death and mourning? Should it be earthy or
pastel, strong or subtle? Is it abstract or realist?
For the last 10 months, Max Miller has been working out his
grief over the death of his father, Murray, by saying
Kaddish, the ancient Jewish prayer to console those in
mourning. But being an artist who lives in a loft in
TriBeCa, Mr. Miller has been observing the ritual rather
differently.
He has been traveling from synagogue to synagogue throughout
New York and beyond, reciting the daily prayer and then
painting a watercolor study of the synagogue in which he has
recited it. You might say that Mr. Miller, a slight,
dark-eyed man of 48 who favors a porkpie hat, has found the
point where art and religion meet to transform life.
Painting synagogues as a symbol of grief is a departure from
his usual focus on the living, his portraits of children,
cats and dogs. His portraits are realistic, often with busy,
kaleidoscopic backgrounds. Mourning, it turns out, is lush
and impressionistic, at least for Mr. Miller.
To represent the Wall Street Synagogue he has painted a
stained-glass window in brilliant reds and blues that make
it look as if a firecracker is exploding. The First
Romanian-American Synagogue, in the old Jewish Lower East
Side, is drenched in Old World shades of brown and gold.
.
Maybe it's the enforced reflection, but something about the
ritual and obligation of saying Kaddish, Mr. Miller says,
inspires creativity. Look at Allen Ginsberg, who wrote one
of his most celebrated poems, "Kaddish," as a lament for his
psychotic mother.
At first, Mr. Miller found, saying Kaddish was not easy. He
had forgotten how to read the Hebrew letters. He was not a
synagogue regular and felt bashful about being there. "And
then in the art world," he added, "religion is really sort
of an uncool thing." But he felt a duty to his father, an
architect, who was raised an Orthodox Jew in Flatbush,
Brooklyn, and whose first language was Yiddish.
It turned out to be easier than he expected. When a newcomer
walks into the early morning service, where Kaddish is
recited, Mr. Miller says, "Everyone knows why you're there,"
and tries to be helpful. He has been offered food and
shelter. In Middlebury, Vt., where he taught art for a
while, the congregation held only a Sabbath service, but the
rabbi sent e-mail messages to everyone he knew and organized
daily minyans - quorums of 10 people (traditionally men, but
this was an egalitarian congregation) - so Mr. Miller could
say Kaddish every day.
To his surprise, Mr. Miller has found that he feels most
comfortable in Orthodox congregations, like the Bialystoker
Synagogue on the Lower East Side. And in some places, he has
felt distinctly unwelcome. An Orthodox rabbi in a Midtown
synagogue was afraid that Mr. Miller was a terrorist, and
angrily demanded that he erase the digital photographs he
had taken as studies for a painting. The rabbi later
apologized, but Mr. Miller was too stung to paint that shul.
Mr. Miller estimates that he has visited 50 synagogues, not
only in New York but wherever he has traveled. When he can't
drag himself out of bed before 7 a.m., he goes to the
Synagogue for the Arts, on White Street, around the corner
from his loft. There a regular named Morrie, an assistant
district attorney, showed him how to bind his tefillin,
leather boxes containing patches of the Bible. The rabbi,
Jonathan Glass, tutored him in Hebrew. In exchange, Mr.
Miller is painting a portrait of the rabbi's daughter's cat.
Often during his visits, Mr. Miller has found himself in the
middle of small psychodramas. Most of the people who attend
the morning services, he discovered, are much more
conservative than he is. He has learned to avoid talking
politics.
On a recent morning at the Synagogue for the Arts, the sole
woman at the morning service brought a bottle of Johnnie
Walker Red so she could mark the anniversary of her mother's
death by drinking a toast. Ten people sat down to a
breakfast of cucumbers, tomatoes, bagels and cream cheese,
then downed plastic cups of whiskey. There was some
grumbling when the woman picked up her half-empty bottle and
took it home instead of donating it to the shul.
Mr. Miller expects that his synagogue paintings, which can
be seen on his Web site,
maxmillerstudio.com/mourner/index.cfm, will not be as
commercial as his dog portraits, which landed him a spread
in the May issue of New York Dog magazine, alongside an
exclusive about Hilary Duff and her five dogs. But when the
11 months of ritual mourning are over in May, the
watercolors will remain, a chronicle of his grief.
Hyfler/Rosner
"Hyfler/Rosner" <rel...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:lI6dnWUDq6c...@rcn.net...
>A Son's Grief, in Word and Watercolor
> By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS NY Times
>
> Painting synagogues as a symbol of grief is a departure
> from his usual focus on the living, his portraits of
> children, cats and dogs. His portraits are realistic,
> often with busy, kaleidoscopic backgrounds. Mourning, it
> turns out, is lush and impressionistic, at least for Mr.
> Miller.
> Mr. Miller expects that his synagogue paintings, which can
> be seen on his Web site,
maxmillerstudio.com/mourner/index.cfm
I recommend a look at these paintings. They're gorgeous.
Brad Ferguson
<rel...@rcn.com> wrote:
Yes, they are. Thanks.
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