The Jewish Museum Berlin is dedicating a major retrospective show to Boris Lurie and his radical artistic examination of the 20th century. Lurie is an artist who demanded political relevance from art and the art market. His much-discussed and controversial works accuse society of shirking coming to terms with its crimes against humanity by packing evidence of them between advertising and everyday banalities.
His collages confront the viewer with the experience of persecution and prison camp in the Nazi era, provoking “horror and fascination” (Volkhard Knigge). For Lurie’s work reveals disgust toward a humanity that proved itself capable of exiling and murdering millions as well as revulsion against a self-satisfied art market more interested in financial profit than in artistic expression.
His drawings, however, strike a different tone. In “War Series” of 1946, Lurie created an initial inventory of his own experience of persecution and camp imprisonment during the Nazi regime while his “Dancehall Series” of the 1950s and 60s depicts poetic images of his time.
Lurie’s Life
Boris Lurie was born in 1924 as son to a Jewish family in Leningrad, grew up in Riga, and with his father survived the Stutthof and Buchenwald concentration camps. His mother, grandmother, younger sister, and childhood sweetheart were murdered in 1941 in a mass shooting. These experiences left a lasting impression on Boris Lurie’s life.
In 1946, he immigrated to New York. In 1959, he founded the “NO!art” movement with a group of artist friends set against Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, but especially opposed to the economization of art and devoted to political issues such as racism, sexism, and consumerism.
Boris Lurie died in New York on 7 January 2008.
“A Jew is dead,” 1964. In the late 50s Lurie was set on leaving New York and settling in Italy or France. A ten-year relationship had just ended and there was nothing holding him in a country where he had an increasingly negative view of society and politics. In the collages of words and images making up his “Adieu Amerique” series, he takes stock of the situation. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
“Suitcase,” 1964. Stars of David are a recurring element in Lurie’s work, where they appear in all possible forms: cast in concrete, scratched or painted on the canvas, or glued, sewn, or burned into the image’s surface. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
This work from 1972 belongs to the “Hard Writings” series that emerged in the period between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Lurie painted words from window displays and advertisements over historical photographs and images that he had taken from newspaper articles and men’s magazines. Enhanced by the arrangement of the individual letters, these words suggest a variety of meanings. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
The exhibition also presents some of Lurie’s sculptures such as the “Axt Series.” Already in 1964 the “NO!Sculpture” exhibition showed the New York art world what Lurie thought of it. His “Knives in Cement” from the early 70s with immobile, unusable machetes allude to the end of all revolutionary impetus in Cuba. Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
“Back From Work – Prison Entrance,” 1946/47. In 1946/47 Boris Lurie created numerous works in which he processed his experiences in the camps through the medium of art. These “Saturation Paintings” include his collages from the 60s in which he juxtaposed historical photographs with pin-ups. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
Interior view of the first room in the exhibition with works of the “Dance Hall Series”, the “Saturation paintings,” and the “Love Series.” Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
Boris Lurie in Sixth Street Studio, 1977 Photo: Joseph Schneberg
In the media room you can watch several documentary films on the artist Boris Lurie. Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
Interior view of the exhibition with works of the series “NO” and “Pin-ups.” Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
Interior view of the first room in the exhibition with works of the “Dance Hall Series”, the “Saturation paintings,” and the “Love Series.” Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
“Love Series: Bound On Red Background,” 1962. In this series Lurie examines physical coercion, subjugation, and torture, as well as the link between voyeurism and the commercialization of eroticism. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
This room of the exhibition is dedicated to Lurie’s family and his “War Series.” Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Yves Sucksdorff
“Dismembered Stripper,” 1956. An obsession with the female body runs through Boris Lurie’s entire artistic oeuvre. Commenting on his “Dismembered Women” series in 1995, he said: “It was my reaction to New York and America. Fat and cut up women. Fat and even cut up. All this after the famine and the war in Europe.” Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
“Three Women,” 1955, and “Dance Hall Series 11,” 1963–67. At the beginning of his stay in New York, Lurie often went to the dance halls on 14th Street, where women charged 50 cents to dance with men. His friend, the Beat poet Jack Micheline, wrote: “Observing the frantic passion of the evening Boris Lurie sat among this humanity of the cities sketching these creatures of the night.” Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA; Private Collection, New York
Jewish Museum Berlin || Exhibition: No Compromises! The Art of Boris Lurie || until 31.07.2016
“Altered Portrait”, 1963. Boris Lurie based this series of overpainted posters on an election poster of the politician Henry Cabot Lodge. As the U.S. ambassador, Lodge was involved in a CIA plot against Jean-Baptiste Ngô Đình Diêm, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. In these works Lurie denounces the indifference of modern politicians and their lack of character. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
“A Jew is dead,” 1964. In the late 50s Lurie was set on leaving New York and settling in Italy or France. A ten-year relationship had just ended and there was nothing holding him in a country where he had an increasingly negative view of society and politics. In the collages of words and images making up his “Adieu Amerique” series, he takes stock of the situation. Boris Lurie Art Foundation, New York, USA
Source: Jewish Museum Berlin
#StoMouseio 