George Economou

"THE WORK OF ART INTERACTS WITH THE WORK OF LIFE

That the paintings of Roee Suffrin, produced under the capacious rubric “Art-Judaism-Anthropology,” embrace a remarkable range of subjects should come as no surprise.

Though each individual painting offers its own unexpected surprises to the viewer interested in the various elements of painterly craftsmanship, in short, the artistic technique of its maker––and in the case of Suffrin the technique is both innovative as well as masterfully conversant with many of the conventions and properties of contemporary art––it is the power of the larger picture of his artistic project that strikes one with singular authority.

This “collective picture” of his many pictures might be called “The Workplace of Human Nature,” for the abiding and sustaining image that dominates and pervades the whole of this larger picture is that of us human beings involved in activities related to the cultivation of ourselves.

The array of subjects, which extends from momentous scenes from scripture to depictions of utterly contemporary conditions, draws upon a diversity of sacred and profane contexts to explore and illuminate the ongoing human effort to lead, to teach, to learn, to help and to call for help.

Even in the striking abstract works, subtly reminiscent of Klee and Miro, Suffrin points to Jerusalem, the center of gravity in his vision of the human journey.

From representations of men meditating, studying Torah, or teaching boys, to young women working at supermarket check out or packing eggs, to touching portraits of friends and decorative designs for children’s rooms, the human face and figure is the central sign that radiates within these powerfully attractive paintings.

One of the most effective of Suffrin’s compositional elements is the use of blank areas or, perhaps better said, unpainted parts of figures and spaces, as in some of the paintings of small children and working girls and desolate office spaces, in which he seems to dare the viewer to complete the signifying forms suggested by their sketch lines, perhaps as a commitment to helping fellow human beings realize their potential in the world to which these figures refer, or perhaps even to fill in the blanks with oneself in a show of empathy and compassion: the work of art interacts with the work of life.

While every artistic production of this remarkable young artist surely deserves individual attention, it is the totality of that work so far, the oeuvre of Roee Suffrin, still a very young artist, that not only stands as an impressive accomplishment but also holds the promise of extraordinary things to come.

George Economou

Biographical Note
Educated at Colgate and Columbia Universities, George Economou is the author of twelve books of poetry and translations, the latest of which are Ananios of Kleitor (Shearsman, 2009), Half an Hour, translations of Cavafy (Stop Press of London, 2003), and Acts of Love, Ancient Greek Poetry from Aphrodite’s Garden (Random House, 2006).

He has published many translations from ancient and Modern Greek and medieval European languages, including William Langland’s Piers Plowman (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).

A critic and scholar of medieval literature, he is the author of The Goddess Natura in Medieval Literature (Harvard University Press, 1972; rprnt, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002) and numerous other studies, including an edition of the late Paul Blackburn’s troubadour translations, Proensa (Universty of California Press, 1978).

A founding editor of The Chelsea Review and co-founder of Trobar and Trobar Books, he has published many critical reviews and essays.

A Rockefeller Fellow at Bellagio, he has been named twice as an NEA Fellow in Poetry.

In 2000, he retired after 41 years of teaching at the University of Oklahoma, where he was department chair of English from 1983-90 and director of Creative Writing from 1990-2000, Long Island University, and Columbia. George Economou has given readings and lectures throughout the United States and in numerous countries abroad, such as Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Michigan, Colgate, Texas A & M, Columbia, Stanford, California, the American College of Paris, King’s College of London, Oxford, Athens, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.