It would be a mistake to try and define, describe, explain, or teach the art of Roee Suffrin solely through the categories of European, academic, artistic logic. For the latter is Cartesian logic, sure of itself. But its system of deductible sequences – like the Windows computer system – cannot explain the fact that we consistently find, in Roee Suffrin’s paintings, the same interrogative quality, light, and fecundity in variety of subjects and techniques. His paintings are inspired by a “unique source” – which we sense but are unable to define because its complexity, multiplicity and unity surpass conceptual logic.

We shall try, nonetheless, to describe this quality and Persian classical poetry will help us in this task and we will come to see that it is this latter source which will enlighten us on the art of Roee Suffrin. My own enlightenment, regarding the effect made on the spectator by Suffrin’s paintings, came to me in very special, unique circumstances which do not occur every day. I asked Suffrinr to place his paintings, in a form of personal exhibition, on the walls of my apartment, during the period that spanned the time he finished working on them to the moment he sent them to galleries, exhibitions or buyers.

I thus had the privilege of witnessing the “simultaneous effect of all the paintings together,” under the “spotlight of their interactions,” over the course of months, days and nights. It would require a retrospective of all Suffrin’s works to recreate this unique experience, which is closest to the source of their inspiration.

I was not the only one to undergo this experience. I witnessed the effect of these works on the many visitors who came to my home and placed themselves in front of the “life” of these paintings. It was not in the stereotypical, cultural-classical or modern context of a museum, but in the context of daily life, which is a very different experience, and close to the sources of the paintings. The verbal and non-verbal responses of the visitors slowly enlightened me. About what?

They enlightened me about the “same current” (to be elaborated) which affected the spectators in a profound, aesthetical, affective manner, and which was quite different to the more cerebral response spectators usually display towards contemporary art.

It consisted, each time, in a “sudden, deep silence interspersed by wisps of verbal admiration, emotion, and an inability to clearly, logically define the powerful, personal emotions they experienced.”

The situations depicted in these paintings are observations on daily life, so we are familiar with them. But, in within this context, the paintings present “flaws” that interrogate us, and have a deep, simultaneously troubling, disturbing and calming power: for these “flaws” represent us. An “us” that is undefined by psychology, art, classical or new-age philosophy, or religion which is per se classical.

Being familiar with Persian classical poetry (which is known by every Iranian, just like the Fables of La Fontaine are known by every Frenchman), I was struck by the fact that “this clash between the spectator and the paintings and, therefore, also with the painter” was similar to that produced by Persian poetry, which is unique in the world for its fusion of the concrete and the supernatural, the visible experienced or sensed, and the heartbreak felt in the face of a Presence so close and yet elusive.

One finds, in these two sources (Suffrin’s paintings and Persian classical poetry), respect for common daily life as well as a mirror reflection in which our emotions, the divine and our image of ourselves are closely intertwined but also intensely elusive. And this “present-distance” bothers and interrogates us and sets us forever between life and death.

In the face of this, the artist Roee Suffrin does not cheat by using the conceptual-surrealistic, highly repetitive and conventional conventions of art schools. The truth grasped by Suffrin is the “known and continuous present which racks us and submerges us with beauty, goodness, incompleteness and a sense of non-possession.” Thus, his painting of children is beautiful and good, but the children are partially drawn, and they tell us that we will not succeed in understanding or enclosing them. Childhood is thus a false definition for children are, in reality, complete and aware of everything, more-so than most adults.

Even my portrait, executed without my knowledge, projects this quality of “incompleteness” and a sense of our inability to grasp our own selves. The truth of our existence. Suffrin thus shatters, for everyone, the “boundaries of what is known in advance.” This is the truth.

We are conscious, with the emotion fitting towards someone who gives so much (the painter), that while this double, constant presentation which he has the goodness to transmit to us, provides much satisfaction to the spectators or owners of his paintings, it can also be difficult for the painter who chooses to live experience so intensely and continuously.

He does this in order to re-transmit it to us in beauty. But this pleasant, aesthetic beauty (like the presence that accompanies us when we acquire a painting which will become part of our lives), this consistent, aesthetic beauty does not attenuate the soft digging which penetrates us and forces us to interrogate ourselves.

I shall demonstrate how this same quality is found in the great artists of Persian poetry. It is “striking” to find the same trait, in its individual form in the work of Jewish artist, Roee Suffrin, whose descendants lived in Iran till his mother’s infancy. Culture is an atmosphere which impregnates and infiltrates from generation to generation. This conjoining (Suffrin’s paintings and Persian poetry) does not surprise us, for the “cousinship” with Persia was the only successful experience in the world between the Jewish people and the rulers of another country. To see this for yourselves, read the last chapter of the Bible, and the book of Esther. The relationship was so close that a plaque was placed in the Temple of Jerusalem urging pilgrims to pray for the Persian nation, who then lived a honeymoon with the Jewish people, in the image of the intense, exceptional union between God (the King of Kings) and His Creation, eternally symbolized by a woman, princess or Shekhina. But it is also a relationship that is characterized by incompleteness and breaks.

I shall now develop this more concretely through the quatrains of Omar Khayyam.

I could have also taken, as an example, other great Persian artists:

- such as Rumi (13th century) who, in the introduction of his great poem Matnawi of more than 24,000 double verses, cries out his “incompleteness,” as in “Hear O Israel” :

“(Bechno) Hear the lament of the reed who is transformed into an instrument of music, the flute, the nay. Since it was cut in the rose garden (nayestan), it is man and woman who lament through sounds their nostalgia and separation from the former unity.” Look again at the cut-offs in the painting of the children or in the modern offices where the painter cries out at the alienation of people and disappearance of human life. The white spaces represent the love that is present, asking to live and to survive.

- such as Attar (13th century) in his Conference of the Birds. The birds want to be like all other people and ask for a king. To this end, the 30 candidates, who have to undergo numerous trials, discover that the final appointment of a King by the wise bird Semorgh (meaning 30 birds) imparts to each one the most beautiful vision of themselves. View, in this perspective, these men who are studying together in order to find themselves as they read the Scroll of Esther.

- such as Hafez (14th century), who always sings of the fragility of hope, of love and the need to be “rendi” (a rebel) in order to merit the wine of love and of divine truth.

Many powerful paintings by Suffrin depict a pure, beautiful, holy woman at the center of global wars or as a slave of consumerism. The woman represents humanity at its best, as we see in the following pictures.

- comme Hafez (14e siècle), chantant toujours la fragilité de l'espoir, de l'amour et la nécessité d'être "rendi" (libertin rebelle) pour mériter la vérité du vin d'amour et de vérité divine. Les nombreux tableaux puissants de Roee Suffrin où la femme pure et belle et sainte est au milieu des guerres mondiales ou esclave de la consommation. La femme représente alors toute l'humanité en son meilleur. Et cette photo du peintre au travail est, en ce champ, un témoignage.

We now come to Omar Khayyam(12th century), who evolved from the same source as Roee Suffrin, each in his own way, the one with his quatrains, the other with his paintings. Every Iranian possesses the book of poems by Omar Khayyam (and that of Hafez), in which he ceaselessly strives to guess and interpret his present condition and his direction for the future. There is no other nation that is so poetical.

Like Suffrin, in the modern world, who refuses to abandon his rich source or be fooled by appearances and mass pressure, Omar Khayyam represents the consistent refusal by Iranians to submit to the Islamic conquerors, even if, on the surface, they have been obliged to adhere to the Koran and the rites of Islam. In this, Khayyam joins the great rebellion of Ferdowsi (10th century), whose “Book of Kings” (Shah-Namé) is revered by every Iranian and was written in order to preserve Iran’s ancient heritage against the Islamic invasion and defend the Persian language, to the point that it omits any of the Arabic word that became common usage and were imposed by the invader who tried, without success, to abolish Iranian religion music and arts. This defiance is still alive today, for Iranians will never renounce their rites or their non-Islamic calendar: and their mercy-less struggles against Shiites and Sunnis are the expression of this non-submission in the name of purity, truth and art. Omar Khayyam’s poetry speaks of this struggle against hypocrisy and for the true, divine-human life which he symbolizes with the expression: “drink wine.” All Iranian poetry is an intense, piercing hymn which views the universe in terms of union, desire and separation. We will be better able to grasp the multiple, unitary facets of Roee Suffrin, when we understand the parameters of Omar Khayyam’s oeuvre. Whether Suffrin is knowledgeable of these works or not is of no consequence for he unconsciously possesses this culture, including its original musical dimension which is identical to this poetic corpus.

We see that his paintings have an overall coherence and represent creation. But they are even more than this: they express a very personalized system within creation, in terms of character and aesthetics: this is what is defined as an “oeuvre.”

It is when the quality of a work is simultaneously aesthetic, cultural and anthropological that an oeuvre has “value,” in every sense of the word.

Creation / creation

This painting by Suffrin perfectly evokes the unbroken link that unites interiority, the existential challenge, nature, the body, the city, Heaven, and the meaning and interaction between all these levels. But this is “placed within the act of painting.” Khayyam also expresses, through the image of qalam (paintbrush), our principle existential challenge which is played out in the “relationship between the divine painter and the human painter.” The extracts cited below are taken from his quatrains (robâ’i), and are based on the French translation by J.B. Nicholas (Ed. Jean Maisonneuve, Paris) and follow his numbering. For background in English on Omar Khayyam refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam.

Khayyam’s approach to these issues in a holistic one, as is that of Roee Suffrin.

“The righteous is the soul (djân) of the universe. The world is a body.

The angels are the senses of this body: the skies, the elements, creatures are its limbs: this is eternal unity.

The rest is but trickery.” (328)

The strength of these words is identical to the strength of the figures in Suffrin’s painting who are blowing the shofar in order to renew the world and themselves (for an explanation of this Jewish rite, refer to this site:

http://www.modia.org/infos/etudes/roche-hachana.html and in English on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shofar ).

Khayyam notes:

“Existing things were already inscribed on the tablet of Creation.

The paintbrush (of Creation) is always absent from good and evil.” (31)

Thus, in the middle of the good and evil which we produce, we need to connect with the source and not dilute it. Roee Suffrin’s paintings and paintbrush are based within this tradition. Through our name –ben Adam (son of Adam = human being) – Jewish tradition places us within this dynamic continuity, as seen in the above painting.

Why is this played out in the respiration associated with the shofar in Suffrin’s painting? Here is the answer: everyone can see (last verse of the Psalms, 150.6) that the soul and respiration are one, for the two have the same pronunciation: neshama and neshima. So, within this divine, creative union between these two terms, which Khayyam always depicts through the symbol of wine, he writes:

“Do you wish your life to rest on a solid base?

Do you wish to live a while with your heart free from all sorrow?

Do not stay one moment without drinking wine, so that with each breath you will find a new pleasure in your existence.” (422)

The strength and gentleness of this painting, which reflects the whole world, portrays the dynamics of three true artists (God. Khayyam.Suffrin).

For more on the importance of respiration in Judaism see: http://www.modia.org/hebreu/corps.html#respiration .

Suffrin, in this painting, does not camouflage the harsh, concentrated effort of the two figures, symbols of human beings, of man and woman (or any other symbol felt by the spectator). This is connected mainly to the painter himself. And Khayyam depicts all that is awakened in us by the drama that takes place within nature, and in this painting (read quatrains 425-429)

“How is it that at Spring’s beginning the verjuice of gardens is bitter?

How is that, later, it becomes sweet? How is it, then, that wine becomes bitter?

If from a piece of wood, one creates a viola with a pruning knife,

What will you say when, with this same pruning knife, one creates a flute, a nay?” (425)

The symbol of the wine conceals a call for divine help through man’s cry and work:

“Cupbearer, pour for me this wine the color of the flowers of the trees of Judea;

Pour, cupbearer, for sorrow oppresses my soul: pour me this nectar for while it may, cupbearer, make me a stranger to myself, it may free me for one moment from the vicissitudes of this world.” (428).

In this way, the painting seizes the spectator, and each time, at every gaze, elicits a new deep discovery of oneself and of the stakes, doubts and inevitable challenges that must be resolved.

We find this also in the painting Eros and Thanatos:

Khayyam and the painter meet and express together:

“Although my body is beautiful, although the perfume it exhales is pleasant, the complexion of my face rivals that of the tulip, and my figure is slender like that of a cypress, it has never been shown to me why my celestial painter deigned to sketch me on this earth.” (13)

We now come to the painting “Arrival.”

The scene is the same creation and, this time, humans march, carrying the “wine,” the elixir transmitter of life – the Torah.

But they are concentrated, serious, perhaps bitter and tense while at the same time powerful and peaceful.

They are in an awakened, connected state, like every morning when at prayer.

Khayyam evokes this here:

“Do you know why, at the break of dawn, the morning cock makes his voice heard at each moment?

It is to remind you, through morning’s mirror, that one night of your existence has just passed, and you still dwell in ignorance” (426)

Neither Khayyam nor Suffrin conceal the difficulties, but make us face them, showing them to our face. Let us advance with these figures, Jews and Iranians, like Esther and King of kings in their intimate dialogue.

Khayyam brutally reinforces the image in Suffrin’s painting:

“This firmament is like a bowl reversed on our heads.

Wise men are humiliated and helpless; but see the friendship that reigns between the goblet and the flask, they are lip to lip, and between them, blood flows.” (363)

This duality, which we cannot untie, is the reality of existence, the dramas endured by Moses when he refused to lie to the people:

Khayyam and Suffrin reveal this complex, intertwined reality which the logical words of philosophers cannot encompass, but which artists such as these and such as Bezalel, elected by Moses, are able to transmit to people through their poetry and paintbrushes:

“Know you why the cypress and the lily have the reputation for the freedom they enjoy among mankind? It is because the latter, possessing ten languages, is dumb and the former, possessing one hundred hands, keeps them short.” (373)

The ten languages allude to the bright, spacey flowers of the lily and the hands to the extremities of the branches of the cypress.

Perhaps, only Persian and Iranian culture has succeeded in speaking thus to people and been understood.

A nation of poets, so distant from the extremist tendencies that come from other horizons.

Having understood this, as we gaze at the painting Arrival, we can hear Khayyam’s encouragement, as though he had written his quatrain in front of this painting of marchers bearing the gourd of the Torah and its wine of life:

“Do not measure the length of life beyond the sixtieth year.

Do not set foot anywhere without partaking of wine.

As long as from your head no pitcher has been made,

Always follow your path without setting down the gourde from your shoulders, or the cup from your hands.” (362)

He continues, encouraging the determination of the blind marchers:

“When the azure light (that which precedes the great light of daybreak, explanatory note) shows itself, hold in your hand the shining goblet.

It is said that truth is bitter in the mouth of humans.

It is plausible that wine is this very truth.” (185)

The same wine (yayin) is cited 141 times in the different parts of the Bible and assumes this role in the blessing over wine at the Shabbat table and the marriage ceremony.

This twin, internal culture (Jewish and Persian) has been internalized and passed on automatically through the generations, and cannot be defined solely as represented by the present generation. Suffrin possesses both these cultures, but he also possesses Western culture which defines the value of all other cultures by its own parameters: Suffrin is connected to Jewish, Ashkenazi, German culture through his father. These three dimensions are rich but they also create an inner tension, because of the uncertainty created when models cohabit, sometimes painfully, together.

Suffrin chose “not to be a member of the flock” but rather to “witness society from the perspective of his creative originality.” He joins, here, like Moses, in this painting, this poem by Khayyam:

“There are ignorant men who never spent a night searching for the truth,

Who never took a step outside of themselves,

Who go round dressed in garments of great lords

And who enjoy denigrating those whose conduct is irreproachable.” (184)

It is clear that Khayyam is speaking here about the search for truth and not about absolute perfection in moral action.

This internal conflict is depicted in a painting where good and evil find themselves in a sudden artistic co-existence and collide with somewhat indecent brutality. The artistic expression of this conflict connects the artist as much to Persian miniatures as to the works of Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Breughel:

Sages are present here as well as all evil players: while women are the stakes and potential victims, a multiple magnetic pole. It is a great drama, perfectly expressed by.

Khayyam:

“You asked me what is this phantasmagoria of this world below.

To tell you the truth about this would take too long:

It is an incredible image that emerges from a vast sea

And re-enters this same vast sea.” (232)

Here Khayyam joins Suffrin in a common painting.

Another painting extends this interrogation further by placing it within social reality and not within mythic fantasies. The mystery of evil, the role of women, in a world of incessant wars in the face of the good creative wine. is a mystery which the painter successfully grasps through great personal, artistic effort, and he knows how to set it before our eyes:

Khayyam writes:

“No one possess access behind the mysterious curtain of God’s secrets,

No one – not even spiritually – can penetrate this place

We have no other dwelling than the lap of this earth.

O regret, for this too is an enigma no less difficult to grasp.” (44)

And then he dares to utter a cry that shatters and scandalizes every philosophy and religion:

“If, because I do evil, You punish me by evil,

What is then the difference which exists between You and me, say?”

A new development: Roee Suffrin’s particularity is that he plunges us into this terrestrial explosion of evil, with woman at the center, representing good, beauty and purity:

.

Khayyam writes:

“(Creator) You imparted to our being a very remarkable phantasmagoria

And you create from this quite bizarre phenomena.

I cannot be better than what I am,

For this is how You drew me out of the crucible.” (380)

When the limits of what is endurable are surpassed, he cries out, like parts of these paintings by Suffrin:

“You broke my pitcher of wine, my God!

You thus closed for me the door of happiness, my God!

You poured on the ground my limpid wine.

Were you drunk, my God?” (388)

A tragic and existentially true cry:

Quatrain 393 expresses this even more profoundly.

“O wheel of heaven, you constantly fill my heart with sadness.

You paralyze in me the seed of joy, you transform into water the air that revives my body, you change into earth, in my mouth, the pure water that I drink!”

Suffrin does not go this far but he allusively depicts, in his paintings, a form of extreme conflict without making such a sad diagnosis.

Indeed, woman becomes the motor for overcoming the trials:

She is victorious and evil disintegrates by itself around her.

Suffrin’s paintings are powerfully positive and, in this, he echoes Khayyam when the latter writes:

“As long as there are bones, veins and nerves in your body,

Do not place your foot outside the limits of your destiny.

Never give in to your enemy….” (416).

This leads us to paintings by Suffrin that depict religious people, who claim to be guiding lights of the world, qualified to define the lifestyles of others within their own groups or among the nation in general.

He is not depicting, here, a social group but a real internal dilemma which cannot be simplified, and which he renders by depicting extreme opposites, as in the figures in these paintings (strength versus servile submission).

He does not forget, in the face of claims of certitude (by religious bodies), all that he has presented to us and insists on highlighting problems which cannot be eliminated, for reality is not so simple, as writes Khayam:

“You have traversed the world, but everything you saw is.. nothing;

Everything you saw, and everything you heard is also nothing.

You traveled from one end of the universe to the other, this is nothing;

You meditated in a corner of your room,

All this is also nothing, nothing.” (47)

Suffrin makes us see and hear that a problem cannot be eliminated by illusions, by what Khayyam denotes as “nothing,” a Farsi term which also means blindness, illusion, hallucination, visions, chimera, etc. He thus depicts the child which we are as half the world, confronting the immense weight of those who claim to know and who enjoy collective social recognition:

Khayyam also poses this question in his own, less allusive, manner:

“Why should a man who possesses enough bread to survive for two days,

Who can draw a drop of fresh water from a cracked pitcher,

Why should such a man be ordered by one who is not his equal,

And why should he serve a man who is his equal?” (462)

Suffrin sets us together, equally, before the voice, the flame and the color of the Torah, where no one is great or small, even if he acknowledges the wisdom of masters:

What counts is the Presence, the wine of Khayyam, not the external size of the drinkers.

Suffrin places them equally as they listen and search, with modesty. Especially, together.

Khayyam writes:

“No one has penetrated the secret of the Principle,

No one has taken a step outside of himself.

I observe, and all I see is insufficiency from the student to the master,

Insufficiency in all that a mother has given birth to.” (175)

The answer is given by Suffrin in this painting, which we cited above:

And by Khayyam when he writes:

“If you are ready to listen, I shall give you advice:

For the love of God, do not wear the coat of hypocrisy.

Eternity is forever and this world is but just a moment.

Do not therefore sell, in exchange for a moment, the empire of eternity.” (240)

This is exactly the visual understanding and message of Roee Sufffrin in this painting.

Over and beyond good and evil, as it is said.

Suffrin does not question his ancestry, any more than Khayyam but, as a painter who tries to capture the visuality of essence, he imparts to us, like Bezalel, the connection with what is essential, as in Khayyam’s definition:

“In the mosque, the school, and the synagogue,

One is terrified of hell and one searches for paradise,

But the seed of this fear has never sprouted

In the heart of he who has penetrated the secrets of the Almighty.”

Now we come to the tranquil confidence of woman in this painting by Suffrin, a woman who is present, active, serene and not threatened, the preceding battles having lost their raison d’etre:

“I said: a work is a mutation” said Rochelle Owens in 1988. There are works that are constant mutations: they teach us to live and overcome deep mutations.

At this level we understand the sentence, drawn for me and dedicated to me in 1981 by Hassan Massoudy, the great calligraphist painter of the Muslim and Arabic civilization, “all men are born free and equal.”

We “see” and feel it: Roee Suffrin’s oeuvre is prodigious for a 30 year-old painter.

In the multiplicity of his work, Suffrin shows that he is not a pessimist; he is persistent.

He has heard the Jewish Torah say: “uvaharta bayahim leman tihiye” (“choose life so that you may live,” Deuteronomy 30.19) and he joins in Khayam’s counsel:

“One should not plant in one’s heart the tree of sadness” (147)

The true painter fulfils Omar Khayyam’s wish:

“I wish that God would reconstruct the world,

I wish that God would reconstruct it now,

So that I can see God at work.” (457).

This is being done, now, the painter shows us. He also teaches us this through his sensitivity, depth, beauty and aesthetic. And he allows us to place his unique paintings within our daily lives.

So, in front of the works of Roee Suffrin, we can repeat the words of Omar Khayyam on the wine of creation:

“On the rim of the goblet is a verse full of light which we love to read always and everywhere.” (11)