Esther

closeup of "Esther Preparing to Intercede with Ahasuerus" (F. Levy)

There are the greats of the past, Rembrandt, Vermeer,  Velasquez and those of the modern world de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Johns and Rauschenberg--who all emerged in America during the 50s. The current "The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt," on exhibit in tandem with the Purim holiday at the Jewish Museum, illustrates how geopolitics and culture create not a classic paradigm shift but a paradigm. The show’s titular painting is luminescent in a sui generis way. It is neither one of the masks or "tronies" by which the master demonstrated his gift for role-playing, nor the usual tincture of darkness out of which say an early self-portrait, also in the show, emerges. It’s as if the mercantile forces which allowed for freedom were epitomized in this singular portrait of an iconic biblical icon. On a more overarching level, any Rembrandt show is a challenge to the present. Clement Greenberg the ideologue of the abstract-expressionist revolution would temble in his grave, but to rephrase Saul Bellow’s famously reactionary quote “Who is the Rembrandt of the 9th Street Bohemians?”

read "The Wasteland" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn