Lachman is careful to name his sculptures as part of the pieces’ presentation process. American intellectual and aesthetician Arthur Danto was preoccupied with the relationship between the work of art and its title. According to Danto, once the piece has been given a meaningful name, its viewer cannot ignore the relationship between image and title. Indeed, whoever ventures in-depth observation of Lachman’s sculpted heads with reference to their titles is sure to discover additional layers of understanding and meaning. The viewer will necessarily contemplate a bust called Shulamit differently than had it been titled Head #1. Anyone familiar with Paul Celan’s Fugue of Death will be hard-pressed not to relate to Shulamit without reference to these wonderful verses: “[…] death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue/ he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true / a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete/ he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air/ he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany// Your golden hair Margarete/ your ashen hair Shulamith”.[1] The bust Shulamit does not obviously allude to Celan’s poem and leaves the viewer with a broad range of interpretations, but reading the text before you right this minute narrows them down because you immediately find out that Shulamit’s original title was Your Ashen Hair. The unique characteristics of Lachman’s work make Carrying, the sculpture work at the center of this exhibition, one of the highlights of his oeuvre. Its formal and thematic relation to Michelangelo’s Pietà statues, and particularly the Rondanini Pietà, is clearly obvious. The emotional depth, intensity of expression and multifaceted mystery of the Rondanini Pietà are enhanced in Carrying by the Lachmanesque elements of material complexity, inside-outside games, Giacomettesque amorphousness and the uniqueness of his sculptural base, which is different from the bust bases. Here the base becomes an organic part of the sculpture group, a thin and seemingly unstable pillar that widens towards the top, whose bottom seems too gentle to bear the group’s weight. The two human figures thus refer to an additional element, and the relationships between the three members of the sculpture group are further tainted with a sense of ephemerality, of tragic fragility. True observation of Lachman’s works is a demanding experience, but the more time and attention you devote to it, the deeper the sense of emotional and esthetic satisfaction you experience as you behold works of art. Lachman’s sketches present a disarray of lines and hatchings that seem like quick squiggles, laid down on the paper in a seemingly chaotic manner, which turns out to be carefully ordered and organized upon closer inspection. And out of this orderly disarray of lines emerges a clear yet blurred image, at once incisive and mysterious, alluding to a hidden essence hidden behind the identifiable. This technique, reminiscent of Rembrandt’s sketches and etchings, enables the image to offer its observer an interpretive and associative abundance. The ability to fashion deceptively clear images which convey a message of mystery and wonderment about that which is concealed behind the obvious is a Godgiven gift only few have been blessed with. The only persistent message conveyed by Lachman’s sketches involves the image’s elusive materiality. This message is amplified tenfold in Lachman’s sculptures, by virtue of their highly complex structure. They cannot really be viewed from a single perspective. They are uncontainable from a single distance, direction or height. They invite the viewer to observe them at leisure, to absorb them slowly, in a hesitant, punctuated movement, alternately shifting and stopping, approaching and withdrawing, moving right and then left, and backwards again, stooping and straightening and then returning once again to the first point of view equipped with new insights and new perspectives, and so forth. The gigantic heads are at once hollow and full, potentially containing the visible from without with the invisible from within. The center of thought and instinct, pleasure and pain, hope and despair, he hub of sensory perception, is exposed to the viewer’s eye in a manner impossible outside the Lachmanesque context: the impossible becomes possible, the internal is externalized and the external internalized. Deep, warm and dark secret sounds emanate from this impossible encounter between manifest and latent. Lachman retains the natural look of sprues (short wax sticks) used to mold the form. Just as in his sketches the image emerges from the lines, so does the head emerge in his sculptures from the sprues.
[1.] Trans. Michael Hamburger, www.english.txstate.edu/cohen_p/postmodern/Literature/Celan/Hamburger.html
Dr. Yoni Ascher, expert on renaissance and baroque sculpture, Haifa University Department of Art History.
Photography: Avraham Hay
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