2. In Leonard Lehrer and his Influences, there is a formulation of the “perfect instant” where past is redeemed in the present. This
philosophy echoes the voice of a historian. Reminiscent of Walter Benjamin- a philosopher of history, consistently vigilant to those
victims in the past, Leonard has lived with histories, redeeming personal, kin and humankind. Leonard reworks happenings of the
past into a reality of present hope. Time, was now.
Introduction
Throughout Leonard Lehrer`s repertoire is the continual presence of memory. This is accentuated through a choice of materials,
technique and form. The content determines the means. In Lehrer`s early work he spent time experimenting with great sensitivity
to tone, colour, and compositional balance reminiscent of the still life painter Giorgio Morandi who focused on depicting the familiar
but with subtle gradations of hue, tone and colour, thus making the depictions of familiar have a mysterious quality. Lithography,
a favoured method in Lehrer`s work relies upon the strongest ink that survives for the image. This prefigures endurance, evident
in content throughout his work. The layering techniques are in the presence of now. This form of collage and mixed media,
blasts open that continum of history. It is only through using that present form, that the past begins to seep through the cracks
of time…time collapses and influences from the Alhambra, the quasi-mathmatical composition of the Gardens of Last Year at
Marienbad; Judaism; Jorges Luis Borges; Pontoromo and his daughter Anna-Katrina, all flower and bloom out to the reader. This
technique allows a multitude of perspectives, Lehrer`s personal history, the extrinsic history to his own and within this, the reader
can experience and savor their own vast array of influences.
Sojourns and Embarkation to Cythera
The fascination with formal gardens depicted in Sojourns and Embarkation to Cythera are mysteriously still and removed
from the ordinary world. There is a feeling of the Romantic lonely wanderer, like the Wandering Jew, an exiled bearer of testimony
and witness. Lehrer in his art is narrating a tale revolving around the wanderings of a changeless character in a changing world.
Lehrer`s formal gardens depicted in Sojourns and Embarkation to Cythera allude to Nicholas Poussin’s 17th century mechanisms
in the painterly pursuit of three-dimensional composition in space. Furthermore, Lehrer found affinity with the formal garden leitmotif
embedded within Alain Renais`s Last year at Marienbad. Here characters wander seemingly lost and in a dream. It is precisely this
combination of symmetry in the external world and labyrinth in the internal consciousness, that is evident in Lehrer`s works.
3. “…the viewer is presented with images from the preceding year that may have been prior, but might also be visions of time
future or the present. One image is tumbled upon the other and the viewer is lost in a vertigo of timelessness”
(Gergen, K.J: 1991)
This reactivation of memory from a present moment relates to Jorge Luis Borges’ mediation on time in Library of Babel
where all that is required for time to be infinite, is for time - thus memory to be infinitely sub-divisible. Borges’ work evidently
influenced Lehrer`s as the memories depicted in Sojourns and Embarkation to Cythera are infinite not only for himself but also for
the viewer.
In Embarkation to Cythera there is the combination of Flemish Baroque from Ruben’s, The Three Graces, Jean Auguste
Dominique Ingres, searching for his purist form stylised as Neo-classicism and Florentine Mannerism from Jacopo Pontormo. It
is these very combinations of style, layered upon each other that in turn allow the viewer to see into history of art as being non-
hierarchic and each influencing one another through their presence in time, in history. Lehrer, integral to this canon self-reflexivity,
style and form reveal power structures that have repressed the continual presence of history as being fluid and non-linear.
Furthermore, Lehrer`s personal history is accentuated through the representation of his daughter Anna-Katrina. In Embarkation to
Cythera her face contorted by disability is equal to the beauty of the elongated mannerist women by Pontormo. In Sojourns, Anna-
Katrina’s hands isolated and layered upon one another and aligned with the Alhambra domes and Andalucian, roses metonymically
allude to Flamenco - the dance of suffering. It is in this representation that we glimpse sight of Anna Katrina`s will for presence.
Just like the hands that are the only human form depicted in the Alhambra due to Muslim order, these hands break the silence of
concrete form and order created by human kind in the world.
Dialogues I through IV
The hands are loquacious, the fingers are tongues and their silence is clamorous (Aurelius Cassiodorus).
The hand acts and acting speaks. This speaking can be as literal as a word, which represents something, or it can be simply like a
sound, a pure vocal dynamic. Due to the complexity of the hand’s anatomical structure and of its articulation possibilities, there are
in the movement of the fingers alone infinite possible modifications of behavior. So it is possible for hands to both speak (transmit
concepts) and to exist as pure sound. Furthermore, there is a universal language that is articulated by the hands, that is intercultural
and so in this way Anna-Katrina propelled her presence into the world. Lehrer, by isolating these movements of expression, in the
form of these potent lithographs, shows they are elegant and seemingly ordered in actual disorder.
4. The Rose Season and Boabdil`s Sigh
The Rose Season conciliates Lehrer`s ardor for the Moorish arch, the intensity of the Andalucian Rose and the colors of
the Alhambra that gave rise to its name “red castle”. Alhambra is from an Arabic root signifying in Arabic, the red (Al Hamra) that
alludes to a cacophony of influences that co-existed at this time and space in history. In the middle of the 13th Century, Spain offers
an example in history when African Muslims (or Moors), large Jewish communities, and Christians lived together harmoniously,
and creatively, for several centuries. Arguably the bright red of the rose represents the friendship and positive communication of
people from an array of cultures living together in harmony. Whereas the yellow rose connotes dying love and thus dying harmony
for union between these people. The poem that gave rise to name: The Rose Season elaborates further a sense of belonging to an
epoch of elation.
In Boabdil`s Sigh, the Generalife (the Muslim Jennat al Arid, “Garden of Arid,” or “Garden of the Architect”) dating from
the 13th
Century are framed by the “mocárabe”. The Generalife gardens are said to depict the original Moorish character. There is
repetition of the rose motif plays now, domesticated within glass vases, like clipped hedges and formality of Generalife, and Lehrer`s
symetrical garden motif.
Self- portrait with almost everything
The self finds articulation in not only in material things but also the metaphors and narratives related to intersubjective social life.
Fields of memory and experience are created like a web through materiality. In Lehrer`s self, Fleur-de-lis an icon of purity leads to
student experiemtenation in art and life. Giving way to fascination of Persian patterns, this was arguably a period of existentialism
for Lehrer. Subsequently, part of The Fall of Icarus Peter Bruegel the Elder, 1558. Here Lehrer expresses visually, by being close
with Anna-Katrina how he felt her raw will to live-expressed similarly by the framed electronic heart-beat, but never reached as, she
did, the sun.
Birth of Venus & Baracole
There is an innocence about these pieces. The name The Birth of Venus, a painting by Sandro Boticelli 1485-1486 is not strictly
classical in form. It is a presentiment of Mannerism-a favored style throughout Lehrer`s work. In Baracole The water layered upon
one another is arguably self-reflexive. In that, wisdom of survival, takes water-like pliancy and anonymity. That the waters are from
Venitian canals in both Baracole and Venus permits a peek into the history of Venice as an international trading port for art in the
15th
Century, where it was a time of great occidental and oriental exchange. This is indeed intristic to Lehrer`s conceptual and
artistic maturation.
5. Anna Katrina Entering Heaven
Anna-Katrina Entering Heaven is a deeply personal depiction of Lehrer`s daughter entering heaven. Based upon The Burial of Count
Orgaz, by El Greco, in Lehrer`s print Anna-Katrina`s soul is being assisted in its ascent by an angel. It is the archangel Gabriel
from Pontormo`s Annunciation. The emphasis of pathos is powerful for the closing moments of her life. This Giorgione like emotion
is both poignant languid. Poignancy for that concentrated anticipation frozen in time depicted through computerized records of
her fading heartbeat, languid through that sense of continuity to infinity on the horizon. Anna-Katrina`s infinite presence becomes
embodied within the angels from Mannerist (Renaissance-Baroque style) of the 15th
-16th
century that become a leitmotif throughout
Lehrer`s work. Through the visual arts Anna-Katrina lives eternal and it is this very medium that first breathed exuberance of life
into Lehrer. There is a full circle. There are subtle representations of Judaism within this piece. Part of the Jewish faith believes that
life is about embracing suffering and that people will find divine redemption in heaven. His daughter through her transformation into
an angel embodies this divine redemption.
Kaddish
Kaddish denotes the Jewish rituals of mourning. The liturgy Kaddish is spoken in Aramaic, however, the complete Kaddish ends with
a supplication for peace. This is in Hebrew and from the bible. The prayer, the Venetian canals bordering the print on the left and
right, the presence of Anna-Katrina at the foot of the print and the remembrance of two hundred and four Jews that were deported
from Venice and only eight returned from the death camps metonymically persist with Lehrer`s continual Jetzzeit This presence of
now echoes Benjamin’s: “Don`t start with the good old things, but the bad new ones” (Benjamin:
1940). It is through this choice
of perhaps uncomfortable remembrance that time is redeemed and the messiah arrives. Growing up with the memory of Eastern
European Jews being at the hands of a terrible fate in war, and Lehrer’s paternal family being among the fortunate to have been
able to emigrate to the United States in the 1920’s, and the concurrent memory of his mother’s two sisters and their families, the
only of her large family who survived the death camps, and who lived with the Lehrers as they later adjusted to their new lives and
their new country. It was in Philadelphia as a young boy that Lehrer found his supreme choice of triumph over loss in sketching,
drawing, painting and printmaking. Perhaps it is this personal past that is latent within his art - the essentiality to blast the past and
the present into the future to redeem the victims from the past. The need to adjust, to mend, through attrition.
Lehrer`s work is of a deeply personal nature, but his gest is toward social issues. Gest used by is where all the components
of an artistic piece contribute to elicit a social theme. Lehrer`s tableaux`s didactically condenses past, present and future revealing
mediations on the structures of the artistic cannon, faith and morality, hope and the virtues of attrition.
Jessica Kennedy White
18. The Artist
Leonard Lehrer is an American artist with an international reputation. His works have been exhibited for several decades in national,
international, solo and group exhibitions. He studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and the University of Pennsylvania, where he
received a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1960. He lives and works in Chicago. His repertoire includes oil paintings, watercolors,
drawings, prints such as lithographs and ink jet prints, as well as collages. His work signifies a long evolutional period of ideas and
intentions and he has been inspired by the most diverse influences such as the paintings of Pontormo, the gardens and the domed
ceilings of the Alhambra, the French movie Last Year at Marienbad, and the writings of the Argentine novelist and poet Jorge Luis
Borges. Leonard Lehrer’s main theme relates to concepts of time, the infinite and the simultaneity of past, present and future. The
latter was given concrete expression through his art of the short but remarkable life of his daughter Anna-Katrina. Altogether, there
have been more than forty solo exhibitions in well-known galleries and museums all over the US, including New York and Philadelphia
as well as in Europe, Germany and Spain.
Internationally known museums have acquired examples of his art within their major collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art
(MOMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the Sprengel Museum in
Hannover, Germany, the Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris and numerous others.
Besides his artistic career Leonard Lehrer holds the position of Dean of The School of Fine and Performing Arts, Columbia College
Chicago. Previously he served as Chair, Department of Art and Art Professions, New York University, et al. In addition, he has curated
traveling exhibitions, including “Modern American Printmaking,” which was shown throughout Germany and Spain.
Leonard Lehrer’s work is cited in a multiplicity of books and catalogues. He has been active in writing articles for journals such as the
Art Journal, The Tamarind Papers, and the Journal of the Print World.
Leonard Lehrer has received awards including the “Kunstpreis” of the Heitland Foundation, Celle/Germany, the Gold Medal Award of
Distinction of the National Society of Arts and Letters, a USIA grant to la Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, and a Fulbright
Scholar Program Artist-in Residence Grant, followed by another Fulbright Senior Scholar AIA Grant, both to Greece in Printmaking.
19. This project has been organised by:With the support of:
Collaborating Master Technician
& Digital Photography Lab:
Erick Dennis Rowe
Catalogue Concept, Layout & Design:
Anna Helene v. Schubert
Webdesign & Adaption:
Ines Culinovic
www.iccm.at/leonardlehrer
Lithographs produced & printed at
Anchor Graphics, Chicago, IL
Steven Kapelke Provost/Academic Vice: President
Warrick L. Carter: President
20. Commentary
I have always believed that an artist’s work is essentially autobiographical. It might be in the approach, in the content or in the spirit.
In the work of Leonard Lehrer these are all together. His approach is one of a reverence of history and place. Rather than being
about him, the work makes you feel that what you see is his own view, as if you were looking through his eyes.
Leonard’s images and subjects are ones that he knows a great deal about. Having worked with these subjects for many years he
has explored a multitude of levels of historical, personal and aesthetic issues associated with them. While the images are always
beautiful, they are at times difficult. A large part of the responsibility of the artist is to find that beauty – beauty which is visual, and
perhaps most importantly, beauty which is not obvious, as this is the difference between art and record. That quality distinguishes
the artist from the draughtsman.
Leonard’s work is about relationships. It is about his relationship to his family and their past; it is about his relationship to special
places that have spoken to him and which, for deeply personal reasons, he has returned to again and again. He considers and
reconsiders these places in as many ways as possible in an ongoing effort to understand and unearth his relationship to them. It
is however, above all, Leonard’s spirit that distinguishes him from other artists.
Were I an art historian, I would attempt to provide insight into how and why Leonard’s selection of images is important. For some this
might be necessary and others interesting. For me, it is the underlying association that is as important as the images themselves.
I see an insistence on beauty, corporeality and the potential all things possess. As noted above it is through Leonard’s eyes that
we feel we look. Favored images of Moorish history, or what in a less inspired artist’s work would merely be pictures of flowers,
become personal events. This creates a certain discomfort, as if we are seeing images that are too personal; things are not at all
as they seem – as if we are reading someone’s diary and experiencing the mixed feelings that accompany an intrusion on privacy.
This is an ordered life. He is a thinking man.
Leonard Lehrer is his art.
Steven Rand
Artist, Founder apexart
New York City, NY
