We reprint a talk given by esteemed printmaker and Aesthetic Realism consultant Chaim Koppelman, in the Terrain Gallery's historic series of talks titled "Art Answers the Questions of Your Life!"
The more I look at this photograph the more I am affected by what Nancy Starrels shows about the relation of art and everyday life, the past and present. Nancy Starrels and I studied in classes with Eli Sieqel, the great art critic and founder of Aesthetic Realism. It was from him we learned how to look at the past in such a way that we could be proud.
In the "Outline of Aesthetic Realism," Mr. Sieqel says, "The Past Can Be Seen Better," and he writes:
"If we see what has happened to us better, we give the past a more promising future. There is no limit to how well we can see anything in the past. This means the past can join the present and future wisely.”This is the Garden Cafeteria, a famous Lower East Side landmark for many years. What is so striking in this interior is the dramatic juxtaposition of painted scene on the wall representing the past, with the people sitting right at this moment at the tables below and in the foreground.
People do not feel they can make sense of the past; they either try to forget the past, feeling "it was so bad," or glorify it, because "it was so good," and use it to feel the present is dull. Freshly, surprisingly, Nancy Starrels' photo of the Garden Cafeteria shows the two are really together-- naturally, pleasingly, usefully.
The photograph is divided into two horizontal sections, the lower section of actual people, well dressed, at tables, sitting in pairs, alone, in groups, eating, talking, musing. And behind and above them, as background, a large painting showing the East Side streets, buildings and people of the past, covers most of the wall. The juxtaposition of past and present, painted world and living humanity before us, outside view and immediate interior; is very striking. These two views of reality contrast and merge, enrich one another.
Though the diners seem unaware of the painted past behind them, it impinges on their lives, and dramatically, through form, with them. Look how the forms of the three people in the center, continued upward, form an arch with the old country people in the painting. That same arch form is repeated in the building behind them, in the windows of the buildings in the background, and there are related curves in the chairs of the restaurant.
We are led into depth and into the painted scene by the gaze of the person on the lower left side of the photograph, and our eyes move from near to far, from depth to width, from high into the sky to the scene below. There are other important details: the man in the white shirt, whose head casts a shadow on the painting, separating and joining the present and the past, and the painted lamp post which, as it rises, seems to move right out of the painting into the room with the people. What appeared to be two worlds is one picture!
I see more, through this photograph, of the meaning of Eli Siegel's magnificent Aesthetic Realism statement, "The resolution of conflict in self is like the making one of opposites in art."
