David Aronson

As an immigrant artist of Jewish background, who borrowed freely from Christological, Jewish, mystical, and modernist motifs, David Aronson has been an equally acclaimed and controversial figure in the Boston Expressionist school and beyond. Defying all clear categorization, his highly evocative art moves precariously between the realms of the religious and the secular, between Judaism and humanism, tradition and modernity. This book includes rich reproductions of Aronson's works done in encaustic, pastel, charcoal, and bronze. It also contains Aronson's 1967 lecture "Real and Unreal: The Double Nature of Art," which offers a unique testimony of the intellectual background of his creative oeuvre. An interpretive essay by Asher Biemann of the University of Virginia places Aronson's work and biography in an historical, cultural, and intellectual context and comments on specific aspects of his art.
Provocative and thoroughly documented, this volume will be of interest to scholars of art history, Judaism, and religion, as well as to a general audience.