Ami Yoel Glick Artist

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Transcript of Ami Yoel Glick Artist

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By Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter

The Art of yoel Glick

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Living between opposite poles, every-thing about Yoel Glick, who is known in the art world as Joel Gluck, seems to be a contradiction. At once both a rigid chasid and an exploring aesthete, his long brown beard and peiyos appear inconsonant with his paints and brushes. His manner and demeanor, in fact, clash wildly with his easel.

Yoel lives in the Satmar community of Kiryas Joel. His paint-ings are exhibited in the Betzalel Gallery, located in the mostly Lubavitch neighborhood of Crown Heights. Yet upon meeting Yoel, he strikes one as a model of harmony.

A poet once had this to say about painters: “Every artist dips his brush into his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pic-tures.” If that is true, Yoel Glick must have a very tranquil soul, because his pictures are not only good but the epitome of calmness.

ArtAristotle philosophized: “The aim of art is to represent not the

outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” That’s quite a weighty concept, but what in fact is “art”? It is nei-ther painting, poetry nor music but that indescribable something that painting, poetry and music elicit.

Indeed, the definition of art has been debated among philos-ophers and thinkers throughout the ages. Whether art can be defined at all is a matter of great controversy.

The description of art as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power” is a good working definition, but since it lacks clearly-defined parameters it ultimately fails.

One is perhaps best served by the phrase uttered by the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for lewdness: “I know it when I see it.” This colloquial expression, which became one of the most famous phrases in the entire his-tory of the Supreme Court, is a matchless description of that which cannot ultimately be described. Art, as every art lover knows, falls into this category. It is a form of expression that does not serve any purpose other than to stimulate otherwise inexpressible aesthetic experiences.

Leonardo da Vinci, the leading figure of the Italian Renaissance, wrote about the superiority of painting over poetry and music. Whether or not painting is indeed supreme, what Yoel and I have in common is that we both appreciate painting best. Yoel, how-ever, is a first-class producer of paintings, whereas I am merely a spectator.

Yet what makes him so intriguing is not only his understanding of art, but how art occupies a place of honor on the continuum of his quest for spirituality. The sincerity of the artist and the degree to which he feels the emotion he transmits have always been con-

sidered important elements in an artist’s final product. Yoel, at 30, is genuine and sincere.

I meet Yoel at the Betzalel Gallery and continue our conversa-tion in Prospect Park. The weather is mild—perfect, actually—but what I enjoy the most is our engaging dialogue. Yoel is also trying to paint my portrait as we speak but it’s a non-starter, since like every good Jew he talks with his hands.

When I point this out to Yoel, he responds with the anecdote about the two Jews and the Englishman who are crossing the ocean by ship. The Jews, who don’t know how to swim, start arguing with each other about what to do if the boat sinks, gesturing with such vigor and enthusiasm that the Englishman backs away to avoid injury. A moment later the ship actually begins to sink. All of the passengers, except for the Jews, who are too wrapped up in their argument to notice, jump overboard. After a long, exhaust-ing swim, the Englishman finally reaches the shore, where to his amazement the two Jews greet him with a wave. Astonished, he asks them how they got there. “We have no idea,” one of them replies. “We just kept talking in the water.”

OriginsYoel shares that he started drawing as a little kid. “My mother, as

well as her mother and brothers, used to draw a lot. On Sukkos, the whole city would come to see my grandmother’s brothers’ pic-tures. My grandmother was an einikel of Reb Itche Landau, who was a brother-in-law of the chasidic composer Rav Berish Vishiver. They were all artistic people. My grandfather was also a famous baal tefillah in Chust.

“Then when I was 12 years old my mother gave me one of her pencils as a bribe, and taught me the rudiments of drawing. I really started getting into it, making simple images and drawing mono-grams. But other than that I was completely untrained. It wasn’t until shortly after my chasunah, about seven or eight years ago, that I decided I wanted to paint.”

“For parnasah?”“Yes, but also just to pursue my art. My wife thought it was

funny for a yungerman to spend money on art supplies. I prom-ised her that one day I’d be able to sell my paintings and make a living from it.

“I’ll never forget the first time I bought oil paints and realized just how difficult it is to paint. I understood right away that I needed to find a teacher. I began with an art teacher in Boro Park but soon saw that he was doing most of the painting and that I wasn’t really learning anything, so I left him.

“I’m a big searcher. When I want something, I’ll look and look until I find it. I eventually found someone near me in Monroe who owned some very nice paintings. I asked him who the artist was and he told me Gershon Becker. So I went to Becker’s house, knocked on his door and asked him to teach me. ‘Why not?’ he said. I started going to him once a week. He taught me how to paint still lifes. Later, I went to learn from somebody else. I acquired a

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lot of knowledge and skills from each of my teachers and even started to sell some of my paintings.

“One of my problems was that they all wanted me to go to art school. But an ehrli-che Yid can’t go to art school. I told them, ‘You’ll see. I’ll act like an ehrliche Yid and still become a good artist.’ I was deter-mined to prove it was possible.

“Then I found another teacher named Paul McCormack. He had a totally differ-ent mehalach called the academic approach, which involves making a tight drawing beforehand and then working around it. It’s important to learn the basic technical draw-ing skills. Nowadays I don’t think you can detect anything in my paintings of what I learned from him, but without him I doubt it could have taken off. He showed me how and what to see and how to express it, along with perspective and relativity, how big and small objects appear in relation to each other.

“After him I studied under Max Gins-burg, one of the biggest American realists.

He’s a real Yid. He lives in Manhattan and has a studio near Williamsburg.”

“Was all of that training expensive?”“Not terribly. One teacher charged $70 a

week; another one, $120. It’s not the same as with music teachers, where the good ones charge a lot. In fact, the best artists charge the least because they’re not inter-ested in the money. My present teacher does it for free.”

“You still have a teacher?”“Yes. I still go to Ginsburg when male

models are posing for him. We’re very close. He comes to my house on Chanu-kah. He would do anything for me. He told me that it took me only a few months to learn certain things that took him 80 years to absorb. He’s 94 years old.

“Ginsburg is a realist, with a style somewhere between Rembrandt and John Singer Sargent. He’s similar to the Russian realists like Shishkin, who made beautiful landscapes. He has a very strong freehand with the brush—zaftige paint! I go to him every once in a while.

“I used to do other things as well, like graphic art, but now I paint all day long for a living.”

“You seem to live and breathe it.”“I do. I feel that if I ‘diluted’ my focus and

concentrated on other things at the same time my painting wouldn’t come out right.”

“You have kids?”“Four, baruch Hashem.“And you support your family through

your art?”“My wife still works and I teach painting

to boys age seven until bar mitzvah. I also give music lessons in the evenings to a few bachurim. Together we support our family.”

“How many students do you have?”“Around 40.”“I find it surprising that parents in Kiryas

Joel send their kids to art and music les-sons,” I say.

“Fathers want their children to develop their talents,” he counters. “I actually encounter more resistance to music lessons than painting.”

“What instrument do you play?

Self portrait

Setting up at the Betzazel Gallery

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“Mostly fiddle. Also clarinet and a little guitar.”

“Do you play at weddings?”“A little. I’m not the most professional

player yet.”

Two Sides of the Same Coin

“Which do you consider the higher art, painting or music?” I ask.

“For me, painting and music go together,” he explains. “I need to have a tape on when I’m painting because it influences me a lot. For example, if I’m painting a person I need to listen to music that’s intense. When I finish, I can look at it and see the colors and know which music was playing. Towards

the end of a painting I often put on some happy music and add a lot of color.

“Painting and music speak the same lan-guage,” he continues. “They both have color and rhythm. A painting is also a com-position, a series of notes. It has a certain direction and mood. It’s mamash the same thing.

“Most of the great violinists were Jewish. Many grew up in the Jewish towns of Poland. There were fewer Jewish painters because they couldn’t get the training or the jobs. But Jewish music was very devel-oped.

“There are far fewer people in the world who can understand good painting than good music. It’s even easier for the ear to appreciate music that is off key than the eye

Still Life with Apples

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Shuk Meah Shearim

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to appreciate visual art.” “But you’re first and foremost a painter

rather than a musician.”“Yes. I’ve studied painting thoroughly.

I’m good with music, but I still have a lot to learn. The study of music is much harder than the study of art because you don’t actually produce music for quite a long time, as it’s all technical in the begin-ning. When you study art, you’re already making it.”

“Let’s talk about your paintings. I don’t sense a diversity of moods,” I tell him. “They all seem upbeat. With Monet, you can see different moods.”

“Most of the paintings at the Betzalel Gal-lery are studio paintings, canvasses that are produced over the course of a few weeks. So it’s harder to see moods in them than in the paintings I make from life, sitting in the street. Last week I made a painting of a tree. You can really sense my mood in that.

“I can only paint what I feel. A person isn’t always joyful. Life doesn’t work like that. Some people see painting as a way to escape from real life; I see it as the opposite. Art isn’t a disconnect from life; it’s reality. For some Jewish artists it’s all about expressing beauty. Other artists bring out their pain as well as their joy, all their feelings.”

“Rembrandt’s paintings are rich with emotion,” I assert.

“Rembrandt kept on painting his own face; he and van Gogh. There are reasons why a person paints himself. When I paint a person from a photograph, sometimes people say that I didn’t capture the true him. But when I paint a person from real life, I connect and capture his spirit. I feel his nefesh. It’s totally different. That’s why I try to work as often as I can from real life. You can see the neshamah on his face, in his facial features.”

“Why do you paint from photographs at all?”

“Because it’s very hard to paint Jewish scenes from life. It’s hard to get three kids to sit still for you. But for every painting I make from a picture I need to make four from life: still lifes, portraits.”

“Why do you keep painting street scenes of Meah Shearim?”

“My dream is to live there. I know every stone, every nook and cranny. I’ve studied

it. I know the place better than people who have lived there their entire lives.

“Someone once observed me painting in Meah Shearim and asked, ‘How can you paint such a dirty place?’

“‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘I see so many colors here as well as beauty.’ Painting is a very complex art, because it also entails knowing what not to paint. You have to know what to select; you can’t paint everything and you have to move things around. A good landscape artist captures the feel of a place but rearranges it how he thinks is best.”

“You’re also a photographer?”“Yes. In a certain way, photography is the

same chochmah as painting.”

Aesthetics Sitting in Prospect Park, I point to an

old and twisted tree. “If you notice,” I say, “there’s a bit of pink in the foreground. The composition of the colors and the expressiveness of the shrubbery make it a masterpiece. The old tree still has life in it, but it looks like an old man.”

“Green and red are colors that are very striking when you put them together,” he says in agreement. “Can you see the purple and green in the shadows?”

I confess that I cannot.“Another thing,” he continues in a philo-

sophical vein, “is that you really can’t paint a tree or a nose. You can only paint paint. An artist has to know his paint and know what it can do and create an illusion of a tree or a nose. I can’t just copy what I see. If you only copy, it’s going to lack life. I have to translate what I see into the language of art.

“If an artist has his own feelings, you’ll feel it in the painting. If the artist is an empty person, a cipher who just paints, you won’t understand what the painting is saying.”

“How important is it for you to paint out-doors?”

“It’s one of the most important things to me.”

“En plein air, or outdoor painting, which was so important to the Impressionists, isn’t so popular today,” I say.

“But my teachers did it a lot. My current teacher paints mostly faces but says that he

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sometimes has to go outdoors to paint the poetry of nature. Only nature provides you with all the colors. You can only capture them when painting from real life.

“I’m 30 years old. Young painters are usually much ‘tighter.’ Rembrandt became increasingly ‘looser’ the older he got. That means allowing the viewer into the painting to see the process along with you. A lot of times paintings look half-finished because the artist is letting the viewer in. It also shows that the artist hasn’t solved all the problems. He’s left it open to the viewer to complete.

“When I paint,” he adds, “I’m not thinking about the subject’s nose or mouth. I think about color and form, in the abstract. Every painting starts with a concept; it’s about color or light or direction. This tree would be about shade.”

“What about perspective?”“Every painting consists of a lot of things. The question is what

you want to bring out.”“Some painters have said that painting is all about light. What

are your thoughts on that?”“Rembrandt painted light and put figures into it. Other artists

painted figures and put light on them. Rembrandt was all about light. His genius was in understanding its nature. Shadows are transparent; light is opaque. Light hits an object with a sharp edge.

“There are so many things that go into painting: soft or hard edges, color, form, concept and paint quality, thick or thin paint. Thick paint brings the painting out to the viewer. Thin paint is about transparency. The viewer feels he can go through the painting.”

“Painters sometimes fudge the eyes,” I remark.“That’s because either they don’t know how to make edges or

their technical drawing skills aren’t good. The rule is that the fur-ther something is from the source of light, the more defined its

Fabrengen with Reb Mendel Foterfas

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edges. Shadows are separate. Also, light and color don’t work together. You have to put color in between the light and the shadow.

“The artist directs the viewer where to look by putting the focus only on that. The main focus is always different. It could be the subject’s face or eyes but it’s never right in the center. It’s always at least a little bit off to the side.”

“Some rebbes have said great things about Rembrandt,” I say.“He lived in a Jewish neighborhood,” he responds. “The model

for his Yoshke was a Jewish yungerman. He understood that he needed a Jewish face. They say that his Biblical paintings are much less goyish than his other works.”

“Who’s your favorite painter?”“Rembrandt. I can stare at his paintings for hours. I also like

Sargent, Zorn, a famous Swedish artist, and the Spanish artist Sorolla. These three combined realism with elements of Impres-sionism. Sorolla is full of color. He painted in the Spanish style with certain Russian elements.”

“The original Russian abstract painters were trying to express musical notes through paint and called their works ‘composi-tions,’” I add.

“In older paintings you see a lot of people. Later, you begin to see more color and abstraction. It’s all about color and movement. Then Impressionism developed into abstract Impressionism. A lot of abstract paintings want you to feel a certain emotion when you look at it in a museum, and it’s often a foreign feeling that I’m not comfortable with. And a lot of abstract paintings are full of anger and angst. An artist can bring that out very strongly.

“When I paint, I don’t look at detail. I usually use a big brush and then fill it in afterwards.”

Chasidic Identity“Most people would be surprised to learn that there’s a chasi-

dishe yungerman from Kiryas Joel who’s an accomplished painter,” I tell him candidly.

“When I paint, I don’t think about what other people might say. I think about who I am and what I want.”

“How does it work?” I want to know. “How do you combine your Yiddishkeit and your art?”

“When I sit quietly with my painting all day, I feel connected to Hashem. I talk to Him while I’m painting. I truly feel that some-one who has this talent and doesn’t use it is a farhakte person [disjointed]. He can’t be a true oved Hashem because then he’s farhakt in other areas as well. He can’t daven or learn because he has strong feelings and he’s not developing them.

“My art teachers would often tell me that I’m handicapped in what I’m allowed to paint. I would answer that I don’t need to draw women. I believe in Yiddishkeit very passionately. My art stems from my Yiddishkeit. Hashem gave me a talent so I could use it. A lot of Jews are strengthened in their Yiddishkeit through art.

“I’m very influenced by the chasidic masters, especially the teachings of Chabad and Breslov. I’m very close to Rav Kluger of Breslov. All of that has an influence on my art.”

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“You got into Breslov after you started painting?”“Yes, four or five years ago. The first thing Rav Kluger asked

me was whether my paintings add nefesh, if I’m not just copy-ing from nature. I send him a lot of my paintings. He likes to see what I’m thinking and creating.”

“How often do you go to Eretz Yisrael to paint?”“I only went once, working mostly from pictures. It’s diffi-

cult to set up in the street and paint. But once I start painting I don’t notice anything else. Someone once showed me a photo of myself painting surrounded by about 100 people, and I wasn’t even aware of it at the time.”

“Will you be moving to Eretz Yisrael soon?”“If my wife agreed I’d move there today. I daven in a Breslov

shtiebel in Kiryas Joel, so that’s not the reason I want to go. There are actually seven Breslov shtieblach in Kiryas Joel.”

“You’re attracted to the poetry in Breslov?”“It’s not just that, although nature is one of the biggest things

in Breslov, listening to the briah singing to Hashem. For me, hisbodedus is speaking to Hashem and opening my heart. When I paint it’s like singing a song, sometimes happy and sometimes sad.”

“You got that from Breslov?”“It added a lot for me.” “The Lubavitcher Rebbe encouraged painters. Is that your kin-

ship with Lubavitch?”

“For me, Chabad is part of my neshamah. I spent many years poring over Chabad sefarim. I learned Chabad chasidus for hours at a time.

“I get a lot of encouragement from a letter the Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote to Zalman Kleinman instructing him what to paint. He also gave him a lot of chizzuk, describing how an artist can transmit much good to people.”

“You left Chabad for Breslov.”“I didn’t leave it, I just added to it.” “So you’re involved in everything: Satmar, Breslov, Chabad.

Did you learn in Satmar yeshivah?”“No. In Nitra.” “What would you tell young people who want to develop their

artistic talents?”“That talent isn’t a contradiction to Yiddishkeit. Hashem doesn’t

give talent to a person for him to waste and suffer his whole life because he knows it’s unused. Developing a kid’s talent is tricky, because you’re worried that it’ll take time away from learning. But an older person who doesn’t share his talent for the bene-fit of others is a broken person. That’s someone who’s going to have difficulty with friends and with shalom bayis. I have a lot of friends who also wanted to develop their artistic talents but never had the guts like I did. Some people think it would mean giving up Yiddishkeit, that you have to cut off your beard and play goy-ishe music. But that’s narish; it’s just the opposite. Who says we

A Conversation in Meah Shearim

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have to play jazz at a Jewish wedding?”

Recognition“Where are you right now in your career in terms of recogni-

tion?”“A lot of people have started noticing me over the past year or

two. They’re suddenly excited about my work and buying my paintings.”

“Who represents you?”“The Betzalel Gallery, where there will soon be a solo exhibition

of my paintings. Its owner, Shmuel Pultman, is a real art lover. He encourages me a lot. An artist needs a gallery to represent him or else he can’t manage.

“Some people warned me that he wouldn’t accept my paintings. But when I first met him he said, ‘Wow! I get emails from at least 15 artists a week and I don’t take anyone. But you’re going to be one of the next great artists.’ When I saw that I had this freedom and that someone was pushing me, it helped me to develop.

“I’m still young and in the middle of growing. But in terms of skill, I feel that my art is starting to say something. I’ve heard this from a lot of artists who are older than me.

“My wife gets a lot of the credit. She was always very supportive and encouraged me to develop my talents. Not everyone has to be like everyone else. If not for her, I’d never have done it.”

“I know a lot of our readers will still find it surprising that some-one like you is a consummate artist.”

“I get a lot of reactions like that even in the non-Jewish world. People say, ‘You’re an artist?!’

“I try to bring out the beauty and geshmak of living a Yiddishe life and the Eibershter’s creation. I go out into the street and hear it screaming shirah to Hashem. I can see the beauty in a bent-over, wrinkled Yid at a chasunah and I want to pull over a chair and sit down next to him.”

“Is there such a thing as Jewish art?”“In Israel, they wanted to make an ‘Israeli’ style of painting. That

was in the days of Reuven Rubin. It feels very Eretz Yisraeldik. But I don’t think you have to follow all of their technical rules.”

“The artists who came from Russia and Europe to Israel were all painting in very dark tones and it didn’t work. They had to change to a much lighter and looser palette,” I say.

He nods his head in agreement. “I’ve heard from a lot of musi-cians that playing the violin in Eretz Yisrael feels totally different from playing in America or Europe.”

“The sun and the light change everything,” I say.“People cannot imagine how many colors there are in Meah

Shearim, in the ‘white’ stones! When you try to paint white on white it’s called high-key painting. But there are actually many colors that most people don’t notice.

“If a secular person views my paintings he can sense the Yiddish-keit. Even my teacher says that he’s inspired by my Meah Shearim paintings; it opens his heart more than any drashah.

“Just as Jewish music makes every Yid, even the most secular, feel Jewish,” he states emphatically, “so too can Jewish paintings elicit the same emotion.”