- 186
R. B. Kitaj
Description
- R. B. Kitaj
- Dreyfus (after Méliès)
- signed, titled and dated 1996-2000 on the overlap
- oil on canvas
- 91 by 91.2cm.; 35 3/4 by 35 3/4 in.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2000
Exhibited
Monaco, Marlborough Monaco, Group Show, 2008
Berlin, Jüdisches Museum; London, The Jewish Museum; Chichester, Pallant House; and Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Obsessions : R.B. Kitaj 1932-2007, 2012-13, p. 213, illustrated in colour
Literature
Condition
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Catalogue Note
In 1994, a landmark retrospective of Kitaj’s work had been planned for the Tate Gallery, London. Fascinated by outsider practices such as Jewish intellectualism, and with a deep-rooted interest in the literature of Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka and T.S Eliot amongst others, it was suggested that Kitaj should demonstrate some of this erudition with extended captions accompanying each work in the exhibition. What was meant to be a celebration of the artist’s lifelong achievements, however, rapidly denigrated into critical scandal and what the artist felt was a witch-hunt. Many critics were outraged by what they perceived as Kitaj’s pretences to intellectualism and queued up to destroy Kitaj’s claims in the national press, which grew in ferocity each day. Dividing opinion in much the same way the Dreyfus affair did, on the other side of this so called ‘Tate War’ were Kitaj and his fellow London painters Lucian Freud, David Hockney and Leon Kossoff who rallied in support for their fellow artist. Tragically, two weeks after the show opened Kitaj’s beloved wife and muse, Sandra Fisher, passed away – an event Kitaj wholly blamed on the shock of the utter public humiliation that the exhibition caused. The outcome of this tragedy was Kitaj’s self-inflicted exile to Los Angeles, where he cultivated his obsessive, anguished dislike for British critics.
Describing how the critical reception made him feel, Kitaj expands: “a hundred years ago, Oscar Wilde, Whistler and Dreyfus were attacked and savaged by hatred for the outsider, the foreigner, the Jew. All three fought back against enemies who savaged them in unjust warfare. And they fought back against the odds, against a cowardly press and it’s dogs of war… These little wars were like antechambers to a miserable century in which far more real wars would murder many millions of outsiders, foreigners and Jews. More often than not, Jews were all three objects of hate at once, as I was in the fateful summer of 1994 when my Tate War opened to friends and enemies by the River Thames” (R. B. Kitaj quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin, Jüdisches Museum (and travelling), Obsessions : R.B. Kitaj 1932-2007, 2012-13, p. 213).
Dreyfus (after Méliès) is the perfect culmination of these fears, depicting as it does the scene of Dreyfus imprisoned on Devil’s Island in George Méliès’ 1899 sequential film of the scandal. However, in Kitaj’s rendition he has cast himself as the despondent and accused Dreyfus who recieves a letter from his wife. By aligning himself with Dreyfus, Kitaj reflects just how unjustly persecuted he was made to feel at this time. In this work, as in many of his later pieces, Kitaj renders himself with a long white beard in terse, scumbled brushstrokes and with lines of sorrow and longing etched on his face. Owing to their extraordinary facture, painterly mastery and heartfelt subject-matter, these later paintings, of which Dreyfus (after Méliès) is a thrilling example, have rightly maintained Kitaj’s status as a stalwart of British art.