Notes On Michael Somoroff’s Images by Donald Kuspit

 

 

By DONALD KUSPIT October 14, 2025

Michael Somoroff is a religious artist, a Jewish artist, like Mark Rothko, as Somoroff’s Illumination I, 2006, put in on the Rothko Chapel, makes indisputably clear.  “Only abstract art can bring us to the threshold of the divine,” Rothko declared.  But to be on the threshold of the divine is to not cross it:  Rothko’s God stays the deus absconditus, “the God who hides himself,” as Isaiah 45:15 says, main would-be believers to doubt his existence.  If he by no means manifests himself, besides in such quirky miracles because the burning bush, he should be not more than a quirk of nature, like a will o’ the wisp, understood as an omen of loss of life, for it’s the soul of a lifeless human being.  If he’s all the time extra absent than current, he can’t be counted on to come back to 1’s rescue when one wants him.  God actually didn’t come to Rothko’s rescue, however left him in emotional hell, deserted him to masochistic struggling—the self-doubt implicit in and symbolized by the Rothko Chapel work.  They epitomize what Kierkegaard known as the illness unto loss of life that’s melancholy.  They had been the stepping stones to Rothko’s suicide, the ultimate expression of his sense of the futility of life—and artwork.  Their bleakness signifies that Rothko misplaced all hope, together with the hope implicit in creativity, which provides presence to being.  Rothko was a Jew who struggled to imagine in God—the Holocaust exhibits that He let the Jews down, to say the least, and was not definitely worth the hassle of worshipping—however was not ready to take action unequivocally:  the gloomy—morbid–paintings of the Rothko Chapel convey his lack of religion, his self defeating disillusionment with religion–except, maybe, the faith of artwork that Jacques Barzun stated was born with 19^th century romanticism.  Dare one say that Rothko’s suicide signifies his identification with God, who dedicated suicide at Auschwitz?    

And Rothko is a romantic, if to determine with God is romanticism ne plus extremely—the primary verse of the Old Testament declares God to be the primary artistic artist, for He created the cosmos, and, considerably for the self-importance of the artist, made man in His picture and with that gave him God’s artistic energy—and if, as Baudelaire stated, black is probably the most romantically mysterious of colours, as Matisse additionally thought.  Baudelaire additionally thought black—the absence of coloration that was paradoxically the profoundest color–was probably the most aristocratic of colours, for it was worn by probably the most modern males of his time:  it was not solely romantically mysterious, however higher class (as God little question was; thus the divine proper of kings).  Early within the 20^th century the faith—worship—of artwork turned de rigueur with non-objective artwork:  artwork rid itself of “the external,” as Kandinsky wrote, and with it the determine.  In Absence of Subject Somoroff eliminates the determine from each final considered one of August Sander’s images of People of the 20^th Century, leaving us solely with the context during which they seem, its objects now peculiarly remodeled into simulations, the entire work now unexpectedly “mystical,” to allude to Kandinsky’s thought of the paranormal content material of artwork.  A tour de pressure of what Jose Ortega y Gassett known as the dehumanization of artwork in modernity, it additionally exemplifies the skepticism of goal reality and common data typical of ironical postmodernism.  There is an ironical nihilism in Absence of Subject, on a par with the apocalyptic nihilism of the Rothko Chapel work.  If the duty of images is to convey presence, Somoroff’s Illumination I and Absence of Subject exhibits him obsessive about absence.   

Rothko dedicated suicide in 1970, when Somoroff was 13, the yr he got here into his personal as a Jew and have become a person, for he was bar mitzvahed, which confirmed his religious superiority to and energy over girl, orthodox Jewish males giving morning due to God for the truth that they weren’t born feminine.  Duchamp, a extra avant-garde and cynical—actually not spiritual–artist (some would say devilish anti-artist) than Rothko, was mockingly idolized in Somoroff’s perverse therapy of Duchamp’s portray Nude Descending A Staircase, 1912, considered one of his many misogynist works.  Mockingly became a gradual movement summary movie indebted to Eadweard Muybridge’s sequence of automated electro-photographs of a horse in cinematic movement, Duchamp’s robotic nude jerkily descends the staircase in masturbatory movement into summary orgasmic oblivion in Somoroff’s work.  It is one other masturbatory use and ironic abuse of the item, lastly cancelling it; Duchamp’s nude slowly however inevitably loses human presence, turning into an summary cipher, to not say an ironic simulation, vacuous on the core—an empty presence, to not say a hole girl.  Somoroff was clearly not impressed by Rothko’s grandiose abstraction nor Duchamp’s abusive cynical wit.  His subtly derogatory therapy of them was a final hurrah to modernism—a ultimate working of it by way of to clear the best way for his humanist images.  Somoroff will not be one other stylish “experimental” modernist, making the aesthetic greatest of contemporary alienation and anomie, however a neo-humanist figurative artist.  Somoroff didn’t have to be and wasn’t impressed by Rothko or Duchamp to come back into his personal as an artist—an unique photographer.  They weren’t the daddy figures of his insightful images, however his organic father, Ben Somoroff, whose works had been exhibited on the Museum of Modern Art, was his religious father—one of many many unique insightful photographers who had been his  guides to the mysteries and complexities of images.  They had been his position “models” as his refined portraits of—homages to–them clarify.  However completely different, each Rothko and Duchamp are implicitly nihilistic—apocalyptically announce the loss of life of humanistic artwork, and with it the noble determine, noble as a result of it’s of sound thoughts and physique.  Somoroff restores the determine—the person person–to stylistic credibility by giving it photographic freshness, aesthetic immediacy, and emotional which means—certainly, existential depth–giving the nice custom of humanistic artwork a recent photographic re-start and emotional subtlety. 

Somoroff’s mom was a well-known mannequin, who glamorously appeared on the quilt of the April 14, 1952 concern of Life Magazine.  She is certainly vigorous, radiantly stunning, and implicitly a femme fatale, as her phallic sneakers, crowning her blossoming costume, suggests.  She has nice presence, emotional and bodily, conveying what Ashley Montagu known as the pure superiority of girl.  She symbolizes what Goethe known as the everlasting female. Full bodied, Somoroff’s mom is altogether not like—irreconcilably antithetical with–his German spouse, a skinny, small former ballet dance whom he just lately divorced.  Somoroff’s stunning, wonderful mom, vigorous, symbolizes what Goethe known as “the eternal feminine that drives us on,” whereas Somoroff’s spouse looks as if a “mouse,” a German time period of endearment.  A toddler of divorced dad and mom usually identifies with considered one of them, normally for emotional causes, but in addition for cognitive causes.  Somoroff clearly recognized together with his father, as the truth that he turned his father’s studio assistant signifies.  In the studio he realized the ropes of the images occupation, turning into a grasp photographer, like the various good, well-known photographers he met by way of his father, and whom he celebrated—idealized, to not say idolized—in a critical of refined photographic portraits, every an aesthetic masterpiece  in addition to an insightful and empathic research of the grasp, an all however worshipful homage to them in gratitude for them.  Concentrated in themselves, all of them have outstanding presence, the calm and fullness of being that comes with artistic confidence, conviction, and success, together with the respect and admiration of 1’s friends that comes with artistic success and recognition of 1’s originality, in addition to the long run technology of photographers, symbolized by Somoroff.  Somoroff projectively recognized together with his mentors, idealized them within the act of internalizing them by respectfully photographing them, with a delicate tenderness and gratitude for his or her existence and artwork.  They had been masters of nuance, aesthetic and emotional; I don’t know of any comparable tribute to—unequivocal respect for–a grasp by his disciple.  The artwork historian Max Friedlander stated {that a} portrait is convincing—solely works—if and when the portraitist identifies with the portrayed, unconsciously, one might add, in addition to, within the case of one other artist, out of aware respect for his artistic achievements, and with that for his particular person—his genius.  Somoroff’s portraits are hero worship; he was lucky to have had heroes to worship, many father figures whom he might admire and from whom he might study.  Somoroff’s sense of gratitude appears uncommon to me.  It appears clear, from the proof of their portraits, that they took Somoroff beneath their wing, and handled him as an equal, which is the explanation Somoroff’s portraits of his mentors have the plenitude of presence and expressive nuance that Rothko’s miserabilist abstractions lack, to allude to Breton’s assault on the miserabilism that was self-evident to him in trendy life and trendy artwork.  Somoroff’s portraits of his mentors are masterpieces of psychological perception and attunement, all of the extra so as a result of they invite empathic recognition of them and with that acknowledgement that images could be a effective artwork, as Somoroff exhibits it’s, not merely a journalistic report of occasions and other people. WM

 

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