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Art: Elizabeth Ann James, Columnist
April 2006

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Gallery V Presents One-Man Show
Works documents the extraordinary 60-year career of printmaker Sidney Chafetz

The First Spring Day on Campus, by Sidney Chafetz

Gallery V will present a one-man show by internationally acclaimed printmaker Sidney Chafetz through April 29, 2006. A Chafetz exhibit recently closed at the Columbus Museum of Art, and now, thanks to the curatorial skills of Lynne Muskoff, Chafetz’s work will be visible in the Short North.

Introducting Sid
Sidney Chafetz, printmaker, teacher and artist, is a man with deep interests in literature, history, art, and, yes, politics. Famous for his woodcuts, intaglios, dry points and lithography, he is often considered the greatest living woodcut, or woodblock, artist.

The artist admires legendary Francisco Goya’s boldness and agility in recording events – grotesque, barbaric, or humorous. Chafetz’s own work is often grotesque, barbaric and humorous, as well as sensitive and warm. Like Goya (1746-1828), Sid Chafetz is always in touch with actual events and trends.

Chafetz’s prints tend to be medium-sized to large. And, no matter how timely, his subjects exude a “retro” ambiance that reflects the printmaking tradition. The print paper is usually of substantial weight and is not shiny white. Choosing specific paper for specific projects is an extraordinarily important task that remains a mystery to me. Indeed, much of printmaking technology is mysterious, but I’ll do my best.

At this writing the Gallery V exhibit had not been hung. The artist, vacationing in his Colorado home, was due to return mid-March when he and Lynne Muskoff would stand in the long Gallery V space and make the final selections.

Several selections had already been made, however, and I will try to describe them, if briefly.

The First Day on Campus
The First Spring Day On Campus is a riot. It’s probably one of the most “scandalous” Chafetz prints, one of his many satirical O.S.U. tableaus. This color woodcut harks back to rollicking nymphs and rampaging gods. It’s a black, tan, and white “painting,” and the scene d’action is the OSU campus, likely the Oval. There, behold, the sharp-beaked professor, black robed and inebriated (at least with spring), is flying, arms outstretched toward a red frisbee, the only bright spot in the painting. A scruffy black dog has joined the chase, and a hefty high-heeled goddess in bikini also gives chase. Other versions of this painting are subtitled Primavera, Spring, and Last Tango in Columbus. Does this guy have a sense of humor or what?

The painting is a romp, an irreverent commentary. During his 40-year career as a dedicated artist/professor, Chafetz often lampooned academe. Yet, he remained conscientious and loyal toward the university; and he and the powers-that-be respected each other.

Contemplation
Contemplation is a two-plate color, soft ground etching, 12 x 8 inches. The subject, shown from the waist up, wears a red orange herringbone jacket and manages to hold a cigarette and his own grinning egg head in one white hand! The toothy mouth and the eyes are as red as the jacket. The egg’s face resembles a certain irascible artist, initials, S.C. – and we don’t mean Santa Claus. This is a startling print, one guaranteed to stimulate “contemplation.”

Corporate Image
We recognize the sharp white handkerchief in Corporate Image’s pocket. Corporate Image repeats Chafetz’s color motif of red, black and brown, and the use of geometric shapes.

Corporate Image is a color woodcut, yet he’s not a square. Although he stands before black-and-red rectangles, he is round and spotted, like a Mr. Potato Head wearing a curvy black suit. The pocks, shapes, scratches, dabs and shapes on Image’s head and hands exemplify the medium of block printing. They are the artist’s “brushwork,” they allow the painter to be “painterly, textural.” White dabs and cylinders glow strategically in the lower half of the painting which honors “round” and “square.”

Freud, by Sid Chafetz

Freud and Ben Gurion
A medium-sized portrait of Sigmund Freud, and a similar-sized portrait of Israel’s founder David Ben Gurion will be included in the Gallery V exhibit.

Freud and Ben Gurion represent profound influences on Chafetz’s worldview, and he has drawn and carved their likenesses more than once. Ben Gurion’s face is not cartoonlike but a gentle and profound portrait, a wood painting so to speak, and one of a quartet. Dr. Freud is wearing a suit; he gazes beneficently beyond the viewer. The legendary cigar in his hand is really a – (?) We’ll call JungHaus for the answer to that question

Chafetz
In 1987, a hale and hearty Sid “painted” his own self portrait, a profile facing right in a color lithograph, 22 x 15 inches, printed in red-orange, green, light gray and dark gray. In it the artist, born in 1922, is glowing with health and wears his characteristic grin and square-frame eyeglasses. His white shirt gleams, so do his teeth, his eyes, and his haircut. He casts a black shadow on the many-imaged wall behind him. There, Mickey Mouse, a Sid icon, grins near Chafetz’s forehead; below that a triple decker hamburger, and below that a favorite Sid-motif, the grinning ape. In Chafetz prints there are many pet apes, many wearing Mickey Mouse or Uncle Sam hats. In Communication, an amiable Uncle Sam-hatted ape asks us to read “A country that expects to be ignorant & free, expects what never has been nor will be. – Tom Jefferson.”

Robert Tauber on Sid Chafetz
Robert Tauber is a long-time colleague of Sidney Chafetz. Tauber co-founded, directs, prints, publishes, and teaches at the newly reorganized Logan Elm Press at the Ohio State University. Logan Elm recently published Chafetz’s beautiful 18th Century Poets. In 1989, Logan Elm, with Tauber and Chafetz collaborating, published The Perpetrators, a series of portraits depicting the diabolic perpetrators of the Holocaust: “scientists, doctors, educators, who not only perpetrated the Holocaust but planned it in detail.”

Tauber is Sidney Chafetz’s colleague but was also once his student. It was Tauber who reminded me several times of Chafetz’s worldwide reputation and that the Columbus Museum of Art owns at least one print of each existing Chafetz print.

Describing Chafetz as an “avid reader” and a “true Renaissance man,” Tauber also describes Chafetz as a humorist, a kindly teacher and a marvelous adept. “He draws, yes, I mean he draws, that is, carves directly on the block; I’ve never seen anything like it. Sometimes there’s nothing left of the block – it disappears!”

Tauber enjoys Chafetz’s zany wit. In 1979, Chafetz wrote and illustrated, and Tauber printed The True History of the Invention of Printing in China. In this accordian book the heroes, Wu-Cut and Pren-Ting, cut letters into wooden planks for the Temple signs, and by accident spill ink on the wood. When they blot up the spilled ink, printing is born. Their cousins, Pee-Arr and Tee-Vee, help them spread their new invention, which just goes to show that if you go to the Temple every day, something good might happen. And, sometimes: Just go blotto!

Sid’s Life
After serving in World War II, 1942 -1945, Sidney Chafetz went not only to Rhode Island School of Design where he graduated in 1947, but to the famous L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Fountainebleau in France. He has been a Fulbright Fellow in Paris, a Senior Fulbright lecturer, and a Ford Foundation Enrichment grantee. He began to teach at the Ohio State University in 1948, became Professor Emeritus in 1988, and has remained active ever since.

Reflections by Marjorie Bender
Printmaker, sculptor Marjorie Bender, whose work was recently shown at the Ohio Dominican College Wehrle Art Gallery, recalls her experience as a student under Chafetz:

“Sid encouraged all of us. I was rebellious and troubled and he was kind, not authoritarian, never got in your face. He taught us craft, but he thought we should follow our own visions.

“He had a small office – and studio too, very cluttered. Always crowded with students and laughter. Once I got printers ink on some fabric and he didn’t act mad about that. For years his grad students sent out a newsletter called The Recidivist, with news about Sid and the gang. JoAnne Holtrey and Dotte Lipetz, to name two.

“And because of him, important printmaking artists came from France to talk to his classes.... Sid served in World War II; I mean he was on the ground, in England, France, Belgium, Germany. He cares about people. He’s socially responsible, concerned about events. He’s part of that Greatest Generation.”

Gallery V, directed by Lynne Muskoff, is lcoated at 694 N. High St. in the Short North. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 am to 5 pm. Call 614-228-8955 or visit www.galleryv.com

Editor's Note: On May 31, 2006, Gallery V closed its doors after 13 years, in part due to the owner's frustration with the influx of restaurants and entertainment in the district taking precious parking spots from potential customers. Gallery V was the second-oldest for-profit gallery in Columbus at the time.

© 2006 Short North Gazette, Columbus, Ohio. All rights reserved.