Historical Truth vs Artistic License

What do you do when you have completed a painting to your satisfaction, that very elusive goal, only to learn some fact that compels you to change it? Now this is different than when you want to make a change because it will create a more visually compelling image. At this point you are pleased with what you have. Change could alter the very things that satisfy you. When does historical accuracy trump artistic license?

When you paint story, you often encounter historical truths. In two cases I've had the benefit of an actual witness share a detail where I felt I needed to incorporate it, always with some trepidation. I had shared a painting on these pages called Body and Soul of the old Brochin's store and its founder Solomon Brochin. Brochins began in 1906 as a Jewish grocery/deli/community center, an early institution in the Jewish community. Brochin's 98 year old daughter came to my studio during a recent open studio event and I was pleased to hear she felt it looked like him. I had drawn his image

largely from a faded and grainy photo from 1924 crossed with the image of him as an older man in his obituary photo. I had little certainty as to whether I had captured him. She added one salient fact. Her father always wore a yarmulke in the store. Now I had read this in the archives as well and left the suggestion of darkness at the top of his head, perhaps to be perceived as a yarmulke, perhaps shadow. But the new detail I learned was that it was a square yarmulke that one often sees on Jewish men from Russia. When she told me that I excitedly grabbed a small collage I had done of my great grandfather from the Ukraine. In it he wears the same kind of hat. "Yes, that is it" she confirmed. Now she may be the only person who actually still holds that visual memory, but for some reason I felt compelled to render him accurately.

The second detail I needed to correct is in the painting They Walked Together. This is the painting I have done for the Artists' Lab which draws on the story of Abraham's proposed sacrifice of Isaac with a more contemporary twist. It tells my friend Dora's story of a death march from Auschwitz which shares many components of the original story. I had decided the painting called for a poem to link the two stories when I displayed it. Dora and I sat together on her sofa as I quizzed her. What was the time of day? How long had you walked? Where did you sleep? What was the weather? All details I wanted to be able to incorporate into a poem that tells the story.

Dora had actually been on two death marches, one to Auschwitz in August 1944 and one from it in January 1945. This story occurred during the later when it was winter and snow was on the ground, not the time I had envisioned nor painted. Now Dora can't critique the painting as I develop it as she is legally blind. When I described the colors to her she felt it important that I show the snow. What to do? The ground has a greenish cast layered with the deep blue shadows of dusk and the richness of the color and its contrast with the iron oxide pleased me. I ended up doing a wash of blue over the green areas and used medium to suggest the snow. Now I need to live with the change for awhile.

Body and Soul

When I began the paintings for the Jewish Identity and Legacy series, I decided story would be my focus and I would only do portraits if they related to the story. Now as I near the end of the series I realize that most of my paintings are figurative, but not always of my interviewees as they are today. In some cases the image may reflect what I imagined the interviewee looked like at an earlier age. In two instances I painted the parent of the person I interviewed because they played such a significant role in their stories.

One of those paintings was Fire, Light and Legacy, the story of Fannie Schanfield’s mother burning the papers of her legacy. The other was Body and Soul, based on the stories of Dorothy Brochin Wittcoff. I've written a bit of my interview with Dorothy in an earlier post titled Citizens of the World. Brochin’s was an early Jewish grocery/delicatessen in Minneapolis started by Dorothy’s father Solomon Brochin after he immigrated from Russia in 1906. The store was unusual in that one side was a grocery, but the other side had religious articles such as talleisem (prayer shawls), Hebrew books and Yiddish newspapers. It served as the Jewish community center with a back room where people would gather for community meetings and to discuss the issues of the day. The famous Jewish figures who came to town all visited Brochins. Dorothy recalled meeting Chaim Weitzman and Louis Brandeis at the store.

Brochins also played an important role in the story of Jewish immigration to Minneapolis. For several years around the time of WWI, Brochin had a relationship with a Russian bank through which he assisted his neighbors in purchasing steamship tickets to bring over their families.

As I was doing research in the archives I began to search for material that would be relevant to my painting. In 1924 there was a faded image of Solomon Brochin and a profile which gave a flavor for the man. Together with his obituary photo, I began to develop the image as he may have looked in his prime. Solomon talked of how one side of his store fed people’s stomachs, the other their minds, so the title became Body and Soul, both subjects for nourishment.

I also found the store’s early logo which advertised itself as offering a delicatessen, Hebrew books

and steamship tickets. Putting on my genealogist hat, I located the immigration record and city directory listings for the Brochins and traced their journey to Minneapolis and within it. Brochin brought capital with him and after a brief stint at salaried work, he opened his delicatessen/grocery.

He and his wife Anna had seven children between 1907 and 1921. Each of the children was given a Hebrew name, but when they attended school their first grade teacher gave them an American name. Dvora became Dorothy, but sometimes the names were a bit of a stretch. Her brother Sher Yashub became Joe.

So how was I to take this wealth of information and capture it with a painting? I began with a man holding a Yiddish newspaper, his features modeled on her father, Solomon Brochin. To one side there is a barrel of herring and boxes of matzo. Behind him hang talleisem. There is a suggestion of figures gathering and the logo in the upper left. The Hebrew names of the children are written at the bottom and the Americanized names written across the top. The white of the paper is the focal point. Your eye is then drawn to the face framed by tallesiem and then over to the white of the barrel of herring, a triangle between the figure and the nourishment for body and soul.