Tumarkin's Homage to the Pietà Rondanini Avigdor WG Posèq

assemblage is essentially different from that of its Renaissance prototype against
which he seems to react by using the modern techniques. The contrast is also
reflected in the meaning of Tumarkin’s work. Moved by the sublime pathos of
the Pietà Rondanini, Tumarkin associated himself with Michelangelo’s life-long
quest for parental love; but, as a secular Jew, he is deprived even of the Italian
master’s hope of finding it in death. Thus, rather than the yearned for other
worldly bliss, the Israel Museum assemblage epitomizes the misery of
estrangement of its author and his inner need to alleviate his disorientation by
relating his art to the sublime artistic tradition. However, his adaptation of the
Christological motif has a deeper meaning which goes beyond that of his
Renaissance model. While Michelangelo transformed a generic religious theme
into a personal allegory, the allusions to the traumatic experiences which
Tumarkin shared with the rest of his generation elevate his autobiographical
Pietà to the level of a transpersonal icon of the collective Jewish remembrance.
The assemblage shows also that the Jewish character of a work need not be
compromised by the reference to a non-Jewish iconographical motif, and that
the work of a modern Israeli artist may be intensely personal and universal at
the same time.
NOTES
This paper has been awarded the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion, in Jerusalem, Richard and Joan Scheuer Prize in Jewish Art and
Architecture for the academic year 1995-96.
1 The installation in 1987 of Tumarkin's work coincided with the Israel Museum
publication of an illustrated catalogue of several of his assemblages with
commentaries by M. Schneckenburger, art critic and director of the 8th Documenta
in Kassel, and Y. Zalmona, the Israel Museum curator for Israeli art, cf. Rails and
Pietà. A version of the present paper was delivered as a lecture on: “Ambivalent
Images of Son and Mother in Michelangelo and Tumarkin”, at the 17th Colloquium
of the Historical Society of Israel, Tel-Aviv, 1993.
2 Michelangelo produced at least three sculptural versions of this subject. The “Pietà
Rondanini” is named after one of the early owners of this statue, which is now in
the Castello Sforzesco in Milan; cf. Baldini, 142-147.
3 Zalmona is right about “the tridimensional bodily solidity of the Renaissance
sculpture” being replaced by what he calls “a two dimensional stage setting” but
his description of the son as “a Karageöz shadow puppet” unnecessarily obscures
the issue; Rails and Pietà.
4 On Tumarkin's relation to the Parisian avant garde and on his innovative sculptural
methods see: Tumarkin, 1970, 7-9. On his pioneering contribution to the new
sculptural realism: Rails and Pietà.
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