The Life and Art of Boris Aronson - Yiddish Book Center

streets, or other real-world locations. Instead, set designersthought like sculptors or architects, crafting three-dimensionalplaying spaces where the actors could move about onmultiple levels. They arranged abstract geometric shapesand masses to construct symbolic expressions of a play’semotional essence. In keeping with the philosophy of totaltheatricality, the set and costume designer for a Kamernyplay worked intimately with the director from the earliestplanning stages of a production. The look of the play wasnot a decorative add-on, but an integral part of the show’soverall concept.An affinity for nonrepresentational stage design, a preferencefor sets that did not confine the action to a singlelevelplaying area, and a vision of the designer as a fullfledgedcollaborator with the director – all these legacies ofhis Kamerny experience were to have a profound influenceon Aronson’s subsequent career.The Soviet Union’s hospitality to abstract and experimentalart did not last long. Socialist Realism soon becamethe nation’s official aesthetic doctrine, and Stalinist purgesdealt harshly with artists whose work was deemed bourgeois,decadent, or unsuitable for government-approvedpropaganda purposes. Aronson avoided the unhappy fateof many fellow artists by fleeing the country in 1922.He settled for a short time in Berlin, where he exhibitedhis paintings and published two books, one of which was astudy of Jewish graphic art. In his native country, Aronson,temporarily using the name “Baruch Aronson,” had beenaffiliated briefly with a group of Jewish artists who lookedto traditional shtetl folk art, such as primitive woodblockprinting, and to non-representational design motifs, suchas the decorative patterns on prayer shawls and skullcaps, askeys to an explicitly Jewish style of abstract art. Now, however,Aronson used his book to argue that there was nottruly any such thing as “Jewish art,” that a people so dispersedamong many nations could not lay claim to a signatureaesthetic tradition distinct from the art of the dominantcultures around them.The other book Aronson published during his residencein Germany was about fellow artist Marc Chagall, withwhom he had fo rmed an important friendship back inRussia. Chagall was a decade older than Aronson, but thetwo had a great deal in common. Both were deeply interestedin Russian Jewish folk art, and both had exercisedtheir talents not only as painters but also as Moscow theatricaldesigners. Years later, married and living in theUnited States, Aronson would name his son Marc.The modest financial su ccess of his two books madeit po s s i ble for Aron s on to set out ac ross the At l a n ticfor New York Ci ty in 1923, a metropolis that lived in hisi m a gi n a ti on as a rom a n tic cen ter of tech n o l ogical soph i sti c a-ti on and cultu ral vi t a l i ty, “a new worl d ,” as he conceived it,wh ere an artist would be able to work “on a l a r ger, f reers c a l e .”His decision to seek his first A merican work in theYiddish theatre was driven by practical considerations. Forthose first few years in New York, he simply didn’t haveenough English to read scripts and contracts, or even toconverse with actors and directors. Nor was he sufficientlysteeped in the look and feel of his adopted country to beconfident about his ability to express the American experiencein his designs. But, in the Yiddish theatres located inthe Bronx and on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Aronsonfound a community of fellow artists and European immigrantswho shared his familiarity with the avant-garde artinnovations that were still years away from gaining accepta n ce in the com m ercial mainstream of New York’sEnglish-language theatre industry. To Broadway producersand directors of the 1920s, the young Russian’s approach tostage design was, in the words of a writer for The Nation,“an exotic and transplanted thing” that was bound to limithis appeal, notwithstanding “Aronson’s technical proficiency,his intelligence, and his ingenuity.”It was not until 1932 that Broadw ay ’s imagi n a ti on caugh tup with the exo tic intell i gen ce of Boris Aron s on . He wash i red that year to de s i gn the va u devi ll e - s tyle musical revu eWalk a Little Fa s ter, the first of his many com m i s s i ons forthe musical stage . Over the next several dec ade s , Aron s onof ten found that mu s i c a l s , opera s , and ball et s , with thei ri n h erent dep a rtu res from the literal ren d i ti on of re a l i ty, weree s pec i a lly com p a ti ble with his theatrical vi s i on .Aron s on unders tood that a Broadw ay career would frequen t ly entail com promise on his part , that he would haveto come to terms with the need for re a l i s tic repre s en t a ti onin his de s i gns for certain shows . In many of the sets hede s i gn ed after leaving the Yiddish stage for the wi derworld of E n gl i s h - l a n g u a ge theatre , the lessons he hadl e a rn ed at the Ka m erny ex pre s s ed them s elves in su bt l eto u ches ra t h er than full - bl own abstracti on . For ex a m p l e ,even wh en de s i gning a pri m a ri ly re a l i s tic set , he of tens c u l pted the three - d i m en s i onal stage space by incorpora t-ing ramps and other devi ces that en a bl ed actors and directorsto invi gora te the play with acti on on more than on el evel . Because he con ti nu ed to work as a painter wh i l ep u rsuing his career in the theatre , he maintained a stron gs ense of the con n ecti on bet ween the physical re a l i ty ofco l or and the em o ti onal re a l i ties of a play wri gh t’s scri pt .8 S P R I N G 2 0 0 5