PASSOVER 5774 EDITION SECTION C PAGE 10
For the IJN Passover Edition, Chris Leppek reviews three new books: Thicker Than Paint, The Story of the Jews and The Legend of Red Klotz.
Thicker Than Paint
Many in Denver, especially members of this city’s arts and Jewish communites, knew Sandra Wittow as an artist of significant skill and unique vision.
She exhibited in many venues, including many times in the Denver Art Museum, and although she never attained the status she aspired to — and probably deserved — earned a reputation as an artist fully capable of expressing her vision.
Thicker Than Paint, part coffee table art book and part autobiography, tells and shows a great deal about and by the artist who passed away in 2011.
This family-commissioned project, large in size and opulent in production, is a fitting memorial to the artist whose writing and paintings fill its pages.
Proficient as a writer, Wittow tells the story of her life in clear and controlled prose. She was as upfront and open in her writing as she was metaphorical and symbolic in her painting, sparing the reader no details of a life that was often difficult, sometimes tragic and always creative.
We learn from the author of her childhood on Denver’s West Side, her romances and marriage, her many arduous health battles, her concepts of art and literature, even of her family disputes.
Much of this is fascinating to read; some of it is almost embarrassing, giving the reader the unpleasant sensation of peering through the author’s deliberately un-curtained window, so seemingly private are many of Wittow’s revelations.
While one might question the author’s being so forthcoming, her directness and courage in doing so are remarkably resolute, leading to the conclusion that such openness was essential to her, both as an artist and as a person. That must be respected.
Wittow’s paintings, dozens of which are reproduced in full color, are the main draw. Bold and colorful, they display Wittow’s uncommon technical skills and her thought-provoking, often enigmatic, artistic aspirations.
She called herself a traditional realist — and her work honors that school’s admiration for beauty and message — and disavows surrealism, but admits to having been deeply influenced by it.
Indeed, Wittow’s realism is primarily that of the representational execution at which she excelled. Her imagery often leans strongly toward the surreal.
A fascinating menagerie of human figures, animals, plants, symbols and assorted other ephemera populate Wittow’s often dreamlike images. Most of them are recognizable, as the artist appears to have not wanted to be so mysterious as to obscure her own meanings.
Viewers of her art will find such disparate characters as Anne Frank, Darth Vader, Jesus, Wonder Woman, Rasputin, Wittow herself — even Denver’s Rabbi Manuel Laderman — in her paintings.
Flowers proliferate, as do angels, feathers, candlesticks, keys, seashells, lightning bolts and magical bubbles.
Her paintings obviously convey messages but they’re never so cerebral as to be dull. Wittow obviously loved vivid color, dramatic skies and striking compositions. The paintings are consistently fascinating and fun.
One may chose to read or ignore Wittow’s often painful autobiography. That might depend on whether the reader knew her personally.
But everyone with a love of art should approach this book for the treasure chest of paintings it contains. They are well worth the look.
The Legend of the Red Klotz
A great many people have seen the Harlem Globetrotters, the basketball show team that has delighted audiences across the world for decades, and have remembered their whiz-bang antics, part athletic excellence, part circus act, part Vegas comedy routine.
Just as many people have seen the Washington Generals, the seemingly hapless team that unfailingly serves as opponents (and fall guys) for the Globetrotters but — not surprisingly — not very many have remembered them.
The Generals never, but never, win.
They occupy a rare place in the sports pantheon — a team whose primary function is to lose and to make their opponents look good. This function is vital for the Globetrotter act to come off as spectacularly as it routinely does, but hardly draws attention to the players who serve as their straight men.
The Legend of Red Klotz by New Jersey sportswriter Tim Kelly has finally pointed the spotlight in the Generals’ direction, focusing on the team’s longtime player, manager and owner.
Klotz, now 93, was a Jewish kid from South Philadelphia who, despite his modest height of five feet, seven inches, started shooting hoops when just a little kid.
Known for a two-handed set shot of uncanny accuracy, Klotz was good from the beginning, experiencing considerable success in neighborhood, high school, college and minor league basketball before becoming a pro with the old Baltimore Bullets, helping win their league’s championship in 1948.
He joined the basketball barnstorming circuit in the 1950s, just as the Globetrotters were gaining serious attention at home and abroad. He founded the Generals, one of several similar teams organized to face off against the Trotters as they toured. In time, the Generals grew into more or less their permanent opponent
Klotz thus embarked on a decades-long career as a professional loser, traveling to more than 100 countries and playing with or against such basketball legends as Wilt Chamberlain, George Mikan and Connie Hawkins. Klotz and the Generals managed to lose more than 14,000 games to the Globetrotters.
Despite that amazing fact, this book is not an account of a player or a team that considered themselves losers — far from it.
This entertaining biography portrays Klotz as a fascinating and intelligent individual totally at peace with his professional place, a man seemingly incapable of seeing the glass empty or half full.
The Generals always played excellent ball, Klotz contends, making sure that the Globetrotters were forced to put on their best performance in every game. Although noticed far less than their flamboyant opponents, the team was consistently solid in their play — they had to be if they wanted to keep the games close, which was expected.
Klotz is also aware of his team’s role in helping bring basketball to the huge international audience it enjoys today, and in integrating the sport. The Generals were always a multi-racial team while the Trotters have always been exclusively African American. Their thousands of games proved how skilled Black players could be in an era when the doors of professional basketball were largely closed to them.
Proud not only of the consistency and amazing duration of his professional career but of a marriage that matched those attributes, Klotz comes across as an eminently likable and fascinating guy.
Written by an author who obviously knows his way around the sport, The Legend of Red Cross is a fun and breezy read, full of touching insights, humor and surprises.
For example — and be warned of a plot spoiler here — the belief that the Washington Generals never win is an urban legend: In a 1971 face-off against the Globetrotters, with three seconds left, Red Klotz put up one of his uncommonly accurate set shots. It went through the basket. The Generals won.
The Story of the Jews
A comprehensive textual history of the Jewish people would obviously take far more than the 96 pages that comprise this book, but this is not the book’s intent.
The Story of the Jews is fully intended to be a visual history of the Jewish people and it excels brilliantly. This is one of those rare books that can honestly be described as beautiful, so lavish is its wealth of illustrations, so intelligent and aesthetic its design, so thoughtful its extra features.
“Extra features” pertains to the 15 facsimile documents that are included in bound envelopes tucked into the large format book, riffing on the proliferation of such bonus inclusions in recent popular books.
Beautifully reproduced from the originals, these documents allow readers to hold and behold a page from the oldest illustrated Biblical codex, a 12th-century Maimonides responsa, pages from the Venice Haggadah, a 1617 Dutch ketubah, an excerpt from Theodor Herzl’s diary and much more.
These are a visual and tactile delight, providing tangible substance to epochal moments in Jewish history.
The rest of the book is no less striking in its visual impact. Ranging from the origins of the Jews to modern times, including the Holocaust, The Story of the Jews is replete with paintings, woodcuts, sacred documents, photographs and archaeological art, masterfully reproduced and thematically well chosen.
Goldberg’s text is a masterpiece of concision, racing as it does through several millennia of complex history and forced as it is to share space on virtually every page with sumptuous illustrations. He does a yeoman’s job, in the process providing a foundational primer for those starting their foray into Jewish history.
This book would be the perfect companion, for Jew or Gentile alike, on a cold or rainy afternoon, a welcome addition to the family bookshelf.
And it’s a steal at 50 bucks.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
