REVIEW: "The Paternal Suit," an exhibit by F. Scott Hess at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art

August 31, 2012

BY ADAM PARKER

The Post and Courier

Possibly it was his father, Eugene Nolan Jr., missing from his life for decades, then found with an inadequate ancestral memory, who punched the hole that artist F. Scott Hess would struggle to fill in myriad ways over time — until obsessions with genealogy and history combined to provide Hess with a solution.

He’s always been a storyteller of sorts, he said. Known primarily as a realist painter, his pictures include built-in narratives. He’s tried his hand at fiction writing, too. But Hess found his voice in 2005, when he established the F. Scott Hess Family Foundation and initiated his hunt for family artifacts in earnest.

With a family tree that extends far back to the 1634 settlement of Dorchester Bay in what would become Massachusetts, Hess has spent the last seven years finding and collecting objects, documents, photographs and stories in a tenacious effort to construct a historical narrative that may or may not be accurate.

But this is art, and accuracy isn’t the point.

“The Paternal Suit: Heirlooms from the F. Scott Hess Family Foundation” is a sweeping and mesmerizing exhibit at the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art that runs through Oct. 6. Entering the galleries of the Halsey is akin to stepping into a weird time machine that propels you into the 17^th century, then pull you back along a topsy-turvy incline to the present — from Puritan settlers to Iranian royalty, from witch trials to a portrait of the artist as a young man.

It works on the spectator like theater, its characters sharing their experiences, armed with useful props, contributing loudly to a complex dialogue that seems to tell a fundamental story of America.

“The Paternal Suit is swollen by myth and impossible to wear,” states the epigraph of the excellent catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. The book is a helpful companion to the show, providing the narrative accompaniment, though wall-mounted placards also describe the Hess history to spectators who take the time to read them.

That history begins, more or less, with the Osgood, Fowler and Lord families arriving on the Mary & John and settling in Ipswich. Land grants, Hess contends, brought Thomas Osgood and his wife Susanna Lord to South Carolina where, thanks to slavery, they grew rice and grew rich in Dorchester, on the banks of the Ashley River.

The history winds its way through the north- and southeast, illustrated by the most ingenious and strange objects Hess has collected (or perhaps manufactured and painted), including a large wooden hand with wagging finger mounted at the end of a long pole; a “learnin’ machine” or cage in which young, undisciplined students were tied so they might focus better on the lesson; a set of dueling pistols and faux shot; marionettes of Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Alfred Iverson; a hand-painted secessionist bullhorn replete with teeth in the bell, and much more.

It’s almost as if Hess has organized a giant artistic con game, except that some of the history seems plausible and, in any case, there’s a certain humorous truth about it all. There were political fights and injurious duels and corporal punishment in school and awful civil war battles in real life, after all.

Hess might take his liberties — he is an artist — but the story he tells, a sweeping story that relates the contributions of extraordinary people (who may or may not have actually done these things, or even existed), is nevertheless one that might be deemed foundational.

The hand of Halsey Director Mark Sloan, who curated the show and edited the catalogue, is evident, for Hess’ oddball romp is just the sort of strange and wonderful artistic adventure that Sloan loves to discover and promote.

The Halsey has become adept at organizing multi-faceted exhibitions that flatter the eye and challenge the mind. Included usually is some sort of film, a beautiful book, special events and the presence of the artist. In this case, Hess was on hand Aug. 25 to give a tour of the show and deliver his historical monologue.

Some of those depicted in the latter part of his history were present, including his Iranian wife and two daughters, his mother and step-father.

A word on the paintings, which are applied to copper, ceramic, linen and canvas. Speaking in purely aesthetic terms, they are technically impeccable, full of vitality and beautifully composed. Some are attributed to Naomi Washington, a black servant; an illustrated ceramic pen holder is ostensibly the work of Fergus Watson; several framed canvases are by a Calvin Lemuel Hoole; and several more are by Hess himself.

“Hoole’s masterpiece” is a stunning, vigorous, hyper-realist depiction of a Revolutionary War battle, sort of a cross between Pieter Breugel and Eugene Delacroix. The pastoral “Swallow Bluff” by Hoole might have been painted by Winslow Homer.

A certain artistic seriousness permeates these paintings, despite the playful context in which they are presented, and they indicate that Hess is an artist capable of work that can hold its own just fine without a grand quasi-artificial construct propping it up.

A particularly striking, expressionistic picture by the real F. Scott Hess, called “Noah Forgotten” (1995), inspired by Giovanni Bellini’s “The Drunkenness of Noah,” does just that. The spectator is given a bird’s-eye view of four figures (the Hess family) outdoors illuminated by an afternoon sun. The man, nearly naked, lies on his back cushioned by green foliage. The robed woman peels a hard-boiled egg. The older daughter blows into a funnel as if it were a horn and looks sanguinely at the viewer. The baby sits behind its mother, glancing upward. Tools are scatters on a cloth nearby.

What to make of this image? Perhaps it is the incongruous and dissipated culmination of the Hess family history, populated by such larger-than-life figures. Perhaps it's an attempt to fill the hole of paternity. Perhaps it is Hess letting us in on the joke. The tools are symbols of his active imagination. The figures are only half real. The wine is poured, but a moth floats dead on its surface.

Perhaps, then, the whole experience of “The Paternal Suit” is but a mirage in which history’s reflection, though distorted, compels the viewer on.

Its allure is undeniable, its effect unforgettable.

Small Town Jewry in South Carolina

Sumter's Jews

Walterboro's Jews

And here's the story that goes with the videos:

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Sunday, August 26, 2012

BY ADAM PARKER

The Post and Courier

It’s a serene and lovely place where hundreds of Sumter’s Jews are buried. A certain vibrancy buzzes in the warm air, for this burial ground is visibly active with use. People come and go, leave their stone markers and flowers, keep the car path that circumnavigates the gracious gazebo green-free.

Anita Rosenberg, visiting the town she spent half her childhood in, stops by the grave of her parents, Herbert and Virginia Rosefield, to pay her respects and remember the time when this city’s sole synagogue, Temple Sinai, was a thriving centerpiece of Jewish life, rich with tradition and history, filled with families and literally glowing with the light that infiltrated into the sanctuary through magnificent stained glass windows.

Few people today are left to marvel at that warm light. Either they are buried in the cemetery or they have left this rural corner of South Carolina to pursue careers and raise families elsewhere. The congregation has dwindled to a handful of elderly worshippers, and the fate of Temple Sinai is sealed. It will close soon.

The full-time rabbis are all gone. The Sunday school is no more. There will be no new generation to carry on. The people in Charleston — at the Reform synagogue Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim and at the Jewish Federation — will act as executors of Temple Sinai’s estate. In coming years, they will figure out what to do when the last observant Jew utters the last prayer and conjures the last memory in the old building. They will ensure that the comforts and grace of the centuries-old cemetery do not abandon the dead.

They will do so because of strong bonds between the two communities that date to the inception of the colonies. They will do so because Southern Jewish life transcends any specific place. This is what the old Jews of Sumter want.

They are not alone. Other Jewish communities — in Kingstree, Aiken, Orangeburg, Georgetown, Walterboro — have seen similar declines, even as Jewish populations in the larger cities such as Charleston, Greensville and Columbia have grown.

All of these small rural communities, in South Carolina and beyond, share a similar story: A thriving merchant and professional class with origins among the earliest Jewish settlers, provided plenty of reason for the sons to follow in their fathers’ footsteps. They inherited the trades, shops and professional careers practiced by the older generation. And they invited other Jews, new immigrants and extended family members living up north, to join in the bounty.

South Carolina’s cities along the coast — Beaufort, Charleston, Georgetown — flourished economically in large part because of slave labor and the rice economy. Inland towns similarly prospered thanks to slave-dependent agriculture and, later, the development of a robust textile industry.

When towns grew, opportunities arose, and Jews were among those to seize them, often invited to help bolster the urban business and professional classes.  By the time World War II ended, Jewish populations in the state’s larger cities and towns were booming (relatively), and synagogues were teeming with worshippers, according to historian Dale Rosengarten, curator of the Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston.
While the rise of the Jewish community in small towns across the state was noteworthy, it was a phenomenon not unique to South Carolina, Rosengarten said. “It was national, it may not even have been regional,” she said.

Sumter

In Sumter, a commercial crossroads, the post-war years were characterized by strong textile, manufacturing, biotech, retail and medical sectors. Starting in the 18^th century, the city drew many Jews from Charleston; the two communities are strongly connected even today.

Anita Rosenberg’s grandfather had located there from Charleston to start a men’s hosiery mill. And Anita spent many of her earliest years attending services at Sumter’s Temple Sinai, where her father served as cantor.

Robert Moses, 91, remembers when the synagogue had a youth group, religious school and full-time rabbi. Its members were active in the city’s civil life. Moses, who worked in real estate, was president of the Rotary Club. One of the temple’s rabbis served as president of the YMCA. Moses’ father, Richard P. Moses was mayor of the town in the 1970s. His uncle, Herbert Moses sat on city council.

He said Sumter’s residents always have welcomed Jews, and intermarriage was common. “They loved us to death,” Moses quipped.

Roger Ackerman, 80, moved from a small town in North Carolina to Sumter with his family in 1965. Temple Sinai still was enjoying its post-war peek. Jewish families from nearby towns such as Summerton, Bishopville, Kingstree and Manning streamed into Sumter for weekend services, Ackerman said.

Perhaps 200 families once gathered at the synagogue then. Today, only about 40 members are left, and most are in their 80s or 90s, the two men said.

Moses married a Catholic woman with whom he had five daughters. Three moved out of state; one lives in Charleston; the youngest, Elizabeth, is the only one who converted to Judaism. She was active in revitalizing Georgetown’s Jewish congregation, which has benefitted from snowbirds and the tourist industry, and now works as a state park trooper in Union, S.C.

The decline of Sumter’s Jewish community can be attributed partially to ease with which everyone got along, Moses said. “Jews were well-accepted by non-Jews, so assimilation was rampant,” he said.

Exacerbating the situation were rabbis who threw the baby out with the bath water, he added. They would not marry interfaith couples. They would deny non-Jews formal roles and responsibilities at the synagogue. “They turned their back on them.”

Ackerman has three children, all of whom have moved away. For a congregation to survive, someone must be there to receive the flame. “You’ve got to have young people,” he said.

A few years ago, those who remain at Temple Sinai began to discuss its imminent fate. It was a difficult topic, Moses and Ackerman said.

“This whole process is a very emotional thing for all of our members,” and especially for those who were born in Sumter, Ackerman said. “The congregation deserves a lot of credit. Some small congregations refuse to face reality.”

They had already been saving money, so they set up two endowments, managed by the Coastal Community Foundation, one for KKBE’s use with regard to the building, and one for the Charleston Jewish Federation which will maintain the cemetery in perpetuity.

The Temple Sinai congregation contacted David Sarnat, then president of the Atlanta Jewish Federation and now president of the Jewish Community Legacy Project, to help them create something like a living will. Anita Rosenberg, vice president of administration at KKBE, is acting as the Charleston-Sumter liaison.

For now, the synagogue will continue to operate — and prepare for the end.

“At what point do you say the temple is finished?” Moses asked.

Walterboro

The same dilemma is playing out in Walterboro, where 91-year-old Bernard Warshaw presides as patriarch of Temple Mount Sinai, the small synagogue near the center of town.

At its post-war peek, the Jewish population in Walterboro reached about 35 families. They would meet at the Masonic Hall to pray. In the late 1940s, it was decided that the community needed a synagogue, and in 1951 the cornerstone of Temple Mount Sinai was laid.

“We had a vibrant little temple,” said Warshaw’s wife Ann. “We had a sisterhood, seders, holiday celebrations.”

Today, average attendance at a lay service is five. The temple seats about 100.

Warshaw, who attended The Citadel in Charleston with Robert Moses, joined the service and saw intense action in the European theater. He fought his way up the Italian peninsula, participated in the Battle of the Bulge and eventually penetrated deep into Germany, reaching the Dachau concentration camp eight hours after it was liberated by the Americans. He opened two of the ovens himself. And he took a number of photographs of the dead bodies.

Remarkably, he emerged from the war physically unscathed, and he joined the family business “Warshaw’s of Walterboro,” a clothing store, in 1945. The store was started by his parents, Murray and Dotty, 25 years earlier, when they purchased it from Philip Bogoslow, and they maintained strong business ties to Charleston.

“Henry Berlin (the famous Charleston clothier) used to call us his country store,” Bernard Warshaw said.

On Jan. 1, 2000, when Warshaw was 80 years old, he closed the store and retired from the clothing retail business. None of the Warshaw’s three daughters live in Walterboro, and only one lives nearby, in Charleston.

At a recent Friday evening service, as a thunderstorm burst in the sky, Lewis Harris led prayers with his wife Arlene, Warshaw, the Siegel family and a couple others in attendance. Afterwards, Paul Siegel recalled when there were three or four different Sunday school classes, when traveling rabbis cycled through Walterboro, when visitors appeared regularly in the pews.

The last big event was Joseph Siegel’s April 2010 Bar Mitzvah. Joseph traveled to KKBE for his Hebrew lessons.

Paul’s wife Jayne Siegel, who was raised Methodist and who participates in both faith traditions, noted that synagogue membership isn’t the only one to decline in recent decades. Small town churches, too, have seen congregations dwindle as people move away.

For now, the doors of the little temple will remain open. Walterboro’s Jews are not ready to face the problem their brothers and sisters in Sumter are dealing with, Warshaw said.

A robust and charismatic presence in the community, he is the force around which the town’s few remaining Jews gather, and he is not ready to let this distinctive social and religious component of Walterboro, this history that continues to be made, slip from his grasp.

“We (give) a lot of credit to Bernard Warshaw, not just here but all around the state,” Paul Siegel said, for he is a primary source of Jewish pride and identity. “We are as strong as we believe.”

Sunset

At Temple Sinai in Sumter, Robert Moses and Roger Ackerman cope with a combination of worry and peace. They know their beloved synagogue is in good hands, that KKBE will consider carefully the options and do the right thing.

But they know that none of the options are ideal: Perhaps the building will be sold to a church congregation. Perhaps it can be protected by the city or state as a historic site. Perhaps it will become a Jewish museum.

“We are deathly afraid it will be torn down,” Moses said.

Its 11 stained-glass windows, made in Germany more than 100 years ago, are magnificent testaments to what once was a flourishing community. Each is dedicated to a founding family — Schwartz, Levi, Moise, D’Ancona, Moses, Ryttenberg and others — names recognized by most of the town.

At the cemetery, the warm sun emphasizes the storm clouds accumulating to the south. Anita Rosenberg leaves the grave of her parents knowing she will have many opportunities to return.

Too often, aging religious communities fail to make the necessary provisions to safeguard their property and history, said Judi Corsaro, chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Charleston. But Ackerman and Moses and the rest of Sumter’s practicing Jews are visionaries. “They made some really hard decisions for their community,” Corsaro said.

Those buried in the grave yard, and those to die in the years to come, will have a secure resting place.

“It’s comforting to know that such an important cemetery, or burial ground, where your relatives are laid to rest, will always be taken care of,” Corsaro said. “We feel like it’s a privilege to be a part of this.”

Batman, Upholder of the Status Quo: A Critical Analysis of the Nolan Trilogy

August 15, 2012

BY ADAM PARKER

I don’t know if Christopher Nolan intended for his “Batman” trilogy to deliver a message in support of the political and economic status quo (my guess is he didn’t), but the pro-capitalism, pro-institutional leanings of the films are, upon reflection, disconcerting.

Why, you ask, should we expend any energy analyzing Hollywood blockbusters made as grand entertainments and money-making engines? Why consider “Batman” to be part of a film tradition that warrants serious critical scrutiny? Because these movies are seen by many millions of people worldwide, because many hundreds of millions of dollars are collected from those audiences and because such serious business inevitably influences the way we think — the way we expect movies to entertain us, the way we perceive good-and-evil dichotomies, the way we make myths (which by definition are lasting) and the way in which attitudes can be shaped by the stories we engage in.

The Batman figure was conceived as an anti-hero — a man who bucked the system, employing vigilante tactics, in order to seek retribution for the murder of his parents and restore balance to his injured psyche. What makes the character compelling is that his goals are unobtainable. His purpose is not enlightenment. No justice can be obtained, no balance achieved, yet he is compelled by dark forces within to keep on keeping on. He possesses no superpowers; he relies on technology, smarts and brawn in an attempt to appease his troubled soul and, meanwhile, serve the interests of the populace. We sympathize with Batman because we can understand his dilemma.

That dilemma is twofold. He is an injured man seeking an ever-elusive healing, and he is a member of the oppressor class whose family wealth was the result of exploitation and violence (Wayne Enterprises is a holding company whose lines of business include weapons and chemical manufacturing), and who continues to lead a double life. As Bruce Wayne, he inflicts damage; as Batman, he attempts to repair the damage. These unresolvable conflicts make him a tragic figure, doomed to his dark fate. His destruction is only a question of when, not if — at least, so goes the myth, though Nolan chooses the easier way out, delivering a happy ending of redemption instead.

It is the third Batman installment, “The Dark Knight Rises,” that shines the spotlight brightest on the main themes of Nolan’s trilogy, and it gives us a chance to look back over all three films in our effort to understand the messages therein. The Origin Story, “Batman Begins,” presents the young Bruce Wayne, describes the early trauma that would shape his life, and reveals him as a seeker of the unobtainable. He trains successfully as a presumed member of the League of Shadows, a group of vigilante ninjas, but is cast out once he understands that the League’s mission is not benevolent. His association, however, sets the stage for later confrontation — a sort of meet-your-maker showdown that is only finally resolved in the third film.

The ostensible motivation of the corrupted bad guys is corruption, an odd contradiction that remains unexplored by Nolan. The League of Shadows sets its sights on the irredeemably depraved Gotham City, with its ignorant residents, vile institutions and excessive capitalistic enterprise. This is Sodom, and it must be destroyed. In the darkness, Batman befriends the trustworthy cop, James Gordon, roots out and defeats the evildoers, saving millions of innocent lives and billions of dollars in shareholder value. Gordon represents an inadequate but ultimately honorable police force firmly on the side of good. It is guilty only of underestimating the forces stacked against it. These policemen do no racial profiling or unnecessary search and seizures. They don’t shoot immigrants in vestibules or torture them in bathroom stalls. They are, essentially, victims.

Gotham is saved and life goes on, until a new villain arrives — the Joker — who, as Nolan presents him and Heath Ledger plays him, is the ultimate nihilist psychopath, an amoral fiend bent on revealing the inner corruption of human nature. We are all jokers, he seems to say, even Batman, especially Batman. Here, Nolan had a real opportunity to undermine our prized institutions and expose the injustice that permeates all of them. Ledger seems to push in that direction, but the script keeps contained the character’s larger impulses, forcing the Joker to serve the interests of the story, denying him the opportunity to explode it. Surely it would have been more interesting to see his nihilistic drive toward unleashed chaos destabilize the entire mythmaking effort itself, to force us to question all of our assumptions about the political and economic underpinnings of society, but Nolan was unwilling to go that far.

At the end of the second film, “The Dark Knight,” Batman takes the fall in order to protect his protector (Gordon) and the people of Gotham, who apparently needed a proper myth to believe in (the presumed honor of the crime-fighting district attorney, Harvey Dent). Bruce Wayne becomes a William Randolph Heart-like recluse, descending into his darkness, abandoning for eight years his business interests, social life and destiny. But his fate becomes evident again when the League of Shadows returns to Gotham in the form of the villain Bane, who shatters the peace and plots to destroy the ever-corrupt city and its inhabitants with a nuclear device — a device unintentionally provided to him by Wayne Enterprises, it turns out.

Bane, whose face is obscured by a monstrous mask that relieves what would otherwise be an insufferable pain caused by a mysterious injury of the past, is a cunning brute who, until Catwoman returns late in the film to dispose of him, succeeds in outsmarting and outpacing Batman as well as the police. The dramatic highpoint of the movie comes when Bane, standing atop a disabled police car, admonishes the citizens gathered round for allowing themselves to be victimized by the rich and powerful. He encourages them to take justice into their own hands, which they do with a brutal conviction, betraying their true nature. The masses cannot be trusted; they are ignorant and malleable, prone to violence and betrayal. Bane the Wise knows this and exploits it, using the populace to further his agenda of destruction.

The people do not understand that they are the ones betrayed. They will suffer damnation so that the Shadow World may gain control. The police, who are meant to protect them, are but pawns in the game. Only Batman the flawed outlaw can face off with Bane, confront his fate, and save Gotham from the shadows in which he himself dwells eternally. At the end of “The Dark Knight Returns,” audiences are treated to a not-altogether-unexpected plot twist in which Bane is suddenly portrayed as a vulnerable human being capable of tears. It’s too late to stop the bomb, but Batman flies it miles from the city so its detonation disturbs only the ocean. He indicates his custom 'copter will fly on autopilot, though witnesses assume he has been killed in the explosion.

The butler, Alfred Pennyworth, played by Michael Caine, who had become estranged from Wayne in a previous scene and left the manor house, encounters Bruce Wayne alive and well, sitting at a café table in Florence with Selina Kyle, Catwoman, played by Anne Hathaway. Wayne, we are expected to infer, has finally redeemed himself and shed his darker side. The wealthy anti-hero becomes hero, a destiny of eternal conflict gives way to unexpected enlightenment. The subversive is transformed into the conventional. The populace of Gotham is left in the dark. The people might have been spared nuclear incineration, but they are no less ignorant, no less untrustworthy. Wayne Enterprises survives its near-death experience and, presumably, flourishes again under the leadership of Lucius Fox. Capitalism triumphs over the Occupy Movement, and the Wayne estate is converted into an orphanage, appeasing the guilt of the exploiter.

It’s a lazy finale to a bombastic trilogy that offers an appealing aesthetic but a conventional worldview. No institution is deemed too corrupt to save. No painful lessons are learned. Bruce Wayne, meant to suffer forever, instead ends his adventuresome run smiling in the sun at a charming Italian café with a beautiful, unpredictable woman. The status quo persists because it must. This is the final message of the Batman trilogy, a product of its time.