Scraping away our layers of defenses against our anxieties and fears opens up an intimacy with one another and with the Source of all life. View the study sheet here. Watch the recording here.
My teacher Rabbi Mordecai Finley once told the story of a man desperate to have a fine suit that would establish himself as a man of power and distinction. He went to a tailor who draped him in an expensive suit. It fit terribly. But the tailor convinced the man to contort his body in such ways as to make the suit look perfect. A friend encountered the man and said to him, “You look all twisted up.” “Yes,” replied the man, “but look how beautiful the suit is.”
Our desire to add layers to ourselves, both materially and psychologically, in order to compensate for the anxiety, fear, confusion we may feel is compelling. Torah seeks to help us unveil ourselves, to remove the layers that complicate the journey to shalom, to completeness, fulfillment.
The importance of being empowered from within is one of Torah’s earliest lessons. In the garden of Eden Adam and Eve discover that they are “naked.” The Hebrew word for “naked” can also be read as “shrewd.” This “shrewdness” is a condition that has caused them to lose everything. They respond by sewing garments to cover up their nakedness/shrewdness. A few verses later God, prior to driving Adam and Eve out from Eden, makes them “garments of skin.” Why the need for more clothing?
The Hebrew word for “skin” is spelled ayin vav reish (pronounced or). Second century Rabbi Meir notes that in his Torah the word or is spelled aleph vav reish (also pronounced or), which means “light.” For their journey in exile back to fulfillment and completion, Adam and Eve need not more layers but illumination, an awareness that what they seek was breathed into them at creation by the Source of all life. They already possess what they need.
In the book of Exodus we meet the entire nation of Israel living in exile, called Egypt. All of the major characters – the people Israel, Pharaoh and Moses – suffer from some form of obstruction that hampers their ability to hear the divine message of redemption: open up, let go, liberate. The Israelites have difficulty in imagining a possibility beyond the oppressive present. Pharaoh is burdened with layered attachment to power, prestige and a fear of mortality. Moses suffers from a thickness of his mouth that makes it difficult to connect with those he is to lead. Each will be tested, each will be given the opportunity to clear away their respective extra layers obstructing their access to the fulfillment that the way of Torah offers.
For centuries artists used their paints and canvasses to show us something in the world. The Surrealists used art to show us something in ourselves. As writers, poets, filmmakers, painters, they sought to reveal what was hidden in the subconscious. In their view, modern society’s oppressive rationality had produced chaos and war. To repair all that required a piercing of the veil, an uncovering of what lay below the surface.
In his pursuit of what lay below the surface, the Surrealist artist Max Ernst developed a technique called grattage. He would place richly textured materials under a canvass and then apply paint to the canvas. While the paint was still wet, he would scrape away layers of it. The subsurface textures would impress themselves onto the canvass but as a result of the scraping would appear in new forms shaped by the artist.
Giovanni Guida is a young contemporary Italian artist who has embraced Ernst’s grattage process. He sees art as a struggle against the oppressive weight of the material in order to discover, free and bring out what is latent in each experience. To penetrate the skin of the painting involves responding to unexpected signs and shapes. To liberate what is hidden is themission of the artist.
Shown here is Guida’s grattage work Apotheosis. Apotheosis is a term referring to the glorification of a subject, a revealing of its divine dimension. By manifesting the divine through the process of grattage, Guida teaches us that the glory of God need not only appear by way of external revelation. It can also appear as a result of scraping away surface layers to disclose what lies beneath. In his Apotheosis what is revealed is light (or)…that which we each carry as we make our way through exile on our way back to fulfillment, shalom.
Join us here at 7:00 p.m. (PT) Thursday January 19 as we explore scraping away to reveal the divine.
