Abraham Rattner
American, 1893-1978
Homage to Dante, No. 1, 1968
lithograph
23 x 17 3⁄4 in.
SBMA, Gift of Mrs. Lepska Warren in Celebration of the Museum’s 50th Anniversary
1991.141.2
Abraham Rattner in his Paris studio in 1928, private collection
RESEARCH PAPER
“Homage to Dante” is one of Abraham Rattner’s later works and is significantly different in style from the paintings he produced during the 1930s and 1940s. The latter were characterized by bold lines and bright, flat surfaces of color; the former is a monochromatic lithograph that is representational, executed in extremely fine lines, and which shows incredible detail.
At first look, the piece seems chaotic in its imagery, as every inch of the paper is filled with a dizzying number of figures and symbols. These elements are organized around two female figures in the center of the piece, who are levitating in a wall of flames that is being spewed out by a dragon-like monster at the bottom of the image. Above the two women hangs a glowing orb, likely symbolizing the sun, with two fish inside. A giant half-human, half-lizard figure is facing and embracing the orb. To the left of the women, a male human figure hangs upside down; his lower body is still intact, while his body is turned into a skeleton from the waist up. These dominant elements create a sense of dynamic, circular motion, exacerbated by the fact that they are connected by a snake-like entity that seems to strangle all of them.
A closer look reveals even more details in the shadows of the bigger figures. Towards the right side of the frame, elements symbolizing life and birth are prevalent, such as fish, tiny flying doves, and what looks like an embryo floating in space. The left side of the painting is populated with symbols of death: ghost-like figures flying upwards, dying doves falling downwards, and skulls. What appear to be stars or the cosmos can be found throughout the lithograph.
As the title of the piece suggests, its imagery was inspired by Dante`s Inferno, the first part of 14th century writer David Alighieri’s epic poem “Divine Comedy.” In this poem, we follow the character Dante on his descent into hell, which is imagined to consist of nine concentric layers inside the earth populated by a variety of humans, gods, and creatures, some of which can be found in “Homage to Dante.” The snake-human hybrid, for example, is likely a depiction of the serpentine god Minos, who, in Greek mythology, was thought to be a judge of the dead in the underworld.
This work was heavily influenced by the horrors of the Holocaust, Rattner’s experience fighting in World War I, the injustices of World War II, anti-Semitism, and the nightmare of a potential nuclear war, all of which came to be the main subject, if not motivation, for Rattner’s later works.
In an oral interview from 1968, Rattner remarked: “[World War II] affected me personally very much... anti-semitism [sic] was sharply underscored. It was something that troubled me very much personally. And it affected me in this way that I grew further away from the aesthetic thing. I had to keep my balance because my emotional response to these feelings that were stirred up in me went back to my anti-semitic experiences here in America. And I never could get over them because it left an awful mark on me... And now Hitler’s voice disturbed me. It disturbed me in what I wanted to do. And I knew I could not keep on with abstraction, I could not keep on with the intellectual searching after an aesthetic direction, that I had to do something about this emotional thing in me.” (Rattner in Baskind, p. 35)
About the artist
Abraham Rattner was a Jewish-American artist who grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. His parents had immigrated from Russia and Rumania, and his father supported the family as a baker. Born in 1895, Rattner served in France with the U.S. Army as a camouflage artist during World War I. After the war, he moved to Europe in 1920 to focus on his artistic training and development. There, he was influenced by the many “-isms” of the time, particularly expressionism and surrealism. He became known for his richly colored works and is credited to have been one of America’s first truly modernist artists, at the vanguard of what would become known as Abstract Expressionism. His works were characterized by the inclusion of Jewish and Christian iconography; Rattner believed that the spiritual needed to be part of art and life to counteract cold rationality, materialism, and traditionalism in art. (Halasz, p. 25)
Rattner left Paris in 1939, returning to the United States in October 1939. Unfortunately, the majority of the paintings he produced during his time in Europe were left behind in his Parisian apartment, and have been lost since. Upon his return from Europe, Rattner went on a road trip through the U.S. with his friend Henry Miller; Miller’s observations during this trip, accompanied by Rattner’s illustrations, were published in 1949 as “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.” Rattner taught at the New School, New York, and Yale, Connecticut, in the late 1940s through the 1950s.
His style changed significantly after he came back to New York, from abstraction to a unique representativeness that Rattner felt to be necessary in order to express his emotions and the pain of the world, which were deeply interconnected. As Rattner’s friend and gallerist Kootz described him, Rattner was possessed by "a deeply religious ethical inwardness. He suffers a profound pain - not self-torment - at the injustices of the world, an almost Biblical anguish at war and its causes. He is morally implicated in everything he does." (Kootz, p. 36)
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Kajsa Philippa Niehusen, 2020
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rattner, Abraham. Oral History Interview with Colette Roberts, May 20, 1968 and June 21, 1968. Transcript in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 13. In: Baskind, Samantha. “Navigating the Worldly and the Divine: Jewish American Artists on Judaism and their Art.” Shofar, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Fall 2013).
Halasz, Piri. “Abraham Rattner: Rebel with a Cause.” Archives of American Art Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 (1992).
Kootz, Samuel M. “New Frontiers in American Painting.” New York: Hastings House, 1943.
COMMENTS
Born in 1895 in Poughkeepsie, New York, Abraham Rattner came to Washington, D.C. to study architecture at the George Washington University and art at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. In 1917 he went to Philadelphia to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. That same year, the United States entered World War I, whereupon Rattner volunteered to serve in the Army. After the armistice in 1919, Rattner resumed his studies in Philadelphia, but in 1920 went to Paris, studying at times at l’École des Beaux Arts, l’Académie de la Grande Chaumiere, and l’Académie Ranson. During a 20-year residence in France he saw many kinds of art: cubism, surrealism, and futurism. Rattner also met the avant-garde artists in France: Pablo Picasso, architect Le Corbusier, and American expatriate author Henry Miller. Rattner adopted a cubist style, interpreting nature in bold, vibrant color arrangements.
In 1939, with the tensions of World War II increasing, Rattner returned to the United States, where he was quickly recognized as a leading modernist painter and a superb colorist. In 1940, with his friend Henry Miller, Rattner traveled from New York City south to record life in modern America. Miller’s writing and Rattner’s illustrations were published as The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945), a quirky chronicle of their travels.
Rattner exhibited his painting in New York galleries until 1947 when personal events altered his artistic style. The public exposure of the horrors of the Holocaust after World War II, along with the death of his wife, caused Rattner to turn away from painting for a time. When he resumed his career, he renewed an early interest in architecture and architectural elements, making designs for mosaic and stained glass. By 1960, Rattner’s designs, in a modern idiom, brought together stories from his Jewish heritage, including religious themes, with references to the Holocaust or to nuclear war, to convey his concern for the human condition. His late paintings are clearly related to his stained glass designs in their symbolic force and in style, namely his use of vivid colors and bold, swooping outlines that unify the compositions.
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