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Article: The Jews are my Tahiti: R.B. Kitaj and the subject of his paintings. (Jewish painter) (Interview)
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- September 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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An Interview with Commentary
IN 1891 GAUGUIN QUIT THE QUOTIDIAN, CROSSED the equator, and set up shop in the South Seas. Sitting on a sofa in his Chelsea studio Kitaj, the painter, says: "The Jews are my Tahiti."
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932, Kitaj is also an exile; but his is an exile of the mind, a perennial state of dislocation, as he makes clear in his sketchy but seminal First Diasporist Manifesto of 1989 (which opens with a quote from Philip Roth, "The poor bastard had Jew on the brain").
Roth, incidentally, returned the compliment in Operation Shylock, wherein a character called Pipik preaches a creed called Diasporism. Anyway, it is this ...