Fenton has always admired Rembrandt’s Night Watch but felt that the elegantly dressed soldiers were less militaristic than one would expect. Perhaps the well-dressed soldiers would feel more comfortable shopping at J.Crew than guarding the gates of Amsterdam. Gilgul transmigrates them into the busiest shopping days at J. Crew.
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Gilgulim Reunion and Fugue at Poussin Beach
Through the Kabalistic concept of Gilgul (im pl), which is the transmigration of souls through time, Fenton adapts Nicolas Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women and weaves it through a banal scene at Jones Beach. Fenton creates high drama just under the surface of an ordinary beach scene or lurking myth interacting with absolute reality. This fugue, with its psychological and musical meanings, becomes the focus of this work.
After the Scream
In the midst of his middle-class life, the nude figure curls up on a sofa almost in a fetal position. He emotes a feeling that is best depicted by Edvard Munch in the painting The Scream. A copy of The Scream hangs over the fireplace. Fenton suggests that the social isolation and the resulting melancholia cause the colors of the figure’s environment to intensify and distort as the nude figure contemplates his life.
After Manet- Gulgilim Luncheon
Manet’s painting Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) engendered great controversy and shocked Parisians in 1863. Manet presented a nude female with clothed gentlemen at a picnic. Fenton updates the same concept, showing the ladies undressed and the men in clothes.
Dinner at 8:00
Suicide bombings commonly happen in the Middle East. Americans are mostly oblivious to the pain the terrorist causes because it is something over there, not here. Fenton wants us to imagine the terrible event here to sensitize us to the horror.
Caught
Just prior to an explosive moment!
Laminations of Jeremiah
Fenton describes people throwing rocks at Jews whom they have been taught to hate. In the process of their actions, they fracture the world, a world in which the highest moral standards are the bulwark against destruction. Even so, the Jews fracture as easily as the world. The weeping prophet Jeremiah witnesses all from his vantage point between the layers of the broken world.
Bicycle Accident
People gather at the Jefferson Memorial. It is a place that unites Americans, and yet the figures in this painting function as individuals or small groups that are oblivious to the commonality of all, even to the bicycle accident off to their right.
Sunday Drive through the Hood
Two very different worlds exist and are separated, in this case, by a car door. Fear, distrust, intimidation, alienation, survival of the fittest, and ownership of turf are words which come to mind when one thinks about these co-existing but separate provinces.
CEO
Fenton portrays a Chief Executive Officer of a major corporation (Enron) making decisions which affect the lives of countless others. The CEO’s decisions are based on personal and corporate greed. Fenton compares the corporate leader to a sleazy hot dog vendor. Potential customers should think twice before purchasing anything from this CEO/vendor.