Bellarmine Museum

For some, art is designated, and to a greater extent confined by, the expressive usage of color and line in a form that attempts to depict life in exactitude. However, this aesthetic of precision and objective clarity is often misrepresentative and antithetical to the searing truth that underlies the ignorance of our visceral pleasures. For Norman Gorbaty and his ink sketches, we see an aesthetic that more ominously, and perhaps more accurately, reflects our human nature. Currently on display at the Bellarmine Museum of Art, Gorbaty’s work is shown in his exhibition “Norman Gorbaty & The Legacy of Disegno”. Here his oeuvre of ink sketches puts the viewer within his unorthodox method.

Born in 1932, Gorbaty is an American artist whose work embodies an aesthetic vision that is abrasive while still possessing a sense of fluidity. From afar, the sketches seem to be mere lines placed in a randomized fashion. But with titles like “Wave” and “Waterfall” one can see the abstract image designate itself with the combination of the various small dark etches and the negative space of the white paper.

In his various other pieces such as “View of Venice” from 1980 and “Tower” from 1958, we see architectural images that appear to be in a liminal state of being. Venice is created with hundreds of dashes of ink along the plane of the paper. The sky too is also given a sense of character with heavy darkness and sweeping line formations. The image of the Tower, made with a combination of different charcoal pencils, seems to jut out with sharpening aggression as it rises to meet the viewer from the paper.

With their piecemeal construction of line segments, these man-made structures seem to be coming into existence with rapid construction, or are being destroyed with sudden and violent fervency. Visually, they create a sense of the fragmented pattern that defines our nature and our social structure. Life, in this sense, is given true identity through his work. For Gorbaty, these scenes of nature and architecture are emblematic of the way we seemingly disregard the brevity of our existence.

This sentiment becomes clear and more palpably horrific with other pieces such as “Skull of a Hassid” where Gorbaty calls upon his heritage and personal feelings toward the Holocaust to give his harsh look on humanity artistic breadth. The image of the Hasidic Jewish man is dark and in a state that seems to be between life and death as the bones are barren of flesh yet the hat and signature  peyess hair-curls remain. Lines and colors in this image are not utilized for the gloried humanity that we fail to achieve. But are used to represent the paralyzing truth of brevity and violence that haunts humanity with Gobraty’s vision.