File talk:11- Burial of Christ.jpg

One early memory leads the heart to the matter - The elements that make up a figurative image are abstract. Its power depends upon keeping their integrity intact; while only compassion guides me to its most profound and compelling form. It was a calling.

As a very young child I wanted to be an artist and drew portraits of my family. So at age seven, on discovering my father's book on the great collections from the Gemaldegaleries of Berlin and Dresden retrieved from salt mines after the war, I become enthralled by the drama in the black and white reproductions of paintings by Cranach, Caravaggio, and Rembrandt. However, what is most stirring is the nascent image of pathos whose visualization in Vittore Carpaccio's Dead Christ Being Prepared for Burial foreshadows a major role in my painting when later I turn my attention to the theme of the Holocaust and Man's Inhumanity to Man.

As homage to the sublime medieval Villeneuve-les-Avignons Pieta, Burial of Christ is one of my most sensually realistic and sober works. But it walks a thin line between haunting vision and obvious theatricality. Very possibly it is one of my most perverse works. It is far from ironic pastiche, at least on first viewing. Yet neither was I naive to such subtle ironies as the unsettling ambiguity of ownership of the hand resting on Jesus' rib cage. This deadpan pantomime, staged as passion play, holds to its own rules, for the serious gazes looking toward the viewer brook no questions. With the exception of the sole woman on the left, all are self-portraits including that of the nude figure of Jesus, more asleep than cadaverous, languorously stretching across the canvas as if attended to by his disciples. Try holding a pose while painting it.1

1, Richard Rappaport, "Venerable painter Richard Rappaport discusses five of his works.", www.pghcitypaper.com, July 21,2011.