File talk:MADONNA OF THE FLAMES 1996.jpg

"Madonna of the Flames", along with "Schneeloch", was exhibed in GO FIGURE at Main Gallery, Fine Arts Center Galleries of the University of Rhode Island, October 1- December 14, 1997. In the catalogue for the five artist exhibition, Judith Tolnick Champa, its curator, writes:

Rappaport's "Madonna of the Flames",1996, confounds any traditional reading of the madonna, except via oblique references in its overall vertical orientation, symbolic primary color palette, and in the down-tilted head of the figure. Rappaport's is a spectral, hairless (excepting the pubic region) and childless figure, a gender-fluctuating nude seen kneeling, half-turning, tilted precariously, and de-stabilized even more by having arms raised overhead. The nude is modelled in somewhat representational ochres, but her contours are a vibrant blue, revealed throughout the canvas as a prominent underpainting of an overpainted flame red ground which comes forward in areas to re-fashion or even obscure her contours. The inversion of figure and field is clear; the nude is thin and the ground is thick, she is embedded, passive, and held up by the action of a forward-moving field. That red field strongly connotes the horrific terrors of slaughter, or sacrifice.

The artist has painted several madonnas in his career, and as he characterized it in a recollection of 1994, "It is almost impossible not to have the shadow of the Holocaust fall onto any image that I make that depicts vulnerability, loss and violence against the weak, but for me it is not important who the victims are. Sorrow falls on all people, and the victimization continues into the next generation..."

Madonna of the Flames is placed in an ad page on the inside back cover of "Flash Art", January - February 1997.