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Showcases the distinctive work of one of the most innovative artists of our time. Samuel Bak's most recent series of paintings, "New Perceptions of Old Appearances", is a tribute to the power of the metaphorical imagination. Using the pear as a substitute image for the familiar apple of Eden, Bak explores the struggle of modern civilization to wrest from our fragile universe a viable mode of communal existence. Bak's pears are stoic in their solidity, but vulnerable to decay. In some guises they shine with the beauty of succulent fruit, but in others they fall victim to the violence of history and the decay of time. In this book - filled with color illustrations - Lawrence L. Langer shows the versatility and uniqueness of Bak's art. His pears play many roles, challenging the viewer to interpret their enigmatic presences without having to search for a single dogmatic meaning. While some, laden with promise, proclaim the inherent dignity of artistic form, others remind us, as they are consumed by fire or sacrificed on strange altars, of what Bak has called the ""ineffaceable tragedy and sadness"" that has been part of our lot as human creatures during the past hundred years. His images are both ripe with life and haunted by death. Samuel Bak had his first exhibition at the age of nine in the Vilna Ghetto. After emigrating to Israel, he studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums in the United States, Israel, and Europe. Books about his work include ""Landscapes of Jewish Experience: Paintings by Samuel Bak"" and ""The Book of Genesis in the Art of Samuel Bak"". Lawrence L. Langer is Alumnae Chair Professor of English Emeritus at Simmons College. His publications include ""The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination"", ""Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory"", ""Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology"", and ""Preempting the Holocaust"".

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Common wisdom has it that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this series of paintings artist Samuel Bak wonders: can a word be worth a thousand pictures? Words are constructed from letters, which stem from hieroglyphic representations of the world around us. The use of letters, words, and sentences in art is not the domain only of comics and cartoons. Examples exist in medieval art, in the art of the post-Impressionists, the Cubists, the Dadaists, the Conceptualists, and more. Bak has always integrated letters and words into his art, incorporating both Hebrew and English characters, cleverly visualizing turns of phrase, and playing on multiple meanings and double entendres. In this series, the letters of the word hope appear in various conditions and ambiguous states—sometimes monumental, sometimes disguised, unnaturally large or unusually small, at times solid and whole, at other times broken and in disarray. They are both impish and foreboding, sometimes clearly presented and other times defying order or even recognition. They are wounded yet resilient, detached but seeking connection. Four simple letters—H, O, P, E—belie the significance and complexity of the word they spell. Is hope something we find or something we build? We dwell in a world that shapes us as we shape it and this interactive dimension applies to the feeling of hope, familiar to every human being who has ever anticipated, wished, or expected. For Bak, the work of building hope, or believing in the hope that others offer, requires engaging with the discarded and broken pieces of a previously trusted world now irrevocably shattered by the Holocaust. In landscapes, still lifes, and figural works, Bak gathers the layered elements of hope for us to contemplate and reminds us that they hold within and among them a promise for rebuilding and renewal. At best, hope is a wager of trust embodied in the venture of going forth. In his essay, Henry Knight guides us through the multivalent forms of hope in Bak’s work, asks us to question what we see and look beyond the visible, endeavors to define what hope after the Holocaust looks like, and teaches us that the process of creation after destruction represented by Bak’s work is itself the ultimate act of hope.

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