Stéphane Mandelbaum’s Drawings of Human Depravity

Editor’s Note: The following story contains mentions of racial and sexual violence.

The art of Stéphane Mandelbaum is rich with inherent contradictions and tragic histories. The Belgian artist-poet’s large-scale drawings, currently on view at the Drawing Center, tell the story of someone entangled with his own demons — inherited, yet intensely personal — and his work to overcome them.

Born in Brussels in 1961 to two artists, Mandelbaum began drawing at seven years old. His family tree was a mosaic of perseverance: His father’s side bore the weight of Holocaust survival within the Jewish community, while his mother’s lineage traced back to Armenian genocide survivors. Perhaps because of the ever-present familial traumas that filled his childhood, Mandelbaum clung to his grandfather and their shared Jewish identity, with a vested interest in the cultural rather than religious aspects of Jewish life. Though he was reportedly dyslexic, he taught himself basic Yiddish. 

His Jewish roots became a guiding light in his later artistic practice, though the term “later” is relative: he was murdered in 1986 at age 25 after attempting to steal what turned out to be a fake Modigliani from an elderly woman’s home. But this exhibition does not follow the easy path of recounting this salacious history. Instead, it concentrates on the 10-year period in which he made hundreds of drawings. These works, created with ballpoint pen, graphite, and colored pencil, demonstrate the artist’s exploration into the depths of human depravity, intertwining violence with sexuality and lawlessness. 

On the gallery’s center wall are Mandelbaum’s haunting portraits of Nazi party members. Here, portraits of Ernst Röhm, the early ally of Adolf Hitler and leader of the Nazi’s paramilitary wing, and Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, sit side by side. They come across as part devil, part human. Röhm’s bust sits atop a fiery pit of red, blue, and black scribbles and marks, with his name etched into the paper. Goebbels is more subdued: a few lines conjure a seated body, focusing all attention on the detailed face. Sketched in profile, we see a man with heavily shaded and closed eyes and a receding hairline, his mouth agape. 

These works are juxtaposed with a drawing of Mandelbaum’s father, Arié Mandelbaum, from 1982. Mandelbaum portrays his father’s likeness in graphite, with collage and text elements scattered throughout the composition. In the center is an arresting phrase in Yiddish, which translates to “Kiss my ass.” Nestled within the text is a caricature of a Jew, with a large nose and wolfish grin, alongside a pornographic image with a Nazi soldier’s head collaged onto it. 

Anyone who speaks Hebrew, Yiddish, German, or French could easily spend hours trying to decipher the mess of language that litters the side of this work and many others in the exhibition, such as portraits of painters and poets that Mandelbaum admired, alongside Brussels underworld figures of sex workers, thugs, and pimps. The works include comments like “kosher” in Hebrew, “fucking Jew” in German, and “bitch” and “bastard Jew” in French. The artist’s use of language conveys an emotional combination of outrage, hopelessness, revenge, and humor, all rolled into one.

Mandelbaum confronted the worst parts of humankind in his art, and in doing so, endeavored to overcome his internal struggles. In a journal entry that sums up his practice, he wrote, “On my pages, the 20th century vomits out its murders. I have a disgust for what I’ve done, and also a respect.”

Stéphane Mandelbaum continues at The Drawing Center (35 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan) through February 18. The exhibition was organized by Drawing Center Executive Director Laura Hoptman, in collaboration with Susanne Pfeffer, Director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. 

Source: Hyperallergic.com