Long before The Chosen, Chaim Potok’s celebrated novel about the often fraught relationship between the conventions of American boyhood and those of Orthodox Judaism, became a best-seller, the American painter Bernard Perlin took to tempera to paint a scene of two yarmulke-clad boys in the New York subway, engrossed in one another and in conversation. Situating them against a wall strewn with graffiti, the work, Orthodox Boys, both encloses its subjects within an urban environment and isolates them from it.
Although some critics at the time thought that Perlin had been unduly influenced by Ben Shahn -- even as the Times applauded the younger artist’s “decided technical brilliance,” it felt his work was “impoverished and enslaved by [his] admiration for his mentor -- Kirstein was rather taken with the young artist, so much so that he would go on to purchase Orthodox Boys for his own collection. That the guiding light of the New York City Ballet, a man famously indifferent and at times even downright antagonistic towards his Jewish background, should have fancied Orthodox Boys is one for the books, a testament to the power of friendship. “He liked me, he liked the life I led, and he liked hearing about it,” Perlin subsequently recalled.
Ultimately, the two fell out. “I had been persona grata for years,” the artist wrote, but then suddenly I became “very much a non.” Before this breach in their relationship, they had frequented a circle of gay artists, museum curators, arts patrons and intellectuals vividly depicted in David Luddick’s 2001 book, Intimate Companions. In it, Perlin publicly acknowledged how much he owed to Kirstein, noting that “he opened ways to whatever success I have had.”
Orthodox Boys is now in the possession of the Tate Gallery in London where, in the wake of its creator’s death, one hopes it will attract attention once again.
