Mordecai, Horse and Haman

I went to the Worcester Art Museum show about the recovered art collection of Richard Neumann. A few things struck me about his taste in art. One, because he didn’t have big-name artists (at least among these represented works), his collection seemed to be about what moved him and not about impressing others. Two, his love of opera in painting – many dramatic, expressive situations, poses. Third, three paintings of the fourteen shown had a trompe l’oeil (fool the eye) element that connected what was depicted to the room we occupy. So I ran home encouraged to finish my little Purim opera (I love operas, too) with scratches, cracks, and worn corners to connect the picture to the room. My pseudo-plaster panel is derived from examples from Dura-Europos, as is the costuming. Putting these familiar stories in Dura-Europos’ unfamiliar setting – it’s not emulating BCE Persia, but a cross-cultural frontier town from a period (240 CE) – in the hope of being able to see and feel ancient stories without the emotional weights of repeated iconography and contemporary assessments.