I Will See You in Far Off Places
I Will See You in Far Off Places
Thesis Paper
NYAA, 2025 MFA Program
Instructor: David Ebony
Bar Plivazky
Contents
I. Illustrations …………………………………………..3
II. Abstract………………………………………………..3
1. Gaze in Venice………………………………………………….4
2. The Starring Contest……………………………………………
3. Classicism in Venice ………………………………
4. The Children of The Son……………………………………..
5. Iconoclasm………………………………………………………
6. The Man in The Boat…………………………………………..
7. Golem Horror Picture Show…………………………………..
8. The Sin of The Calf………………………………………………
9. Conclusions And the Fable of the Jewish Shopkeeper….
10. Bibliography
Illustrations
1.1 Sandro Botticelli, self-portrair from Adoration of The Magi, 1476
2.1 Anton Raphael Mengs – Jupiter and Ganymede, 1758-9
3.1 Leonardo Da Vinci – Allegory of Pleasure And Displeasure, late engraving from 1898
4.1 Greek Kourai Twins, early 6th century B.C.E
5.1 Caravaggio – Medusa, 1597
6.1 Il Bronzino – Pygmalion And Galataea, 1529
7.1 Tim Curry and a Fake David Sculpture, from Rocky Horror Picture Show
Abstract
In my thesis, I showcase some creations and retell fables that, at first glance, appear disconnected. Through my craft as a unifying thread, I believe I can find their common ground and draw dynamic parallels.
1. aze In Venice - A recap and extracts from death in Venice
In Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach’s obsessive fixation on Tadzio, a 14-year-old Polish boy of striking beauty, is related, in my book, to Sartre’s philosophical idea of the gaze: the novel has no plot except Aschenbach’s looking at this boy and thus following him around. Aschenbach’s futile pursuit of Tadzio represents the collapse of longing for unattainable idealization, intertwined with the decay that strikes Venice- in which the rot of the city mirrors the moral decay of the hero.
The novel begins with Gustav, nobly seated at his desk, working diligently as he is a famous author, clinically described as the holder of divine inspiration: Mutus Animi Continuus. The old author takes a vacation to Venice in pursuit of “psychological hygiene”: this phrasing is charged with the foreshadowing irony as secretly, a deadly plague is spreading over the city.
In the train station on his way to Venice, he observes and categorizes men, scrutinizing their appearances and imagining their lives in detail, though his gaze is making them uncomfortable: “Aschenbach’s gaze, though unaware, had very likely been inquisitive and tactless.”.
2. The starring contest – Recaping The Gaze and connecting to Venice
Aschenbach’s gaze is not only the one of an artistic fascination or a perversion, it is also laden with existential tension. At one point, while he is maddened, beaten, and ill, to remind himself of his identity, he lists his family tree from memory, proud and delighted by the recounting of the professions of his illustrious ancestors. In the spirit of Sartre’s essay of The Gaze, he mentions that if they would have seen him now, they would have been ashamed.
Jean-Paul Sartre, in the essay collection Being and Nothingness, explores “The Gaze” (Le Regard). Sartre says that the act of looking is activated only while being looked in return: self-awareness arises when we recognize that others perceive us as objects within their world, like we do to them when we see them.
The gaze creates different possible situations:
1. Control: I nullify the other, look at him, erase him, treat him as an object, and then I don’t grasp him as in power to nullify me. The one who is looking feels in control while the one being seen feels vulnerable. This could flip if the observed looks back on the observer and makes them feel self-conscious.
2. Fear that the other can take my world from me: I recognize the other for what he is, but this way I lose the grasp on him because his medusa gaze is paralyzing me, and makes me treat him as a person who nullifies me, and so I cannot nullify him: this way I lose the justification I was after (wanting love is wanting liberty for the other person) and I can only find refuge in masochism. In this case, I no longer search for the subjectiveness of the other, but am busy trying to erase mine. I can try to ignore them, but his gaze makes him undismissable.
3. Shame that I finally found my being, only to dicover that im not for myself but a slave to the ‘other’, I exist only as an object under his gaze, and I am reducted to an object, not without the tension of resistance of full objectifation, for I am alwayse more than what could be captured.
4. Pride, when the other depends on me in order to be something.
Sartere remarks that these possibilities make the human exsistance a helpless one (“no exit”).
In Mann’s work, Tadazio looks back at Aschenbach with unshaken confidence: the latter, painfully aware of his own impotence, sees not only the beauty he craves but also his own mortality and decay, and as a like manner to Venice, hangs between grandeur and ruin. The distorted perspective of his gaze transforms beauty into ruin, leaving him consumed by his desire and decayed by his refusal to look away.
3. Classicism in Venice – Allusions and connection to my craft of observational drawing
“Nature herself shivers with ecstasy when the mind bows down in homage before beauty.”
In Mann’s description of the chase after Tadazio, classical allusions to St. Sebastian, Narcissus, Hyacinth and Ganymede (3.1) are not late to come. Without these, the text would have been in a severe anemic lack of meat. Just like in classical painting, where these classical figures are used to allude to beauty, love and human emotions, they are used here to intensify the aesthetic and tragic senses in this short novel. Similarly, my craft of repeating nature is enriched by the ancient mythological allegorical allusions too. I get more involved in my gaze while I imagine and fantasise that my model might carry a likeness to Apollo or Icarus.
Mann continues to describe Aschenbach’s creative precess as an author. He writes while looking at Tadazio – this is a parallel to my craft, in which I create infront of my sitter and in his image. My mind is naturally allegorical and I am fascinated by mimesis, parody and idealization. The human body stands as a hierogliph (¿for?), the act of crafting has to do with transcendence, and as for my practice, the circle of admiration and imagination (idealization and allegory) could be schematised to this: the model’s beauty> the pastel stick transmites the signal of my attration and fantasy> the surface recives and surged with mimesis that is the poignent. This pattern is the one I am intrested in expressing unfatigably.
“This lad should be in a sense his model, his style should follow the lines of this figure that seemed to him divine; he would snatch up this beauty into the realms of the mind, as once the eagle bore the Trojan shepherd aloft. Never had he the pride of the word been so sweet to him, never had he known so well that Eros is in the word, as in those perilous and precious hours when he sat at his rude table, within the shade of his awning, his idol full in his view and the music of his voice in his ears, and fashioned his little essay after the model Tadzio's beauty set.”
3.1
3. The Children of the Sun
3.1
Speaking of classicism and the act of creation, I would like to introduce the origin story of the origin of love and humanity according to Plato. This engraving (that illustrates another subject rather than the one I see in it)- for me, is showcasing the man-to-man hermaphrodite. The telling of this myth Plato attributed to Aristophanes in The Symposium (respectively to the myth, we are told that a pair of men connected at the back are the children of the sun, in contrast to children of the earth, which are two women connected and the children of the moon are intersex).
Expanding on this subject matter I see in the engraving, the ambiguous gender of the younger lad, their face is androgynous and the drawing suggests the chimera might have another set of genitals in the part concealed from us, furthermore, the shape of the adolescent’s shoulder imply the form of a breast in profile.
5. The Man in the Boat
In Da Vinci’s engraving we can see the boy’s long, robust branch in contrast with the fecund date tree of the older man, one might see here the ancient’s concept of pederastic love, where the older male (Erastes) and an adolescent boy (Eromenos), often idealised as a form of mentorship companionship and sometimes of a romantic nature.
On the boat on the way to Venice, The protagonist observes an old man who is running wild with some youngsters. Aschenbach is looking at this scence while confined in a demonic shadowboxlimbo—where every appearance is a an ever-morphing disguise, a conniving mirage. He gazes at what seems like a youth, just to realize he is actually an eldery man wearing makeup, with a false set of theeth are and dyed hair. In the end of the novel Gustav himself appear to be fasioned after this same model: when he sees a character who prefigure his rapidly approaching fate, he is disgusted by it, once he sees another eldery man who tries in vain try to step a foot in the reign of youth, he is mortified.
5.1
At the novel’s end, Aschenbach dies a miserable death: a punishment for his moral deterioration (by the fury of which god?). A cosmic resolution for his blasphemous acts- but what exactly is he paying the price for? Is it the declaring of himself as a creator (second only to god)? Lusting and getting lost in a terrenal, carnal ideal? Is it for his sexual orientation or pederosis? Or maybe, as I mentioned, Tedzio’s gaze has nullified him.
The old author represents the ‘artiste’ archytype, who is inherently corrupted to his core and dazed by beauty to the extant of a criminal sexual pursue. Similarly to Nabokov’s Lollita, the subject of passion has no agency or substantial content, just a shell of beauty, and the beholder of it pours content into its shape.
4. Iconoclasm
In Judeism, spawning creations is not permitted and is a sin against god— the third commandment has enjoined upon us the following decree:
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image (nor a mask or a sculpture), or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.”
-Exodus 20:4–6
I want to retell this sermon about Abraham in which he works in his father’s shop, there enters a man. The man asks for a heroic figurine to worship, for he considers himself a hero. Then, a poor woman enters and asks for a figurine of a poor woman to worship. At the end of the story, Abraham breaks and shatters all the ex-votos. The religious moral of the story is to portray Abraham as the leader of the new monotheistic religion and to emphasize that we worship a wise and eternal God, not “a day-old” sculpture. The Greeks made their gods in their image, as did the Christians. When we project our own positions and dispositions onto a worship figurine, we create a closed circle with ourselves. By worshiping it, we limit ourselves and thus sin against the eternal God.
When we transcend not only somatization/materialization but also reach toward the sublimation of eternal revelation, we avoid reducing ourselves to mere “sculptures and masks.” This is in line with the Third Commandment:
4.1
To crown a static, inanimate, younger than yourself, concept will lead you to turn away from your intelligence and potential, into a dead-end. My craft is a technology that’s not only technical, it transends relationships, between the elusive spirit/ being that evolves and changes and the material that aspires to set and fixate itself. In the play The dibbuk, Hanan, the soul who is possesing his beloved Lea, is telling her that ectually, she is his Dibbuk, because of his obsession with her. The reversal of roles is fascinating. Life and death are glued together and this reminds
Is the Dibbuk a tumtum? A woman-man mashed together, an uber powerful union, as the hermaphrodite in alchemy.
5. Aschenbach’s chasing of Tadzio resonates with the implications of the golem myth, for the golem is a lifeless creation given form and purpose by its maker but is devoid of autonomous agency. Similarly, The act of creation- a divine privilege in religious traditions—offers power but also underscores human finitude. The golem narrative warns against the moral dangers of assuming the role of creator, a caution mirrored in Aschenbach’s fall to self-destruction. The arc of happenings takes the reader from igra rama to bira amikta (Aramaic for): from a lofty height to a deep abyss.
7. The Golem Horror Picture Show
The Golem is a creature from Jewish folklore, said to be modeled from clay by Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague to protect the Jewish community. Brought to life by inscribing the Hebrew word “emet” (truth) on its forehead, the Golem would obey its creator’s commands. When it became uncontrollable, the Rabbi erased the first letter, leaving “met” (death), which took the life force from it.
In Hebrew, there’s a phrase that describes a shift in power dynamics: “the dummy rose against its maker.” In Rocky Horror, Frank-N-Furter’s creation of Rocky, intended to be the perfect, unfatigable companion, is doomed by his own desires. In the end, the corrupt pansexual alien meet their death by the rye gun of Riffraff, which is no less than Richard O’Brien, the writer of the film. Who shoots his own prevertions.
MIT Anacdote
The myth of the Golem could be seen as an analogy to artificial intelligence. four Jewish scientists who have worked at MIT’s AI laboratory, claimed to be descendants of the Rabbi of Prague. According to legend, the lifeless Golem remains in the attic of the synagogue in Prague, and the Rabbi composed a verse that could revive the Golem at the judgment day. This secret verse was passed down from father to son during their Bar-Mitzvah. At MIT, Each wrote down the secret verse they had received. When they compared the notes, they discovered the exact same verse. These scientists believe they were the ones destined to bring the Golem back to life.
8. The Sin of The Calf (8.1)
Bronzino, man, I thought you painted, in the middle between the crouthing Pygmillion and his beloved golem, the golden calf from the mount Sinai revalation. You know, when the Israelites waited for Moses to come back from his one on one with god, and they thought he ditched them so they started to worship this golden calf sculpture (Apis). When Moses came back, he thought, ‘what the heck you guys’, burnt the golden calf in a fire, grounded it and forced the Israelites to drink it.
8.1
7.1
“ Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure
And sensual daydreams to treasure forever”
9.Conclusions and The Fable Of The Jewish Shopkeeper
I explored the costs of transcending human limits in the pursuit of art, Love, and immortality. I showcase obsession and creation in various compositions. These works reveal how the desire to immortalize the fleeting often leads to ruin, emptying both the creator and the subject. The paper reflects on the artist’s gaze as a source of inspiration and destruction, the ephemeral and the eternal.
The Fable
There was a Jewish man living in a small town who opened his shop every single day, even though hardly anyone came to buy anything. One day, someone asked him:
“Why do you keep opening the shop? Nobody ever comes in to buy anything!”
The man replied:
“I don’t open the shop to do business with people. I open the shop to do business with God.”
I sit in the store, I mean, the poser sit, I, idealy, stand. I draw my models, this is what I do. I get an inch closer to the truth, with every drawing I make, but you know they say that even the lousiest poet is honest. I open the shop each day I draw- preseverance, stubbornness and instinct characterise this process.
Automatizaton in drawing the figure: Is the drawing the golem? Or maybe I am the automaton?
If I automate the same procedure, although the quality of the spirit is that it is transforming all the time, am I giving life. Could the artwork be a surrogate of life. How can we transcend through matter. We are altered in every fleeting moment, in our own perception, psyche and physically. Even if I step in the same river, I never step it twice the same way. I play with the documentation of the psychology of men, the sublimation of a relationship, the substation of spirits and a classical, yet subjective, idealisation. The illusion that the fixated image will represent a perfect world, is the representaion of the ‘mask and sculpture’ prohibition. Like god, we as artist make cosmos from chaos, and even though ‘our god’ is one, he goes by many names.
And I would like to conclude with another quote from Venice:
“Strange hours, indeed, these were, and strangely unnerving the labour that filled them! Strangely fruitful intercourse this, between one body and another mind! When Aschenbach put aside his work and left the beach he felt exhausted, he felt broken-conscience reproached him, as it were after a debauch.”
Bibliography
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann, 1999, Penguin Classics
Death in venice, , 1988, Keter Publishing, Jerusalem
the gaze, jean paul sarter, resling publishing
Symposium, Plato
