Biography

Born and raised in the Bronx, Raphael Eisenberg's intensive studies in the arts were centered in N.Y. at the Art Students League and the B.F.A. program at Cooper Union, completed in 1967. A lifetime of painting and drawing primarily in N.Y. has also included traveling widely and extended residencies and work abroad. In 1977 he curated an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum entitled "Chassidic Artists in Brooklyn",then a pioneering and new concept for the art world. Eisenberg traveled to Romania on a grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture at the end of the 70's. His work has been exhibited in various venues, including a survey of Jewish artists in the 90's at Brooklyn's Metro Tech Center, at the Brooklyn Museum's survey of Brooklyn artists, and at the National Academy of Design. An experienced draftsman, Raphael Eisenberg has taught drawing as a professor at Touro College in recent years. His work has been presented in seven one-man shows; among them two very large ones at the Brooklyn College Art Gallery and the Benjamin Cardozo Law School.

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The Boro Park Portraits
Paintings by Raphael Eisenberg
By Richard McBee

From the March 24, 2002 issue of the Jewish Press

Yisroel sits looking at us, impatient and itching to get up and leave. It was almost impossible to get this ten year old to sit still and when the artist, Raphael Eisenberg finally got him to settle down and pose for his portrait he was still playing games, making faces and generally acting like a healthy ten year old.

For Eisenberg that’s all part of the challenge and in fact one might say it is the substance of what his paintings are all about. He feels that painting is a reflection of how an artist perceives the world that is in front of him, not as a camera, but rather as a heart and a brain. There is an organic aspect of the artist’s perception in which his emotional response to each subject becomes an essential element in each painting.
The background brushstrokes are all vertical and slightly diagonal, leaning in towards the sitter in a feverish frenzy that reflects both the need to paint quickly when faced with an impatient subject and the self centered nature of all pre-adolescents. At the center of this motion is a boy of remarkable stability. The calm horizontal lines of his loose fitting tee-shirt contrast with the background as he sits looking wide eyed at the viewer, doing his best to be a good kid. We can sense so much about him because this portrait is actually depicting a child in the midst of becoming an adolescent and we can tell how he will grow into this oversize shirt and finally learn to sit comfortably in a grown-up chair.
Portraiture is one of the oldest expressions of the visual arts, dating at least to Hellenistic sculpture, Roman sculpted busts of emperors and Egyptian mummy portraits done in wax on the covers of sarcophagi. In the earliest examples the primary motivation was to record an image of the individual for posterity. While the role of the craftsman was to describe, nonetheless the hand of the artist was always discernible. A close examination of any portrait will reveal considerable filtering as to inclusion and exclusion of a myriad of details that determines whether the subject is presented in a sympathetic or critical light. Fine robes and stately settings lionize the Renaissance princes of Titian while a misty landscape and mysterious smile intrigue us with the Mona Lisa. Rembrandt’s closeness to his Jewish neighbors is reflected in the empathy and respect he shows depicting the communal leader and writer, Menassah ben Israel. Perhaps one of the earliest portraits done of Jewish subjects by a Jewish artist is the extended series done by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim of the Rothschild family in the 1830’s. He depicts them as impeccably dressed members of the elite in nineteenth century society. His artistic mandate is to celebrate and honor his powerful patrons obviously well beyond mere description.
In the 1890’s Isidor Kaufmann traveled to Eastern Europe to record Jewish life there in a series of brilliant portraits. His approach to the Young Man in a Streimel is also unique. He has placed him, dressed in a stately bechesheh before what appears to be a paroches. Kaufmann, not a member of the Hasidic community, has manufactured an image of Eastern European religiosity for his largely secular Jewish audience. His depiction is respectful, empathic and yet ultimately distant.
Eisenberg’s portrait of a Rebbe is remarkably different. All of the symbols of rabbinic authority are present, again the bechesheh, the Hasidic hat and long white beard and the walking stick with a silver handle.

The artist has infused the sitter with a regal presence allowing him to totally dominate the composition from the lower left, up to the top center and finally down to the table on which he rests his arm. As the Rebbe engages us with his constant gaze against an uncluttered background we are comfortable sitting across from him. Similar to the Chasidic teaching that one must connect with the essence of an individual beyond superficial titles or status, Eisenberg began this painting by removing from his mind any preconceptions about a rebbe. By avoiding the “Rebbe Painting” formula, the artist has uncovered the confident bearing of an individual filled with wisdom, Torah and real yichus.
Eisenberg will only work on a painting with the sitter present because it is his actual relationship with the sitter that determines the structure, tone and details of the painting, therefore each portrait in the Boro Park series is singular and unique, just like each individual.

Aaron, painted in 1997, is introspective, intelligent and poised for action in this extremely strong composition. While the simple shapes that make up the background contain him on all sides we sense that he will not remain seated for very long. The very pensiveness of the sitter is challenged by his folded hands, at rest and yet totally capable of action. His head is framed by his yarmulke and beard and firmly set atop his figure anchored in the center of the painting by the geometric shape of his white shirt. His tie cascades across his chest breaking into this powerful shape and carrying the background yellow into the tie and down across his lap below his hands. This kind of pictorial motion provides a wonderful tension to the inwardness of Aaron’s gaze. Eisenberg’s painting reflects the famous credo of the twentieth century master Paul Klee in the Creative Credo; “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather it makes visible” that which is essential and hidden in the subject.
“Portraits must contain a sense of encountering another human being, like two planets meeting” says Eisenberg. The surprise and discovery of such encounters is what animates his Boro Park portraits.

Benzion Miller, the chazan of the Beth El Synagogue in Boro Park is one of the few portraits Eisenberg has done of a well-known individual. The causal nature of this painting makes us feel as if we have just opened the door and found him sitting in our living room. He is relaxed, squeezed over to the right side perusing a sefer as he glances up at us in mild surprise. His powerful voice is alluded to by the vast expanse of white shirt that spans his chest and both arms. While a white shirt is surely not unusual in Boro Park, in this painting our knowledge of who the sitter is informs our visual understanding of the painting. Already we are interpreting the portrait in a personal and emotional way, just as the artist has when he first encountered the sitter.
Eisenberg has been living in Boro Park for more than ten years, painting cityscapes and landscapes both in the neighborhood and all around the city. Aside from continuing on the portrait series, he teaches at the local branch of Touro College and the Brilliant Strokes Art School in Boro Park. This small selection of paintings from Raphael Eisenberg’s Boro Park Portraits is meant to illustrate the diversity and range that portrait painting can provide. His goal in making his work as intense as possible, reflecting a fundamental connection with the Jewish life around him, can be summed up in a the legendary statement by the nineteenth century American landscape painter, Albert Pinkham Ryder; “What good is it to get the clouds right and miss the thunder!”

Exhibitions

2002: Brooklyn College Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2001: Café Bondi, NYC

1998-99: Riverdale YMHA-YWHA, Bronx, NY,

1997: Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY, Through Eisenberg’s Eyes

History

Born in 1944 in New York, NY, United States

1976, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

1967, B.F.A., School of Art and architecture, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York, NY

1956-61, Art Students League, New York, NY