According to the great 20th-century rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, there are two types of ignorance: one dull, lazy, and uninquisitive, the other keen, curious, wise, and humble. It is this second sort of ignorance to which painter Aribert Munzner aspires when he modestly claims that he doesn’t know what he is doing. In actual practice, this “not knowing” is the source of his creativity; it means the artist gives up control over the work of art during its making, despite the appearance of the artist’s controlled, fastidious technique. The painting’s genesis evolves on its own terms while forming and taking shape, conceived of by Munzner as an almost mystical act — the artist being more of a participant in and a witness to this process as it develops, rather than being its director or master.
All of Munzner’s work over decades looks stylistically consistent, as if it were all part of one, larger, continuous work, and this impression is reinforced because they all have the same title, “Genesis,” often with the date or another descriptor. In some of the pieces the artist is
a miniaturist, as in Genesis—Microodrawing #2 from 1969, which measures under two inches and was probably executed with the aid of a magnifying glass. The tiny writhing forms seem almost like living organisms observed in a laboratory under a microscope. Alternately, some of his larger paintings seem almost cosmic in conception, resembling swirling planets and clusters of stars or nebulae observed through a telescope, as in Genesis—12-17-07. Still others seem like fireworks exploding.
If examined closely, the paintings reveal thousands of small, calligraphic strokes applied over and over again, rhythmically, layer upon layer upon layer, with brilliant, saturated, often complementary color. From these myriad small strokes slowly emerge larger, indefinite, biomorphic forms. The word form signifies the noun meaning shape, but also suggests formation, as in the verb “to form” — the way dew forms on grass.
Munzner claims that his drawings and paintings are not his “works” but rather his “play.” And many of them do indeed have a playfully stimulating, almost obsessive quality that they share with everyday idle, mindless doodling. But the rhythmic repetitive motions of the brushstrokes also suggest the recurring bowing or rocking of some Orthodox Jews during davening, the recitation of daily prayers, a practice believed to heighten concentration. It has been likened to the flickering of a flame by Jewish mystics, because of the enlivening of the spirit brought about through merger with the divine spark enkindled by intense prayer.
The technique also bears some resemblance to the rhythmic bilateral eye movements used in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, where it is thought to promote the integration of painful memories (these eye movements also happen when we dream). Some autistic people similarly sway rhythmically to soothe themselves or to block out distractions and overwhelming sensory experience.
The process Munzner uses calls to mind the myth of the creation of the vessels, representing the totality of the universe, taught by the 16th-century Jewish mystic Issac of Luria in the Kabbalistic tradition. To fashion the vessels, God had to withdraw into himself to make space for the creation, according to this narrative. But when God reentered the vessels, the radiance of his presence shattered them, and this corresponds to our shattered universe, direly in need of Tikkun Olam (“healing of the world” in Hebrew). It represents the reuniting of all those fragmented sparks of divinity, the ingathering and healing of the shattered universe, restoring it to the primordial state as it was before the beginning. This project takes place continuously and is never finished.
The theology of the redemption of fragments of divine light, based on Tikkun Olam, is given a new interpretation in the work (or the play) involved in Munzner’s process of painting. “The idea is not to think — I’m a vessel, like the vessels in Kabbalah, the shards — to gather the shards — and see if I can hear the sound of those shards tinkling their heavenly, angelic music.” Munzner’s unflagging optimism is inspiring and contagious, and it was perhaps this that made his decades of teaching so memorable for generations of students. Yet the artist, now 94, has certainly known suffering in his long life.
He was born in 1930 in Mannheim, Germany, to the family of a Jewish physician. The family relocated to Baghdad to escape the Nazis in 1937, eventually reaching the United States via South Africa during the 1940s. Munzner earned his master’s degree in 1955 at Cranbrook Academy, and took a teaching position in Minneapolis that same year, later becoming the dean of the college and retiring after 50 years in order to dedicate himself entirely to his art. In 2020, during the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the building in which Munzner’s studio was located tragically caught fire, and much of his work was destroyed.
Although Jewish, Munzner is drawn to all the mystical traditions, and operates, as he says, in the Zwischenraum, or “in-between spaces,” of the great world religions from Zen to Sufism. As he likes to point out, the mystical experience is remarkably similar in all these various religious traditions, although their explanation of what it means differs considerably.
Munzner wisely remains “unknowing” and forgoes these explanations and theologies in favor of the subjective experience of the unknowable, which reaches beyond all apparent distinctions made by theological systems and is revealed amid artistic genesis, which might be considered both revelatory and, for some Christians, sacramental. As the early 20th-century master of fantasy Paul Klee put it, “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”