{"id":473,"date":"2014-07-01T11:53:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T15:53:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/?page_id=473"},"modified":"2014-07-08T10:34:08","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T14:34:08","slug":"birnbaum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/birnbaum\/","title":{"rendered":"Page-Birnbaum"},"content":{"rendered":"<script>fsg_json['fsg_post_473'] = [\n{id: 982, image: 'https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnabaum_SelfPortrait-copy-new-e1404489343745.jpg', extlink: '', thumb: 'https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnabaum_SelfPortrait-copy-new-e1404489310207-215x215.jpg', permalink: '<div class=\"galleria-layeritem\"><a title=\"Permalink\" href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/birnbaum\/#982\"><div class=\"galleria-link-bookmark\"><\/div><\/a><\/div>', layer: '<div class=\"galleria-infolayer\"><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\" style=\"padding-right: 20px;\"><h1>Aaron Birnbaum<\/h1><h1><i>Self-Portrait<\/i><\/h1><p class=\"galleria-info-description\">Oil on plywood<br\/>Gift of Pat O\u2019Brien Parsons, class of 1951, 2005.33.4<\/p><\/div><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\"><a title=\"Permalink\" href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/birnbaum\/#982\"><div class=\"galleria-link-bookmark\"><\/div><\/a><\/div><div class=\"galleria-layeritem\" style=\"padding-right: 20px;\"><\/div>'}\n];<\/script>\n<p><strong>Aaron\u00a0Birnbaum<\/strong>\u00a0(Ukrainian American, 1895\u20131998)<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_430\" style=\"width: 260px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-430\" class=\" wp-image-430   \" style=\"margin-top: 0px;margin-bottom: 0px\" alt=\"Aaron Birnbaum with painting\" src=\"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnbaum-Aaron-with-painting-250x237.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnbaum-Aaron-with-painting-250x237.jpg 250w, https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnbaum-Aaron-with-painting.jpg 263w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-430\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aaron Birnbaum with painting<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In 1995 the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City celebrated Aaron\u00a0Birnbaum&#8217;s one-hundredth birthday. The painter had been making art for thirty years, depicting memories of his childhood from the distance of two generations. As the images of his youth in Eastern Europe faded and receded in his mind they reappeared with new life and form in the growing body of paintings that\u00a0Birnbaum\u00a0executed from his studio apartment in Brooklyn.\u00a0Birnbaum\u00a0moved to New York from Ukraine in 1913 at the age of seventeen. Though he lived the majority of his life in the United States nearly all of the subject matter of\u00a0Birnbaum&#8217;s paintings is drawn from his memories of Eastern Europe. He avoids depicting the more troubling subject matter of his childhood\u2014the tailor shop where he worked 17-hour days, the anti-Semitism he faced from his peers, and the specter of war looming on the horizon\u2014preferring to preserve the sweetest memories. His pictures of farms, caf\u00e9s, ice skaters, children with their pets, and pastoral landscapes are highly individualistic, celebratory, and uncritical. There is a profound innocence in his figurations that is not naive in the slightest. People and animals float in the flattened space of an eternal present, neither receding into the past nor waiting for the future. In\u00a0Birnbaum\u2019s mind and in his paintings the space of years collapses, mingling with memories of yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 25%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-473 gallery-columns-4 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a data-postid=\"fsg_post_473\" data-imgid=\"982\" href='https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnabaum_SelfPortrait-copy-new-e1404489343745.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"215\" height=\"215\" src=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/files\/2014\/07\/Birnabaum_SelfPortrait-copy-new-e1404489310207-215x215.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-982\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-982'>\n\t\t\t\t<i>Self-Portrait<\/i>\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>\n\t\t\t<br style='clear: both' \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron\u00a0Birnbaum\u00a0(Ukrainian American, 1895\u20131998) In 1995 the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City celebrated Aaron\u00a0Birnbaum&#8217;s one-hundredth birthday. The painter had been making art for thirty years, depicting memories of his childhood from the distance of two generations. As &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/birnbaum\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2790,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"showcase.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-473","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2790"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/facesandfigures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}