Brodley Gallery

Written By: Henry Miller

Critics tell us how and why one artist differs from another. What art teaches, if it has a message, is that everyone should sing, dance, write, paint, shout for joy. This is the why and wherefore of Bezalel Schatz. His creations sing of metamorphosis, ablaze with the radiations of an inner molten sun, the subject matter seems bent under the impalpable weight of cosmic rays caught on the tip of the brush. His is the problem of every serious artist, to define without limit the true nature of reality. It is revelation at work moving with the speed of lightning. Illusion is dispelled, nothing is excluded. There are no facile escapes, he wastes no time in the vestibule of neurosis, knows all the schools, belongs to none. To be at home in one's medium today, one has to span with two feet the world of a past irrevocably dead and the world which will know no end. Schatz has assimilated what he needs of European culture. In his work are distinct reverberations from two sources of illumination, the Mediterranean world, and that of the Orient. His interest is in Man the creator for whom there is no heaven nor hell. Seeing is believing, we say. It would be truer to say "to see one must first believe." I know the man, I revere the artist, I see because I believe and because everything he says and does confirms and augments my faith.