Skip to main content
The Visit from the Second World, along with a number of drawings, was a precursor for the Patriarch of Moscow on a Visit to Jerusalem, 1975, formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Lugano, Switzerland. The subject matter and composition of both paintings are related, but with notable differences. When Levine first visited Israel around 1960, East Jerusalem was still under Jordanian rule. Although this was not the case after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Levine recalled that during his first visit, his observations of East Jerusalem had been restricted to the view from his hotel window. As a result, in The Visit from the Second World, the artist chose to give the viewer a vantage point slightly above and looking down upon the religious procession, while the later and larger canvas depicts the procession as if the viewer is standing and watching from the sidelines. Levine was also more specific about certain details in the Patriarch of Moscow on a Visit to Jerusalem, even using Hebraic captions to ensure recognition of key figures and buildings. In The Visit from the Second World, the only recognizable portrait is that of the central figure, Patriarch Pimen, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1971 until 1990. Levine described his first painting as “more improvised, more free-form in handling, and not nearly as large.” [2]
The artist prepared his canvas with a white ground and applied his paints using brushes and occasionally a palette knife, in colors mixed as well as straight from the tube. The paint is at times built up with impasto, sometimes lean and almost scraped onto the canvas. Levine’s particular use of active brushwork suggests shifts in focus as the viewer looks at the work. The bright red fezzes of the men dressed in Ottoman garb, holding staves, establish a visual rhythm throughout the composition, and in the foreground their distinctive headwear flattens into something like a red carpet under Pimen’s feet. The dominant color is black, from the clerics’ robes, but singular strokes of strong green and yellow activate the composition. The spandrels of gold and white highlights, especially as seen in the Patriarch’s robes, suggest a type of white writing that contrasts brilliantly against the black. There is not a single female in the crowd. The black-robed priests are chanting; several seem to be eyeing something or someone out of the corners of their eyes. In the far right corner is a man dressed in a traditional white robe and headscarf, which suggests he is Jordanian, or an Arab.
It is impossible to know what the Patriarch is thinking as he makes a gesture of blessing with his right hand while holding his crosier in his left. Pimen wears a white, bejeweled miter, shaped like a bulbous crown and topped with a standing cross, indicating his temporal authority as bishop. The crosier he holds has a top composed of a pair of sculptured serpents or dragons with their heads curled back to face each other and a small cross between them, representing the bishop’s diligence in guarding his flock. In contrast to his formal regalia, Pimen’s aviator-style sunglasses strike a contemporary and almost comical note. His eyes, and therefore his facial expression, are effectively hidden. By depicting a religious leader as unseeing or impervious to what others are seeing, Levine establishes some level of doubt in the viewer’s mind as to the advisability of putting your faith in such a person’s spiritual leadership.
As a young man, Levine had chosen not to undertake his bar mitzvah and for many years was fairly secular in his outlook. Upon the death of his father in 1939, Levine began to reexamine his Jewish identity and to paint Jewish sages and events from the Old Testament, but still in terms of traditional art historical subject matter. By the 1970s, however, after his two trips to Israel, Levine said that he “had begun to think that in the time that’s left to me, there’s still room to develop some kind of iconography about my Jewish identity.” [3]
Notes:
[1] Levine quoted in Jack Levine and Stephen B. Frankel, ed. Jack Levine (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 119.
[2] Levine quoted in Jack Levine, 119.
[3] Levine quoted in Jack Levine, 125.
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement
Exhibition History1978-1979
Jack Levine Retrospective
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (11/8/1978-1/28/1979), Cat. No. 76
1996
Falk Visiting Artist Exhibition: Jack Levine
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC (3/1996-5/1996)
DepartmentCollection of Barbara B. Millhouse
The Visit from the Second World
Artist
Jack Levine
(1915 - 2010)
Date1974
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFrame: 54 1/2 × 63 1/2 in. (138.4 × 161.3 cm)
Image: 46 3/4 × 55 3/4 in. (118.7 × 141.6 cm)
SignedJ Levine
Credit LineCourtesy of Barbara B. Millhouse
Copyright© 2021 Estate of Jack Levine / Licensed by VAGA at Artist Rights Society (ARS), NY
Object numberIL2003.1.22
DescriptionJack Levine painted The Visit from the Second World in 1974, basing it on his visual memory of a religious procession he had witnessed on a trip to Israel two years earlier. “I took my wife with me when I made my second trip to Israel, so that she could see how wonderful Jerusalem was. Jerusalem is a jewel of a city, venerable and infinitely stratified with past cultures, crusades, invasions. Its crenellated walls hold endless varieties of churches, fortresses, and mosques, thrusting up spires and towers, domes and minarets. The Dome of the Rock glitters and Jerusalem’s stones are golden. As we entered the battlemented gates of the old city we heard the ringing of great bronze church bells and, drawing nearer, the thudding of great iron-tipped staves on the ancient paving. It is Pimen, the holy Metropolitan of Moscow, who had come to take title to church properties of the surviving White Russians in the Holy Land.” [1]The Visit from the Second World, along with a number of drawings, was a precursor for the Patriarch of Moscow on a Visit to Jerusalem, 1975, formerly in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in Lugano, Switzerland. The subject matter and composition of both paintings are related, but with notable differences. When Levine first visited Israel around 1960, East Jerusalem was still under Jordanian rule. Although this was not the case after the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Levine recalled that during his first visit, his observations of East Jerusalem had been restricted to the view from his hotel window. As a result, in The Visit from the Second World, the artist chose to give the viewer a vantage point slightly above and looking down upon the religious procession, while the later and larger canvas depicts the procession as if the viewer is standing and watching from the sidelines. Levine was also more specific about certain details in the Patriarch of Moscow on a Visit to Jerusalem, even using Hebraic captions to ensure recognition of key figures and buildings. In The Visit from the Second World, the only recognizable portrait is that of the central figure, Patriarch Pimen, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1971 until 1990. Levine described his first painting as “more improvised, more free-form in handling, and not nearly as large.” [2]
The artist prepared his canvas with a white ground and applied his paints using brushes and occasionally a palette knife, in colors mixed as well as straight from the tube. The paint is at times built up with impasto, sometimes lean and almost scraped onto the canvas. Levine’s particular use of active brushwork suggests shifts in focus as the viewer looks at the work. The bright red fezzes of the men dressed in Ottoman garb, holding staves, establish a visual rhythm throughout the composition, and in the foreground their distinctive headwear flattens into something like a red carpet under Pimen’s feet. The dominant color is black, from the clerics’ robes, but singular strokes of strong green and yellow activate the composition. The spandrels of gold and white highlights, especially as seen in the Patriarch’s robes, suggest a type of white writing that contrasts brilliantly against the black. There is not a single female in the crowd. The black-robed priests are chanting; several seem to be eyeing something or someone out of the corners of their eyes. In the far right corner is a man dressed in a traditional white robe and headscarf, which suggests he is Jordanian, or an Arab.
It is impossible to know what the Patriarch is thinking as he makes a gesture of blessing with his right hand while holding his crosier in his left. Pimen wears a white, bejeweled miter, shaped like a bulbous crown and topped with a standing cross, indicating his temporal authority as bishop. The crosier he holds has a top composed of a pair of sculptured serpents or dragons with their heads curled back to face each other and a small cross between them, representing the bishop’s diligence in guarding his flock. In contrast to his formal regalia, Pimen’s aviator-style sunglasses strike a contemporary and almost comical note. His eyes, and therefore his facial expression, are effectively hidden. By depicting a religious leader as unseeing or impervious to what others are seeing, Levine establishes some level of doubt in the viewer’s mind as to the advisability of putting your faith in such a person’s spiritual leadership.
As a young man, Levine had chosen not to undertake his bar mitzvah and for many years was fairly secular in his outlook. Upon the death of his father in 1939, Levine began to reexamine his Jewish identity and to paint Jewish sages and events from the Old Testament, but still in terms of traditional art historical subject matter. By the 1970s, however, after his two trips to Israel, Levine said that he “had begun to think that in the time that’s left to me, there’s still room to develop some kind of iconography about my Jewish identity.” [3]
Notes:
[1] Levine quoted in Jack Levine and Stephen B. Frankel, ed. Jack Levine (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 119.
[2] Levine quoted in Jack Levine, 119.
[3] Levine quoted in Jack Levine, 125.
ProvenanceBarbara B. Millhouse, New York. [1]
Notes:
[1] Loan Agreement
Exhibition History1978-1979
Jack Levine Retrospective
The Jewish Museum, New York, NY (11/8/1978-1/28/1979), Cat. No. 76
1996
Falk Visiting Artist Exhibition: Jack Levine
Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, NC (3/1996-5/1996)
Status
Not on view