Double Ode, 2008/15
Mixed media, found objects
25 x 30 x 7 inches
In remembrance of the artist’s parents. The wall text reads: neither a lullaby nor a storm
Collection of the artist

This double portrait of the artist’s parents takes its name from a poem by the twentieth-century Jewish American poet Muriel Rukeyser, in which she warns against forgetting: 

Black parental mysteries groan
and mingle in the night.
Something will be born of this.
Pay attention to what they tell you to forget
Pay attention to what they tell you to forget
Pay attention to what they tell you to forget

In this stanza, Rukeyser seems to compare poems to children, both born of “black parental mysteries” and bearing responsibility for remembrance. The antique fencing masks and the text beneath them—neither a lullaby nor a storm—suggest that Bart’s parents defied easy classification.

Natalie and Mort Levine deeply influenced the trajectory of Harriet Bart’s artistic practice. Her mother taught her to sew, embroider, and knit, while her father instilled in her a reverence for words, reading, and books. She would adapt both of these quiet, reflective activities to poetic and experimental ends.

Publication:

  • Abracadabra and Other Forms of Protection, Laura Wertheim Joseph editor and curator, Weisman Art Museum

Exhibitions: