Lilith

Lilith was the original Bad Girl whose feisty spirit got her a reputation that stuck for millennia. Her bad press began when as Adam’s first wife she demanded sexual equality. Rebuffed, she took her case directly to God, who responded to her seductive powers by revealing His divine name. Speaking the name out loud earned her a ticket straight out of Paradise and into eternal exile. Then the stories began: She was the Mother of Demons, slayer of newborns, succubus; she was the Serpent in the Garden, the corruption of Babylon. She came to represent sex, indulgence, the animalistic and all that seduces men from the path of righteousness.

But the curious history of Lilith was far from over. What becomes a legend most isn’t mink, but a comeback. And in recent years, with little help from her friends, Lilith has made it at the way back from pariah to icon. With all the force of the return of the repressed she has entered the feminist pantheon, as goddess, exemplar of female strength, passionate and natural, keeper of dark mysteries. And as the literature on Lilith grows, her name appears with increasing frequency in wide variety cultural settings.

Currently she has lent her name to a show of contemporary paintings at The Work Space, an exhibition space on the premises of Dolgenos, Newman & Cronin, a law firm in Soho. “Lilith,” featuring one work by each of six painters, is curated by Stephanie Theodore.

“My interest in Lilith began when I saw a wonderful painting by Melissa Meyer in The Jewish Museum,” Theodore tells The Jewish Week. “The artist’s statement mentioned Lilith as Adam’s first wife. I was smitten! Some research... brought me in contact with the story of a strong, smart and willful woman who felt entitled to status as Adam’s equal.

“Similarly,” she continues, “the artists in this exhibition are working with the language of modernist abstraction, and are not impeded in their progress by their predecessor’s gender. They rule their domain, that of painting.”

Commenting on the group of abstract artists in the show, Theodore says, “The proliferation of abstraction closely tied to post-modem cultural criticism has produced paintings of plastic beauty, like attractive strangers who avoid your gaze. As a teenage museum goer, I basked in the subjective sublime of classic post-war American painting.

“Where is that today?... I realized that there are several contemporary painters whose work has the capability to push emotional buttons, to evoke strong reactions in response to their visceral nature. I also realized that all these painters happened to be women and happened to be Jewish.”

The artists which Theodore has chosen are all well known on the New York gallery scene. And all have a physical, expressive, unironic relationship to the act of painting. Each in her own way has made the language of abstraction something poetic and deeply personal. It would be a mistake to approach this show as a game of “Looking for Lilith.” As usual, she can’t be caught. But in their willingness to risk uncharted depths of feeling, the artists whose work is here embody her spirit.

Perhaps the fiercest among all the works is Joan Snyder’s “Bones.” On a narrow wood panel, a blood red “sun” rises over a wintery white field incised with deep cuts. Radiating circular bands around the “sun” carry not light, out sliced fragments of simulated bone, which descend to line the landscape like gravestones. The effect is both bleary; and bracing, a reminder that the world is renewed by continually dismembering itself. And it recalls the work of another dark goddess, Kali, who bestows both life and death, as nature’s primal force.

Melissa Meyer’s painting, in its unfixed, fleshy greenness, seems to allude to another, more generative, aspect of nature. Fluid brush strokes and transparent washes create a crowded undergrowth of shape-shifting forms. Dominated by soft greens melting into pinkish tans, this is a world between the vegetative and the bodily. Phantom personages arise from painterly would be at home here, where categories, like “human” and “nature” are liquefied, and where the gesture a body makes can describe paradise.

Cora Cohen’s painting looks like nature under the influence of a propulsive, furious energy. Scumbled, spilled and blotted pigment, stuck with the debris of paint skins, form a rough figural presence. The impulse for the raw patches of lime green, ochre, and deep red to fly apart is barely matched by the impulse to cohere. The chthonic spirit that informs this painting delights in its own raw display, seeking an explosive release from the depths.

This movement of descent and release find expression in Louise Fishman’s “Lifting, Moving, Placing.” On an expanse of bluish gray, she has located centrally the outline of an inverted ziggurat, in ragged cadmium red brush strokes. With each thick step down, the red becomes duller and less distinct, until it reaches its nadir. The trip back up reverses the pattern, each step growing brighter and stronger. The effect is that of an abstract emblem standing for the progress of some un-nameable trauma, which seen at a distance takes on the feeling of triumph.

This passage between states of being, expressed in purely “Baby Blue.” Massive vertical and horizontal strokes build a gate between worlds. Thick bars of color, some pale and translucent, some deep and luminous, create a tight matrix of barriers and apertures. There is a sense of entrapment behind darkly silhouetted members, which gives way to zones of color. For all its architectonic geometry, this painting inspires the notion that even the strongest of structures is liminal, dissolvable when flooded with light.

The earliest name of Lilith, in Sumerian, is related to the word for air or spirit. The large central square of Harriet Korman’s painting is filled with an airy image of bulbous forms, defined by gray outlines, nudged close to each other. Surrounding this nearly pictographic image is a narrow strip with blocks of blacks and grays, marked with a scratchy calligraphy. This raw “outside world” borders a calm, cream-colored precinct. In this silent space is a realm of existence before language, before thinking. In its fecund emptiness lies a kind of freedom.

"Lilith,” runs through Oct. 11 at The Work Space, 96 Spring St. (212) 219-2790. Reception, Sat. Sept. 13, 5-7p.m. Hours: Until Labor Day, Mon.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-5:30p.m.; after Labor…