Inside Sliced Corpses, Holes of Hope
Hyman Bloom’s New York Times obituary opens with a fantastically backhanded compliment.
A mystical and reclusive painter who for a brief time in the 1940s and ’50s was regarded as a precursor to the Abstract Expressionists and one of the most significant American artists of the post-World War II era, died on Wednesday in Nashua, N.H.
How did Bloom turn from art-world darling to apostate? And did he really deserve such a snarky obituary?
If you’ve seen any of Bloom’s goriest paintings, you might be unsurprised, even relieved, to find his art buried in obscurity. “A Matter of Life and Death,” a 2020 exhibition of Bloom’s paintings at the Boston MFA, was filled with depictions of decaying corpses and bloody autopsies. The works might have reminded you, like one of my fellow visitors, of the gratuitous violence of the TV series Dexter. Turning your face away from the canvases, you too might have explained: “I don’t want to know a mind like that!”
I’d like to show you some paintings which might lead you to reconsider, maybe even catch a glimpse of beauty behind the blood.
