To Tell Victims’ Story, a Holocaust Survivor Paints the Pain

FACES

“We are the survivors, we are the only ones who can tell the story.”

Such was the realization that came to Alice Lok Cahana, a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust, who had spent more than 10 years painting about her “happy American life” and trying to forget the pain of the concentration camps and the loss of family members including her mother and sister. Since that realization during a 1978 visit to her native country, Cahana has done her part to tell that story.

“I feel it deep in my heart that time is running out for us,” said Cahana, 61, a vibrant woman who repeatedly grasped the interviewer’s arm to emphasize her conviction. “There was a silent pledge that we all gave, that if we survived we would tell the story for those who did not. But I did not want to do it; it was too painful.

“Then when I went back to Hungary nobody cared, nobody missed us in our hometown, nobody remembered. I felt such a deep pain that I came back to America and for years just painted about it. And now I think probably the rest of my life I will continue.”

While the theme remains the same, Lok finds her current collage pieces--at Santa Monica’s Boritzer/Gray Gallery through Feb. 24--more personal than her previous Los Angeles show, a well-received touring exhibition that was at Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum in 1987.

As with that show, several of the works pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat whom Cahana credits with saving 100,000 people--including her own father--through his phony passport scheme. But others are in tribute to those Cahana knew personally--and lost--through the Nazi death camps.

“This is such a major piece for me because here these are people with names; their identity is given back to them,” Cahana says of “Savar--Auschwitz,” which lists all those from her hometown who did not survive.

Cahana admits there is still one subject she can not address in her art--the painful loss of her sister. She says she comes closest this time, however, through several abstract representations of stained glass windows. The works, she says, are “about that light that comes in, but still you can not see through,” just as she could never ascertain the fate of her sister, who disappeared after the two left Auschwitz.

Cahana insists that her paintings are not for therapeutic ends, and surprisingly, she seems without bitterness. Instead, she says, she wants her work to “give a message of hope to the next generations.”

“It’s really about remembering and taking the moral courage to stand up against evil,” she says. “It’s not about hatred, or ‘Oh, pity me, this is what I went through.’ It’s about survival, about having the moral courage to stand up against any oppressor, and to not ever let it happen again.”

THE SCENE

Art and politics meshed once again this week when the pro-Sandinista group Architects and Planners in Support of Nicaragua held “Celebration Amid Struggle: Art in Nicaragua” at Santa Monica’s Sherry Frumkin Gallery.

The event included an exhibition and sale of pastoral and whimsical Nicaraguan paintings, ceramics and weavings plus Andean music and short speeches on world peace by L.A. guerrilla artist Robbie Conal, Nicaraguan painter Armando Mejia and Alejandro Badano, former foreign ministry secretary general under the Sandinistas.

According to support group director Steve Kerpen, who called the event “a symbol for the peoples of the world and their desire for peace,” the benefit raised about $13,000 for the Nicaraguan artists and for his organization, which usually exhibits work at its NICA gallery in Topanga.

OVERHEARD

A highly visible Los Angeles artist, commenting on the local art scene: “It’s become very de rigueur for every hip Westside restaurant to have bad art by famous artists in it; and usually it’s pretty much just decorative art and not art about issues.”

DEBUTS

Polish artist Mikolaj Smoczynski has his first U.S. exhibition at San Diego State University Art Gallery, opening Friday through March 13. The show features a site-specific installation as well as large-scale photographs made in Poland after the declaration of Martial Law, and is the first project of a six-month SDSU residency for Smoczynski, who is a professor at Warsaw’s Curie University.

Five young local artists who create independent pieces but exhibit as a group under the name POM have their debut show at Santa Monica’s Walker and Walker Gallery through Feb. 16. POM is composed of James Michael Barry, Anthony Solano, Mark Housley, Terry Dernbach and George Keskeny, and was originally formed as a support group for the artists who refer to their works as “in your face” art that ignores popular contemporary criticism. The gallery plans to show solo exhibitions by POM artists, none of whom have formal art degrees, in coming months.

Other debuts include the first solo California show by Virginia-based painter Philip Geiger, Saturday through March 9 at Santa Monica’s Tatistcheff Gallery; the first L.A. solo show for New York figurative artist Patricia Hansen, Thursday through March 1 at La Cienega Boulevard’s George Mayers Gallery; and the first-ever L.A. exhibition for New Mexican painter Tom Palmore, at Santa Monica’s Sherry Frumkin Gallery through March 2. Palmore, whose works are part of a two-person show with his close friend and sometimes-collaborator Rudy Fernandez, has previously exhibited in New York and international shows including the Venice Biennale.

HAPPENING

More than 5,000 artworks by African-American artists will be on view Wednesday through next Sunday in “The Ninth Annual Artists’ Salute to Black History Month” at the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City.

The show, which is billed as the largest exhibiting event for black artists held in the United States, features several free events ranging from Saturday afternoon panel discussions on collecting to a Sunday afternoon quilt-making demonstration by the Afro-American Quilters of Los Angeles. Information: (213) 939-0250.

Barnsdall Park’s Municipal Art Gallery celebrates its 20th anniversary on Saturday with “mARTi gras,” a 9 p.m.-2 a.m. dance party at the gallery featuring live music plus special installations by artists Betye Saar and Jerry McMillan. Tickets are $50 and proceeds will go to the gallery. Reservations: (213) 257-6767.

A seminar on “The Place of African-American Artists in 20th-Century American Art History” is being held Saturday and next Sunday at the L.A. County Museum of Art, led by George Nelson Preston, art professor at New York’s City University. Cost is $70. Information: (213) 857-6139.

ELSEWHERE

More than 800 years of architecture at Paris’ famed Louvre Museum will be the focus of an exhibition at the Octagon in Washington running Wednesday through May 21. Organized by the American Architectural Foundation, “The Grand Louvre: Entering a New Century” features 150 drawings, architectural models, maps, engravings, paintings, rare books, sculpture, photographs and computer-generated graphics that illustrate the Louvre’s development from its days as a fortress in 1190 to its current museum renovations scheduled for completion in 1993. Information: (202) 638-3221

Works by more than 40 controversial artists including Barbara Kruger, Gran Fury, Robert Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Jock Sturges, Cindy Sherman and Bruce of Los Angeles are included in “The Body in Question,” a photographic survey inspired by recent controversies over nudity and sexuality in art. The show is at New York’s Aperture Foundation for Photography and the Visual Arts through March 2. Information: (212) 505-5555.

CURRENTS

Los Angeles artist Diana Thater, and New York artists Ronald Baron and Tyrone Mitchell have each been awarded $12,600 cash grants plus the chance to spend six months living and working at Claude Monet’s estate in Giverny, France, under the 1991 Reader’s Digest Artists at Giverny program. Thater, 28, is a video installation artist; Baron, 32, creates assemblage sculpture; and Mitchell, 46, is a sculptor. In addition, Los Angeles painter Sabina Ott received an honorable mention from the program, which had more than 600 applicants nationwide.

ETC.

Individuals and groups can now use the Art on Film computer database, an inventory of more than 17,000 international films and videos on the visual arts. The database was compiled by the Program for Art on Film, a joint venture of the J. Paul Getty Trust and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The service’s enrollment fee is $35 for individuals and educational institutions; $65 for commercial, government and other groups. Information: (212) 988-4876. . . . Holography artists Steve Weinstock of Los Angeles, Fred Unterseher of Glendale and Sally Weber of Ventura have won cash awards of $10,000 each from the New York-based Shearwater Foundation, marking the first time the annual international holography awards have all gone to Americans. The foundation also named two institutional grantees, the International Congress on Art in Holography ($10,000) and New York’s Museum of Holography ($25,000).