R B Kitaj

while surfing art on the internet I (re)discovered RB Kitaj. I've seen one or two of his paintings somewhere, without knowing anything about him...
What an interesting individual....



some links
http://www.geocities.com/pantherprousa/bacon/kitaj_bacon.html

http://www.glyphs.com/art/kitaj/

http://www.southern.net/wm/paint/auth/kitaj/

and a quote from glyphs.com
Kitaj is aware that a Jew who paints figures has crossed a proscribed line, has violated a rule against making graven images. He even dares to contemplate painting God, a transgression of Hebraic law, although not of Christian (thus, for encouragement in this exercise, he turns to William Blake and various Italian painters). Perhaps as a kind of compensation for such defiance, Kitaj also spends a good deal of time concentrating on Cabbalism, the mystical study of the Hebraic scriptures which emerged among Jews in Spain in the 1300s. The Cabbalist employs the Hebrew alphabet as a lens through which to glimpse the Names of God, a means of piercing the veil of the sacred. Kitaj is especially concerned with a variation on Cabbalism developed by the Spanish Mystc Ramon Lull, whose aim was to categorize, and thereby comprehend, the entire cosmos.

Hm... I would have never figured it out myself...