The Star of David may look the same upside-down as it does right-side-up, but the same can’t be said of a painting by the American Color Field artist Morris Louis that implements the Jewish symbol, and for years has potentially been viewed in flipped-over form.
The work, now on display with the title “Man Reaching for a Star” in an exhibition at the Jewish Museum, was until recently referred to as “Untitled (Jewish Star).” The painting had been displayed in the museum under its previous title twice before, once in 1997 and again in an exhibition that ran for several years beginning in 2003. But during preparations for the current exhibition “Scenes From the Collection,” curators decided that a set of red chalk arrows drawn on the back of the work suggest that the orientation had been 180 degrees off.
“We got into this fascinating discussion, looking at this painting anew,” Claudia J. Nahson, a curator at the museum, said in a phone interview. Another curator, Stephen Brown, described a group standing around the painting in the museum’s storeroom, considering how the piece was originally intended to be shown.
The new orientation reveals what appears to be the abstract figure of a man reaching for the star, an image that carries weight for a painting that has been interpreted as a response to Nazi book burnings in the 1930s and to McCarthy-era efforts to suppress public figures perceived as Communist or leftist.
After further research, the curators discovered a brochure from a 1953 exhibition in Washington, D.C., that referred to a Louis painting called “Man Reaching for a Star.” Though the brochure did not include photographs, they determined that the painting was likely the same one as “Untitled (Jewish Star).”
Mr. Brown points out that the correct way to display abstract art is often debated, or considered open for interpretation. “It’s often difficult to know which way up the painting should be,” he said.
