A Woman's Voice in a Man's Mouth: The Sarah Paintings of Richard Mcbee

Abstract

For the body of work called “Sarah’s Trials,” Richard McBee, artist, writer and Orthodox Jew, transformed his examination of the dysfunctional marriage of Abraham and Sarah into sixteen large oil paintings, arranged as eight diptychs, each more than twelve feet across. In order to present the narrative from Sarah’s point of view, McBee delves into traditional sources, including many of the midrashim that, for Orthodox Jews, are almost inseparable from the biblical narrative itself. Pairing the paintings with texts emerging from these sources, McBee creates an imagined paraphrase of Sarah’s observations. The resulting images become a visual midrash on the subversive and creative role played by the two women in the triangular relationship joining Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Nothing is left out. For starters, McBee pictures the idols that Abraham is said by a well known midrash to have smashed in his father’s shop as female fertility goddesses. “For Abraham,” says McBee, “the primitive, sensual feminine had to be destroyed.” McBee’s paintings take a critical view of the narrative, including the akedah—the story of the Binding of Isaac—and what McBee calls “the ultimate insult to Sarah’s memory,” Abraham’s bedding down with the woman who had made her miserable for so many years. According to McBee, it was his prurient interest in the scandal of the narrative that drew him to it. Then, fascinated by other aspects of the story, he devoted several years to studying the text and making art about it. The dysfunctional family drama has not ceased to smolder Abraham, who perceives Sarah’s legendary beauty as a liability, puts his concern for his own safety above hers and subjects his wife to the danger of rape and adultery. Sarah gives Hagar, a younger servant woman, to her husband. Abraham absconds with Isaac without informing his wife about his intension to sacrifice their beloved son.