Susan Bee Paints the Spaces Between People

Susan Bee, ?Ahava, Berlin.?
In many ways, “Criss Cross: New Paintings,” Susan Bee’s current exhibit at Accola Griefen Gallery, has its origins in her 2006 exhibit, “Seeing Double: Paintings by Susan Bee and Miriam Laufer.” “Seeing Double” was a mother-daughter dialog between Bee and Laufer, who died in 1980. “Criss Cross” also begins with Laufer, through a painting titled “Ahava, Berlin.”

Susan Bee, ?Ahava, Berlin.?
In the painting Bee stands in front of the Berlin Jewish Kinderheim (orphanage) where her mother lived from 1927 through 1934, before heading to Palestine. Both of Bee’s parents were from Berlin, and landed in Palestine as teenagers. The scarred walls of the old Kinderheim seem to reflect the scars inflicted by such a childhood, and the importance of this mother-daughter relationship as a source of Bee’s creative vision.
Much of Bee’s work is about relationships. Carl Jung wrote that the world of women is the world of relationship, what he called Eros, a great binder or psychic relatedness. Jung defined Eros as the connecting principle that fueled human relationships, as opposed to Freud, who thought of Eros as a sexual principle. In our politically correct world, the value of women as the carriers of relationships has been sadly dismissed.
Susan Bee is a brilliant writer — she founded the M/E/A/N/I/N/G anthology — along with Mira Schor, but also a psychologist of the painterly realm. Bee explores the spaces between the people as well as their psychic interiority. She paints her subject’s fixed gazes like deer in the headlights. Many of the couples in her paintings, whether of the same sex or the opposite sex, seem to come from film noir stills.
“I am creating these paintings as spaces for a drama to take place,” Bee recently told Artslant. “The figures are actors and actresses in a stage that I am setting up for them to play out their roles.”
The real nature of the relationships in Bee’s paintings seems to exist in the space around the figures. Much has been written in modern psychology about the interactive field, and field dynamics. Bee paints the dynamism of the interactive field and we see the energetic component in bold relief. The space around the figures is often applied with thick paint that does not resemble the paint handling used to create the figures. Bee’s application captures a palpable energy. This critic can think of no other artist who paints the way Bee does. It is well worth a trip to the gallery to experience these works first hand — reproductions do not capture their energy.
Again the near the door of the gallery there is a small work titled “Death in Venice,” from 2011. The painting shows a funeral gondola floating in a canal with an angel overhead. The work is a tribute to Emma Bee Bernstein, Bee’s daughter, who died several years ago in Venice. Bee’s dreamlike picture references the spirituality of Chagall, while tying a haunting umbilical cord back to “Ahava Kinderheim.” Bee, a master psychologist as well as painter, captures all of the complexity of these relationships, and we are haunted by her work.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
- 4
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion The ADL reversed its support for Trump’s student deportations. You should too
-
Fast Forward Senate rejects Bernie Sanders’ proposal to block some weapons sales to Israel
-
Fast Forward Sotheby’s to auction earliest known kiddush cup
-
Opinion Trump’s new tariffs on Israel are a BDS dream come true
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.