Kitaj in his Los Angeles home.
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Kitaj: 'If Not, Not'
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The first part of the show consisted of examples of Kitaj's work that contain references to the art of the past. 'If Not, Not', was inspired by a mysterious landscape by the 16th-century Venetian Giorgione, and is one of Kitaj's most important paintings. T.S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', which was written in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, is also an important source for this picture.
The picture takes as its theme the murder of the European Jews during the Holocaust. The Auschwitz gatehouse, at the top left, looms over an apparently idyllic landscape. The man in bed with the child, a small detail on the left-hand side, is a self-portrait. Caught in a thicket in the centre of the painting is a ram, a traditional symbol of sacrifice.
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