How we cite our quotes: (Page.Paragraph)
Quote #1
'Asher, it isn't nice to draw your mama like this.'
'But it was how you feel in the boat, Mama.'
(7.5-6)
From early on, Asher and his mother have a fight about how he should draw. She demands "pretty things" and he returns her demand by painting things as he feels them, which is often humorous or twisted.
Quote #2
'Asher, are you drawing pretty things? Are you drawing sweet, pretty things?'
I was not drawing pretty things. I was drawing twisted shapes, swirling forms, in blacks and reds and grays. I did not respond.
(17.15)
Asher refuses his mother's demands to paint pretty things. In so doing, he begins to develop his style, which is dark and meditative in contrast to his mother's requests for birds and flowers.
Quote #3
'Here are the birds and flowers, Mama.'
She blinked her eyes.
'I made the world pretty, Mama.'
She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
(19.8-11)
When Asher finally concedes to his mother's request to paint something pretty, she's too grief-stricken by the death of her brother to notice or care. Just goes to show that you can't win 'em all, but you can catch 'em all…if we're talking about Pokémon.
Quote #4
'I don't want to make pretty drawings, Mama.' (28.8)
This is essentially Asher Lev's credo. He doesn't want to make pretty drawings: he wants to paint the world as he sees it, which is a place full of pain and suffering and indecision.
Quote #5
I drew a book burning. Then I drew a pile of books burning. Then I drew houses burning. Then I drew the Ladover building burning. And my mother was no longer asking me what it all meant. (121.2)
When Asher learns about the tragedies in the past of the Jewish people, he begins to draw things on fire. Fire and destruction remain themes in his paintings—super un-pretty themes. This is another example of Asher painting things as he feels them, rather than as they really are.
Quote #6
'I made the Rebbe look like a being from the Other Side.' (125.8)
When the Rabbi orders Aryeh to go to Vienna, Asher gets pretty furious about it. He ends up taking his anger out on the Rabbi by drawing an unflattering caricature of him in his Chumash. This is one really sacrilegious thing to do, and it causes quite a stir in the Ladover community.
Quote #7
'That is Hopper's white sunlight. One day you will understand the sunlight in Monet and Van Gogh and Cézanne.' (252.1)
Jacob Kahn says this to Asher as they're hanging out in Provincetown and looking at some sunlight on the beach. Asher is slowly learning how to see things as an artist sees them, which is very different from how a scientist, anthropologist or apparently a religious Jew sees them.
Quote #8
The only honest way to paint today was either to represent objects that were recognizable, and at the same time integral to the two-dimensional nature of the canvas, or to do away with objects entirely and create paintings of color and texture and form, paintings that translates the volumes and voids in nature into fields of color, paintings in which the solids were flattened and the voids were filled and the planes were organized into what Hans Hofmann called 'complexes.' (253.3)
Breaking down how Abstract Expressionism works, Asher absorbs a lesson from Jacob Kahn on how the strange shapes in a piece of artwork can actually translate to real things found in the world. This is a good example of an artist's imagination interpreting reality in a powerful and unusual way, but it still doesn't explain that one Missy Elliott video.
Quote #9
I heard my mother and father. There was a quarrel. A man with a beard led me gently into a silver bird and sat with me through clouds. (281.3)
When Asher visits his mother and father in Vienna, he gets sick and hallucinates that God is guiding him through heaven. This fever-dream is also a nod to how potent his imagination is and how it could possibly land him in hot water when used to arrange oils on canvas.
Quote #10
Other Davids I had seen were small in size and represented David after the battle. This David was giant and represented the decision to enter the battle. The little Italian had effected a spatial and temporal shift that had changed the course of art. (312.4)
If there's one thing Asher Lev loves, it's European art. When Asher finally gets to see Michelangelo's David in the Louvre, he realizes how the sculptor had manipulated his medium to present the viewer with a completely different view of the story, one way in which imagination can affect reality. No big deal or anything.