AMIKAM GOLDMAN

Concentration camps have rules, dictators have rules; even the art-world has rules. Lurie has survived them all; his art is a straightforward portrayal of what he has seen around him. And he has seen a lot. It has been said that all modern art in America is about anxiety, the anxiety that comes with ''freedom.'' Lurie's art has the distinction of knowingabout both freedom and imprisonment, and it is no wonder his work differed from that of the same generation on these shores. Most American artists of the Forties were fresh out of art school. Lurie was fresh out of Buchenwald. Maybe the museums and galleries will not grind to a halt if they continue to pass Lurie by. But they will cheat themselves of a vital part of history of the Lower East Side pre-East Village scene, of the milieu of the expiring AbstractExpressionism of that time. And NO!art, the seemier antecedent to Pop Art; that samePop Art which made light of the commercial horror it plunged the art world into.
See: Sarah Schmerler, Bleed show introduction, 1997an art critic living in Brooklyn. She teaches at The New School in Manhattan.