Icon of Loss: The Haunting Child of Samuel Bak

"There is no known vocabulary that can describe what Samuel Bak has created here. It is almost beyond mere metaphor to say that his hand is driven by some divine force. Never before has pity been so twinned with outrage, or visionary image-making with unforgiving historical fact." -Cynthia Ozick In this examination of Samuel Bak's most recent collection of paintings inspired by the little boy from the famous Stroop Report photo taken in the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943, Gary A. Phillips and Da…