Jonathan Leaman: In Conversation

Abstract

Jonathan Leaman (b. 1954, London) is a British painter who is represented in the Tate Collection. This article, the result of 15 years of his correspondence with art historian and museum curator Batsheva Goldman-Ida, focuses on a group of works by the artist from the last two decades. Leaman’s familiarity with major Kabbalah scholarship, combined with his wide knowledge of poetry and philosophy, enable him to engage in concepts related to Kabbalah and art in a discursive manner that is unparalleled in modern scholarship. This article showcases Leaman’s remarks with source material for the benefit of the reader. Leaman is one of the most important contemporary artists in the area of mystical art. His introduction to the public is long overdue. His paintings are an authentic, creative expression of the considered material filtered through the artist’s own self-awareness. Leaman’s keen interest in haecceity, hypostatization, and reification is juxtaposed with Goldman-Ida’s interest in object history and linguistic mysticism, and with key Hasidic and kabbalistic concepts such as worship through corporeality, divine contraction, and rectification.