BOROFSKY, JONATHAN

BOROFSKY, JONATHAN (1942– ). U.S. artist. Borofsky was born in Boston. At age eight he began studying art with Albert Alcay, a Holocaust survivor. Early questions about the number tattooed on Alcay's arm would later influence the subject matter of Borofsky's art. Borofsky received a B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University (1964) and an M.F.A. from Yale University (1966). After moving to New York in 1966, Borofsky became interested in Conceptual Art. Since 1969 he has been numbering his work. This ongoing project began as a stack of paper, but has expanded to all of his creations. These coded references to the tattoos of Holocaust inmates now reach the millions. Borofsky describes his art as autobiographical. His dreams became source material in 1973, often including recurring figures such as the Hammering Man, Man with a Briefcase, and the Running Man. First appearing around 1973, the anxiety-ridden Running Man serves as a surrogate self-portrait. Borofsky's 1977 drawing Hitler Dream (no. 2454568. shows a Running Man being chased by one of Hitler's soldiers accompanied by text that begins "I dreamed that some Hitler-type person was not allowing everyone to roller-skate in public places." This was Borofsky's first overt reference to the Holocaust. Since then he has readily identified himself as Jewish and often uses the Holocaust as a subject. His multimedia site-specific installations employ myriad images, including drawings, sculptures, and found objects. He has had several international solo exhibitions at such venues as the Israel Museum (1984) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (2000). From 1969 to 1977 Borofsky taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1976 he moved to California, and since 1977 he has been teaching at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Simon, "An Interview with Jonathon Borofsky," in: Art in America, 69/9 (1981), 156–67; M. Rosenthal and R. Marshall, Jonathan Borofsky (1984); Z. Amishai-Maisels, Depiction and Interpretation (1993). (Samantha Baskind (2nd ed.)