The Staircase
/Ben-Zion Shechter
1988
American
Charcoal on paper
Gift of Laura Shechter, made possible by Harmon-Meek Gallery
Florida Southern College Permanent Collection FP.2017.17.1
There is something unsettling about this drawing by Shechter. What would appear at first to be a rather banal subject matter — a woman in a house looking upwards toward a staircase — seems instead to be a “genre scene” bathed in spooky narrative possibilities. Because the subject is so everyday, the very selection of this precise theme and this precise compositional moment by the artist suggests there is a lot more going on her than meets the eye. Enhanced by the grayscale, black-and-white nature of the drawing, we may perceive an almost cinematic effect, like we are looking at a still from a film. We are confronted with a female figure with her back turned toward us, such that we cannot see her face. She lifts her right arm to the back of her head, as she pauses mid-step to stare at the landing on the second floor of the house. Who is this woman? What has caused her to behave this way? What is she thinking? And what may await her should she climb the staircase? Is this were a movie, would it be a thriller or a comedy? Or something else entirely?