File talk:Potiphar s Wife 1970 07.jpg
While visiting me at le Cite International des Arts in Paris, the sculptor and protege of Elaine de Kooning, Barabara Schwartz posed in November 1970 for Potiphar's wife in "Joseph Accused", the first of three large grattage works, 103'x78", that include "Joseph in the Pit" and "Jacob in Mourning" which comprise the triptych "Joseph in Egypt". These three works and an image of "Joseph Accused" covered by a canopy with cut-out "windows" that blocked out the top of Barbara's bust leaving only the triangular shape of her throne to become the hind-quarters of the sphinx in "Joseph in the Sphinx" were placed on a four-page ad spread in "Art in America", February 1982.
Hearing about her death by cancer at fifty-eight in 2006, I added this bitter eulogy to the beginning of Chapter 4 in "Portraits & Passages", abbreviated here, which tells our story seen through the one I painted from the Bible: Had it not been for her bringing a copy of Thomas Mann's "Joseph and His Brethren" to Paris leading to her modeling for 'Potiphar's Wife' in "Joseph Accused" all her superficial radiance would evaporate into the vacant grey of indifference... If she is to be remembered, Barbara Schwartz becomes the image I make her, fusing seamlessly the real and the fictive on the throne of spitefulness. She had cast me into the Pit where I suffer suppression from her circle then in powere. But already, I had immortalized her in her greatest and truest role.
- Richard Rappaport
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