Joe Malinconico

Paterson Press

PATERSON — Artist Said Elatab was so angry and hurt by the low turnout for his art exhibit at the Paterson Museum that he stacked about 20 of his paintings in his backyard last week and set fire to them.

Cynics might speculate that Elatab, a 59-year-old immigrant from Lebanon, was staging a publicity stunt. But he quickly dismissed any such suggestion.

“There was no plan,” Elatab asserted during an interview Wednesday evening in the yard where he burned the paintings. “I just snapped.”

Elatab, who said his main inspirations are Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, didn’t burn any of the 40 paintings that are on display at the museum. The works he set on fire came from his home on Main Street, a basement apartment that doubles as his studio.

Standing near the charred remains of several of his paintings, Elatab talked about how excited he was when he first got the offer to exhibit his work.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “An art show at a museum — that’s a really big deal.”

Elatab took out a full-page ad about the show in a local Arab newspaper and then distributed fliers to businesses to put in their windows up and down Main Street. When the show opened, Elatab sat at the museum and waited to welcome visitors from Paterson’s Middle Eastern community.

“No one came,” he said. “I asked people; they said they were too busy. So I burned my paintings to protest. People in this community are stupid. They don’t care about art.”

Giacomo DeStefano, director of the Paterson Museum, confirmed that there’s been no outpouring of interest in Elatab’s work from the city’s Arab community. But DeStefano said he would hardly consider the exhibit a failure.

Elatab’s paintings have been popular with regular museum patrons, DeStefano said. Most folks stop in the museum as part of a trip to the Great Falls, he added, and expect to see exhibits on the city’s industrial legacy.

“People come in and are surprised by his show,” DeStefano said. “They think it’s amazing. They learn about a dimension of Paterson they didn’t know about,” he said, citing the paintings' representation of the city’s Middle Eastern culture.

Paterson’s cultural affairs director, Marcia Sotorrio, said Elatab had told her recently that he thought the exhibit was a failure. “I told him, ‘Don’t say that. I love your art. It’s beautiful,’ ” Sotorrio recalled.

It was Sotorrio who had spotted Elatab’s paintings in a makeshift display outside City Hall earlier this year and set in motion events that led to the museum exhibit.

The show is scheduled to run until the end of October, and Sotorrio is trying to arrange a museum reception for Elatab. She said she plans to invite South Paterson business owners and community leaders.

“If you look at the whole history of art, so many artists are not really appreciated the way they should be,” Sotorrio said.

Elatab said the pieces he burned were painted several years ago. Each one took him about a week. He said he doesn’t have any regrets about burning them. Instead, he feels “relief” from expressing his frustration with flames.

As the fire grew, Elatab said, he became concerned and poured water on it to prevent the flames from spreading. Some of the paintings in the pile were destroyed. Others escaped damage.

A funny thing happened when Elatab posted photos of the fire on social media. He went from being an artist who felt no one cared about his work to suddenly getting encouragement from strangers. But around his neighborhood, Elatab said, some people laughed at him and said he was out of his mind for burning his paintings.

When a reporter asked Elatab if he is a little crazy, the artist shrugged.

“Yes,” he said, “like van Gogh.”

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