by Bruce Herman
(my paintings ca. 1988-90)

Dream of Wet Pavements © Bruce Herman, 1988; oil on canvas, 65” x 65”, Collection of Thomas and Susan Brooks
I thoroughly enjoyed living in Boston and pursuing the cultural work that was set before me, yet I had had the persistent sense that the spirit of the city was not one always one of community and caring – rather it seemed often to be about name, fame, power, status, and the like. Of course, this could be a caricature of urban life for anyone who lives and thrives in that setting. But for me and for my family, it had grown stress-filled and even toxic at times.
Around the time of our move, a slew of dystopian urban post-apocalyptic movies had come out: Koyaanisqatsi, Blade Runner, Brazil, the Mad Max series, etc. and simultaneously I had discovered and was reading books by Jacques Ellul on technology and the city – The Technological Society, The Meaning of the City, The Technological City. Having grown up in the 1960’s in the shadow of the atom bomb, I was already a bit predisposed to think that human technology was potentially bent – ironically helping create a world inhospitable for human flourishing.
The city images that came to me in my painting process at that time were all dreamlike and mostly devoid of explicit human presence – like a ghost town of sorts. All of the images in the Dream of Wet Pavements sequence contain water imagery, and are ambiguous as to whether the water is rising or receding. The title Wet Pavements is obviously an understatement when you view the half-submerged buildings, bridges, and roads. Though I was reading Ellul and watching dystopian films about technology and urban blight, I was also reading in Scripture of the stunning and hope-filled truth that at the end of human history we don’t return to Eden but become citizens of a city – “the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” .

Dream of Wet Pavements II ©Bruce Herman, 1988; oil on canvas, 60” x 55”, destroyed in studio fire, 1997
self-defense; of power and mistrust. Yet the Scriptures indicate that God’s ultimate destination for us is just that, a city – presumably Augustine’s City of God. As an artist I am always attempting to show what cannot be fully articulated in speech – namely, in lived-life contradictions and paradoxes abound. As Martin Buber once said, “In strict logic ‘A’ cannot equal ‘not-A’. But in lived life, this is often true.”
Life just doesn’t neatly fit our rational categories.
Dream of Wet Pavements is an attempt to evoke this complexity and mystery – that the very place of selfishness, destruction, and misery can also be a place of fruition, beauty, and creative selflessness. The images that suggested themselves to me all contained a baptism of sorts – a cleansing and rebirth in the most pervasive of elements on our planet: water.
Over 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water, and it is the major symbol of hope and of new possibilities – not just deluge and destruction. In chapter 9 of Genesis God promises to Noah that the earth will never again be completely destroyed by water. Afterward, the people of Israel are several times miraculously led through watery wastes as on dry land. In the New Testament the turbulent sea is calmed by Christ’s word, and later becomes a symbol of regeneration for believers in and through Holy Baptism.
In the first two paintings of Dream of Wet Pavements a waterfall miraculously appears at the top of tall buildings, wetting the streets and buildings and creating mysterious atmosphere. In the second of these, Dream of Wet Pavements II, there appear ghostly human/angelic presences – partly inspired by Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire and partly by the biblical testimony of John on Patmos, Revelation, where two “witnesses” attend to the last things as terrible events unfold.

Steam & Light ©Bruce Herman, 1989; oil on canvas, 48” x 60”, Collection of Tony Merlo
Like the two witnesses, she is almost faceless – an Anybody or Everywoman.

Witness Wall ©Bruce Herman, 1989; oil on canvas, 14” x 12”, Collection of Robert and Patty Hanlon