Understanding the difference between Pictures and Painting is the first step we must take in comprehending Abstract Expressionism and its relationship to the Jews. Once these two concepts are explicated, they will unlock the bewildering abstract images that confront us in the heyday of Abstract Expressionism from 1940 to 1960. Adolph Gottlieb: A Survey Exhibition, currently at the Jewish Museum is an excellent opportunity to explore these seminal ideas that changed the way art was made in the twentieth century. Additionally, these notions may have introduced a singularly Jewish element into modern culture.

A picture is something that depicts something else. It creates the illusion of a reality possessing depth, weight and distance that the audience views through the surrounding frame. Objects, landscapes and figures appear as if seen through a transparent window. A picture is inherently a fiction and as such begins to approach the prohibition against graven images. Of course we know that halacha does not prohibit the vast majority of pictures. Nonetheless, throughout our history we Jews have been cautious in our use of pictures exactly because of the parallel with idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of a false reality, a false god. Pictures are the creation of a fictional reality.

From the early days of Modernism, especially in Cubism and Russian Nonobjective art, the concept of a painting began to be explored. A painting is simply an object that has paint on it. It is, relative to a picture, opaque. Whatever visual experience occurs, it happens on the surface of the painting, not in a deep fictive space. Even though some abstract paintings create a shallow pictorial space, this phenomenon is secondary to the primary experience of paint applied to the surface.

The painting as a physical object is real and occupies the same real space as the viewer. To obtain the meaning from a picture it must be looked into; read like a picture book. In contrast, a painting, being only an object, needs to be experienced to understand the meaning. The viewer, from his reactions to the shape, form, line and color of the painting, must supply the meaning. The artist only makes visual suggestions towards a certain meaning. Since the meaning is not specific they are called Abstract paintings. Paintings, by their very nature, can never approach the category of idolatry. Many have observed that it was this distinction that allowed a large number of Jews to become modern abstract artists. It might be said that a fundamental Jewish concept had been incorporated into the world of Modern Art.

Norman Kleeblatt, the curator of Fine Art at the Jewish Museum who oversaw the development of this exhibition, sees Adolph Gottlieb (1909 - 1974) as part of a trio of Jewish Abstract Expressionists that he has dubbed "Conceptual Abstractionists." Along with Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko (all old friends since the 1920's), they all made paintings that evoked dialectical "conversations" between one dominant form on the canvas and another. In Rothko it is characterized by a large rectangular shape "talking" to a similar shape on the bottom of the canvas. Newman's paintings are dominated by one or two stripes, or "zips" as he called them, that relate to a consistently neutral ground. Kleeblatt sees these artists as "inhabiting a different cultural space" from the non-Jewish Abstract Expressionists. Pollack's drip paintings, DeKooning's visceral brushwork and Franz Kline's stark geometry create artworks that assault the viewer and overcome us with the artist's emotions. The more conceptual Jewish Abstract Expressionists invite our contemplation.

Richard McBee
October 9, 2002

Adolph Gottlieb: A Survey Exhibition
Jewish Museum 1109 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10128;
(212) 423 3200 Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday - 11am - 5:45pm; Tuesday 11am-8pm;
$8 adults; $5.50 students and; Tuesdays after 5pm free.
Until March 2, 2003

Published in The Jewish Press