Ludwig Blum (1891 – 1974) was a deeply complex artist who walked the fine line between pure aesthetics and a radical artistic view of the Zionist enterprise. He clearly loved to paint, make beautiful images and provide aesthetic pleasure. As a committed Zionist and part of the Third Aliyah, he celebrated his newfound homeland with a visual passion exploring all of Palestine’s unique riches.
Just look at the expression on Jonah’s face. It combines not only fear but also incomprehension at his terrible punishment of floating in the belly of the great fish. So too Noah peering out of the ark, perched on the edge of understanding that there might be a future for mankind. Both works point to the genius of Leonard Everett Fisher as an artist and interpreter of biblical narrative.
There is a short list of things that really matter: family, friends, country and faith top most. For many Jews, our people and Israel occupy an almost sacred place in the order of commitment and passion. Therefore when either the Jewish people or the legitimacy of the State of Israel are attacked and slandered, we react passionately. In a visceral way these things are crucial to the very core of our identity. How do contemporary Jewish artists respond?
Ketubot are the magical crystal ball into the life, concerns and joys of the Jewish community. Perhaps no other Jewish artifact is so openly expressive of the dreams, desires and fears of the everyday world of Jewish life throughout the ages. To illuminate this fact Sharon Liberman Mintz has expertly curated The Art of Matrimony: 32 Marriage Contracts from the Jewish Theological Seminary currently shown at the Jewish Museum.
Can the Holocaust be memorialized by an aesthetically beautiful object? Doesn’t the obscenity of the crime create a fundamental contradiction? The question still stands 66 years later, even as art is still being made about the Holocaust. Jewish creativity seeks to smother hate. But the questions persist: can a memorial ignite hope instead of despair?
People believe different things and when they group together as religions, they pretty much agree that most of what the other groups believes is wrong. But one thing that unites the big three monotheistic faiths, aside from the ostensible shared belief in one God, is a strong visual tradition found in manuscripts, documents and books.
Textiles as a Jewish art medium have a long and distinguished history, frequently the sole surviving artifact testifying to a community’s existence and history. Elaborate paroches from 17th century Italy still proclaim a rich and artistic love of the Torah ark so prized by Italian Jewish communities that are now but distant memories.
But of course numbers don't tell the whole story of "painting and feminism," to cite the second half of the show's full title, Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism. Just because a woman is showing her work doesn't mean her work is expressing a feminist agenda or perspective.
Iconic images are rare, especially in the mundane world of photojournalism. But when they happen their intense simplicity compresses a host of ideas and emotions in a single picture, making complexity seem transparent. Israeli photojournalist Rina Castelnuovo excels at this skill. Her first solo exhibition currently at the Andrea Meislin Gallery is a breathtaking tour-de-force of photographic insight focusing on the complex reality of Israeli life.
From the earliest synagogues preserved to the present, Jews have struggled with the role of art in their sacred spaces. Decorative or contemplative, subservient to architecture or an independent aesthetic experience? The Dura Europos murals (235 CE) and many early mosaic floors from 250 CE to 500 CE point to a dominant role of artwork brimming with biblical narratives and Jewish symbols.
Five hundred years of Jewish manuscript and printed book illumination are presented in “Highlights from the Braginsky Collection” scheduled to open at Yeshiva University Museum on March 17, 2010.
In America it happens all the time. Immigrant Jews arrive, build a community, more Jews come, and then prosper and move on to a better neighborhood and finally the suburbs. In the old neighborhood non-Jewish immigrants take their places and suddenly the once thriving shuls are empty.
The illustrator stands in an oft-denigrated position, scorned by modernists and traditional purists alike. For both schools of thought the sublime of art cannot be rendered literal. On the other hand, illustrators are curiously accepted if not celebrated by those in a postmodern disposition.
Why would one want to reinvent a Jewish ritual when it had been working perfectly well for hundreds if not thousands of years? Ah ha, perhaps all is not as well as traditionalists would like to think. There is the disquieting phenomenon that perhaps the majority of the Jewish people have little or no engagement with Jewish practice.
The inaugural exhibition, Tradition and Remembrance: Treasures of the Derfner Judaica Museum, at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale is a stunning presentation of close to 250 objects that sweeps through Jewish art history from the eighteenth century to contemporary times.