At memory's edge: after-images of the Holocaust in contemporary art and architecture

Abstract

by James E. Young. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 248 pp. $35.00.If there is any scholar who has stirred imagination on issues concerning Holocaust representation, certainly James E. Young from University of Massachusetts stands first and foremost. His earlier work as curator of New York Jewish Museum's exhibition, The Art of Memory, and related book, The Texture of Memory, set stage for this work on questions of how Holocaust will be remembered through anti-redemptive memorials as well as provocative, rather than elegiac and often sentimental artistic representations. These are important questions, at least for now, as teaching of Holocaust as a special subject in public memory as well as in academic curriculum has produced a number of questions which have been asked of other traumatic historical events, but not with such immediacy. The scale of Shoah combined with post-modern thought has provoked essential question of how present and future generations that did not experience event can remember it. Will public be bombarded with artistic representations that reproduce now cliched photographs and even kitsch-like images that we know too well, or can some other form of post-Shoah representation actually be produced and succeed?Young poses question correctly: How is a post-Holocaust generation of artists supposed to `remember' events they never experienced directly? He admits that there can be single formula, no final solutions for contemporary artists. In realm of memorial sites, especially in places like Germany, where crime was conceived, how does one approach question of memorialization?Young's approach in this excellent monograph suggests near-impossibility of a comprehensive overview of how artists and architects have dealt with problems of representation. Art Spiegelman's MAUS, for example, is conceived as a serious literary and artistic memory book that contains much ambivalence about memory and representation, but is judged by Young to be successful. David Levinthal's Mein Kampf, on other hand, a series of blurred photo images of Third Reich made from toy figures, creates some problems. Young suggests that because of peculiarities of Levinthal's images, his work forces viewer to imagine and thereby collaborate, and also provides ambiguous conclusions about possibilities of how art may inspire or provoke.Young's chapter, Sites Unseen, relates to outdoor life-size projections of San Francisco artist Shimon Attie. This art form, which is based upon projecting old images of an active Berlin Jewish quarter on now abandoned buildings subject to new use suggests relevance of ghost-like images as well as what Pierre Nora has called the will to remember, and what Young calls an act of remembrance. Thus, Attie has utilized a technological art to remember past and absence of Jews in Germany. But this work can go beyond mere remembrance, into a form of social activism, as intended by Attie's Portraits of Exile, displayed in Copenhagen during 1995. This series introduced a grouping of lighted portraits that floated in Copenhagen harbor near docks. Some images alluded to successful rescue of Danish Jews in 1943, an event Denmark takes pride in remembering. Other images, however, reflected on less than successful stories of new refugees whose acceptance has been more difficult than that of Jews. Thus, memory can be a two-edged sword, instilling either pride or shame for national policies. In this respect, Young's analysis affirms what we know too well -- how dangerous art may be as a weapon for change and as a means for inspiring memory.The author, of course, is in a special position that goes beyond academic analyst. Young, because of his knowledge and excellent scholarship, became a member of Finding Commission for Berlin Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe. …