Jewish Art Research Articles

Jewish Art Studies in the Lithuanian Yiddish Press of the Interwar Period (1918–1940)

Summary Lithuanian art studies as an independent branch of science began to take shape in the First Republic of Lithuania between year 1918 and 1940. During 22 years in a multinational free state, it followed a winding path of mastery, professionalism, and the formation of a critic’s thought. However, if the origins, development, and forms of interwar Lithuanian art studies already are being explored, the Jewish art studies are still waiting for its first investigations. The purpose of this article is to broaden the scope of Lithuanian art research by incorporating the layers of interwar Jewish art studies conducted in the Yiddish language. Using the combined methodology of research as method of source studies, the aspects of social history of art and the comparative method, the Jewish art studies were analysed as a specific phenomenon which functioned alongside Lithuanian art studies. Throughout this research, over 1,000 Yiddish publications were reviewed to find the answers to the never previously discussed questions – how many Jewish art historians and critics contributed articles to the Yiddish press, what kind and quality of publications about Jewish art were featured, what aspects of Jewish art, artists, and society did Jewish art critics emphasise, and what kind of relationship existed among art critics, artists and public. The article also encompasses the short biographies of the most prominent Jewish authors in the field of art criticism.

Was Oleksandr Dovzhenko a Judophobe (According to the materials of the Soviet special services)

The submitted article is aimed at the revealing and representing previously unknown archival documents from the funds of the Soviet special services, concerning the non-conformist attitudes of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, his resentment towards the Jews in particular. The author’s task is directed at stimulating further studies and discussions in order to find means of depicting a realistic image of Dovzhenko. Methodological principles are based on the fundamentals of historicism and critical analysis of sources with a complex combination of the entire multiplicity of newly discovered historical facts and events in accordance with specific historical circumstances. The scientific novelty consists in the comprehension of the documents of the communist special services as a source component of unprejudiced research strategies of modern Dovzhenko Studies. Conclusions. Newly discovered archival documents prove that Dovzhenko’s critical attitude towards Jews is the result of complex and situationally determined attitudes and life experiences. This is why these cannot be simplistic and straightforward narratives. Communist special services have monitored closely Dovzhenko’s anti-Soviet sentiments, suspected him of «counter-revolutionary activities», and also recorded his statements directed at Jewish cinematographers. However, they haven’t given unequivocal assessments to such statements. Dovzhenko has collaborated and made friends creatively with many Jewish artists, and his critical attitudes have never turned into denunciation and other practical forms of revenge.

The Past in the Present: Eleanor Antin, Jewish Art and 1990s America

Abstract This essay situates two works by Eleanor Antin—the film The Man Without a World (1991), and the installation Vilna Nights (1993)—in the context of Jewish art as it was articulated in 1990s America. During this period, efforts were made by scholars, curators—and some artists—towards a new Jewish art that would be consummate with other contemporaneous identity-based practices. Although these efforts did not birth a new Jewish art, they did instigate a revived interest in the history of Eastern European Jewry. This was Antin’s subject in both The Man Without a World and Vilna Nights, but the representation of this history in both works challenged the nostalgia that it courted in other corners of 1990s Jewish art.

Dialogue and challenge: wildflowers in contemporary Israeli art mirrored in history

ABSTRACT This article looks at images of wildflowers in contemporary Israeli art and their evolution in Israel's visual cultural. Wildflowers were regarded a part of the Zionist ideology in strengthening the connection of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel. They served as “cultural objects’ that contributed to shaping national identity by appearing on stamps, bank notes, in official Zionist publications and in botanical guidebooks. The article examines how contemporary Israeli artists relate to this tradition by looking at the artworks of six contemporary Israeli Jewish artists, using both visual analysis and in-depth interviews with the artists. The findings indicate that contemporary artists conduct a complex dialogue with the wildflowers and challenge their national symbolism. The images reflect an ambivalent relationship that includes attachment and belonging alongside discomfort and criticism.

A Survey of American Synagogue Stained Glass

Abstract This article addresses the lacuna of scholarship on Jewish-American stained glass by presenting a historical overview of this prevalent synagogue art form (1845 to the present). Analysis of key trends reveals Jewish congregations’ engagement with Christian influences by imitating the work of church stained glass in some ways while differentiating in other ways. Jewish artists and congregational leaders have also been in conversation with each other, sharing thematic and design ideas to formulate a loosely shared aesthetic and religious approach towards creating windows for their houses of worship. In accordance with the Second Commandment’s prohibition against creating “graven images,” God in figural form does not appear in synagogue space. Instead, a Jewish technique for eliciting a sense of Divine in the sanctuary has included a repertoire of light-filled images—including torches, lamps, fire, and celestial bodies—to convey a spiritual presence, enhanced by actual light from the sun itself as refracted through the windows.

What Matisse and Picasso Owed to Jewish Collectors and Dealers

Abstract While the prominence in twentieth-century painting of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso remains unquestioned, neither of these great artists could have emerged in their shared Parisian art world without the direct support of Jewish collectors and dealers. Foremost among the Jewish collectors of their earlier works were Americans living in Paris, especially the Steins: Leo, Gertrude, and Michael and Sarah Stein. While Leo followed by Michael and Sarah was an early purchaser of Matisse’s bold early Fauvist works, led by Bonheur de Vie (1905), Gertrude turned increasingly to Picasso, who painted her portrait (1906). Their support for Matisse was avidly seconded by the Cone sisters, whose extensive collection was donated intact to the Baltimore Museum of Art. Jews were also early adopters of French modern art in general as dealers. Chiefly led by the Rosenberg brothers, Léonce and Paul, prominent Jewish dealers during the teens also included the perceptive, if underfunded, Berthe Weill as well as the German immigrant Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Both of the latter gave crucial support to experimental art, the latter in particular to the art of Picasso’s Cubist phase (including a Cubist portrait of the dealer). In addition, a number of Jewish art critics served as influencers, supporting contemporary artists, albeit often castigating paintings by immigrant Eastern European Jewish artists, whom they viewed as outsiders. In their view, it was the multinational School of Paris’ often Jewish immigrants, against the greater, local School of France.

Jewish “Ghosts”: Judit Hersko and Susan Hiller and the Feminist Intersectional Art of Post-Holocaust Memory

This article delves into the underexplored intersection of Jewish identities and feminist art. It critically examines artworks by Judit Hersko and Susan Hiller, aligning with evolving identity constructs in contemporary aesthetics. Concepts like “postmemory” link second-generation Jewish artists to past experiences and unveil the erasure of Jewish women’s memory of Jewish genocide. Analyzing Hersko and Hiller’s diverse works, from landscape photography and sculpture to performance art, it underscores their shared pursuit: illuminating lingering “ghosts” of the Holocaust in modern landscapes. Susan Hiller’s The J Street Project represents an ongoing exploration of loss and trauma beyond the Holocaust in Germany, using archives as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon. Judit Hersko’s art calls for bearing witness to a potential climate catastrophe in Antarctica. The article culminates in the exploration of “The Memorial” (2017), an art project by the activist collective Center for Political Beauty that focuses on the resurgence of overt anti-Semitism in Germany. In essence, Hiller and Hersko confront erasures in history and nature, emphasizing justice and repair. Their art, intertwined with a project addressing contemporary anti-Semitism, serves as a testament to the enduring power of feminist art, reflecting, mourning, and transforming a world marked by historical traumas and war.

Paul Graupe, Arthur Goldschmidt and the dispute over an Adriaen van Ostade painting in wartime France

Abstract In 2023 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the collectors Susan and Matthew Weatherbie, and the heirs of the Jewish art dealers Paul Graupe and Arthur Goldschmidt reached a financial settlement over Adriaen van Ostade’s Customers Conversing in a Tavern. The museum had been alerted to a potential claim on the painting in 2017 while conducting research on promised gifts from the Weatherbies’ collection. At that time, the van Ostade was registered as a Nazi-era loss by the heirs of Graupe. Research revealed that it was handled by Graupe and his associate Goldschmidt when they were trying to flee Nazi-occupied Europe. This article provides insight into the working relationship of Graupe and Goldschmidt, and offers clues to the fate of other works of art placed in their custody which heirs of Holocaust victims may be seeking. It also offers a roadmap for museums navigating similar provenance research, donor relations and collection management questions.

Unrecognizable Subjects, Grief, and Repair in Esther Dischereit’s Blumen Für Otello (2014)

This article examines the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of artistic grief work in the 2014 text assemblage Blumen für Otello by contemporary German Jewish artist and activist Esther Dischereit. Dischereit’s work offers a complex engagement with racialized violence in post-unification Germany, tackling the murders perpetrated by the Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National Socialist Underground, NSU) between 2000 and 2007. In their response to the crimes, the German authorities wilfully obstructed investigative efforts and ultimately failed to deliver justice. This situation was exacerbated by a public and media discourse that consistently trivialized the crimes and dehumanized their victims. Against this backdrop, Dischereit’s text offers an artistic intervention into the hierarchies of ‘grievability’ (Butler) and care that enabled such failures in the first place. Drawing on theorists Judith Butler, Çiğdem Inan and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, I propose that Blumen für Otello develops and champions an aesthetics, ethics and politics of dispossession. Employing strategies of transveral affectation and mourning, multi-layered translation and post-catastrophic improvisation, Dischereit’s approach has the potential to undo the division between grievable and ungrievable lives. As such, it may foster reparative modes of agency and relationality that enable the (re-)construction of alternative fields of care.

О ВОЗМОЖНЫХ ИСТОКАХ ОБРАЗА ДРАКОНА В ИКОНОГРАФИИ МЕДНОГО ЗМИЯ ЭПОХИ ВЫСОКОГО СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЬЯ

The article considers the issue of possible Jewish influence on the formation of the image of the Copper Serpent in the artistic culture of Western Europe in the 11th – 12th centuries. For many centuries, textual mention and pictorial image of the scene of the exaltation of the Copper Serpent was tacitly taboo due to the difficulty of explaining the creation of the statue by Moses after receiving a ban from the Lord on the creation of idols. Active reference to the subject became possible only during the Crusades in the context of Christian typological exegesis, where the Copper Serpent is understood as a prototype of the Crucifixion. The development of the iconography of Num. 21:6–9 on the western and eastern banks of the Rhine occurred independently of each other, resulting in the formation of two distinct pictorial types. Herewith, on the west bank, especially in the territories of northern France and modern Belgium, the image of a winged dragon sitting on a column became widespread. According to the author, such a type attempts to ontologize the complicated image of the divine messenger, through whom the people of Israel were granted salvation from death. In that iconography the serpent itself is understood as Christ, which makes it impossible to depict him in the form of an ordinary snake, which in most cases is a symbol of sin and death. Most probably, the authors of the first iconographic programs of the type turn to the Jewish original source in search of possible ways of depiction, supported by Middle Eastern and directly Jewish art. Following such hypothesis, the dragon in the image of the Copper Serpent is Saraf or Seraphim, i.e. the embodiment of the angelic rank visible to humans.

Märchenhafter Materialismus. Zur Konkretion der profanen „Theologie“ Siegfried Kracauers in seinen Figurationen des Jüdischen

Abstract In a polemic against Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig of 1926, Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966) insisted that truth had come to reside in the spheres of the profane. The following article explains the theology of history underlying Kracauer’s postulate and traces its literary, political and philosophical variants in his texts and his correspondences. Prima facie, his single-minded focus on the profane seems to point to a form of negative theology. Relying on vague references to the Jewish prohibition of the image, Kracauer implies that the absolute may be identified only by critiquing profane reality. This claim notwithstanding, Kracauer repeatedly points to positive motifs too. His notion of Jewishness as the particularist embodiment of a universal form of reason and his references to hedonistic and aesthetic experiences that embody the Messianic are cases in point. While the latter tended ultimately to reflect Buber’s concept of Hasidism, Kracauer explicated this approach in his treatment of (actually or supposedly) Jewish artists such as Franz Kafka, Jacques Offenbach and Charlie Chaplin. Kracauer’s canonization of these figures as nonconformists bears a notable resemblance to Isaac Deutscher’s concept of the “non-Jewish Jew” and Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “Jew as pariah”.

Not by Words Alone: Early Holocaust Graphic Narratives as a “Minor Art”

Abstract Immediately after the Holocaust, scores of Jewish survivors created graphic narratives, in word and image, about their individual and collective wartime experiences under Nazi oppression. This essay will make a case for these early postwar works as a “minor art.” “Minor” captures the material characteristics of this low-capital, low-circulation printed matter: slight in weight, small in size, modest in price, and ephemeral in quality. It also describes their “poor” images that pull, in form and structure, from popular culture (comics, cartoons, illustrated books) on the margins of modernist concerns (composite image-texts relying on narrative storytelling). Borrowing from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of “minor literature” as a deterritorialized, political, collective utterance, I argue that disciplinary notions of “art” and “testimony” have prevented us from seeing this “minor art” and recognizing how its vernacular, amateur art practices allowed survivors to reconstruct the past, remember communities and identities erased, and reclaim their own narratives of persecution. Created by a minority (a decimated Jewish community) working on the peripheries of the art world, they tell a Jewish story using Jewish frames of reference to create a community outside of majoritarian culture. What is at stake in them is not only a poetics of recollection but a politics of representation: of seeing with Jews as a critical act by dominated persons against the dominant, antifascist master narrative of WWII and the primary media of its dissemination, photography and film. Ultimately, this “minor art” can have major implications for both how we understand the crucial first decade of survivor initiatives and how we write our histories of Jewish art.

Jewish summer camp theatre and Sondheim, the Talmudic scholar

This article explores how Jewish American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, in his musical theatre works, engaged in a distinctly Jewish lyrical style that resembles a Talmudic dialectic. The author argues that Sondheim’s argumentative, self-referential, quick-moving, pitter-patter lyrics and music, a writing style that values the performance of ambivalence and repeated questioning, resembles contemporary Jewish discourse as influenced by Talmudic dialogue. The author explores Sondheim’s work through a reflection of his experience piloting a new two-week musical theatre specialty programme at Ramah Darom, a Jewish summer camp in Clayton, Georgia, in July 2023. The programme, called Ramah Bamah (bamah is a Hebrew word that translates in this context to ‘stage’), aimed to teach campers valuable performance skills from professional theatre-makers, while simultaneously encouraging campers to explore their identities as Jewish artists. Ramah Bamah presented Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods JR. as its premiere production, as programme leaders used Jewish texts, thought and values to help campers connect emotionally and thematically to Sondheim’s play-text. This article considers the relationship between Jewish text study, Jewish education, storytelling, youth/amateur theatre-making and Stephen Sondheim.

Kaddish for Steve: On the Jewishness of Sondheim1

‘Kaddish for Steve’ explores Steven Sondheim’s legacy as a Jewish artist after his death, seeking traces of his Judaism in stories of his Jewish collaborators, exploration of his Jewish (and Jew-ish) characters and analysis of his Jewish themes. Using theories of Jewish narrative and Jewishness as articulated by (among others) Dara Horn and Daniel Boyarin, and musical theatre theory as conceived by David Savran, the article closely reads musicals including Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Sunday in the Park with George and Gypsy alongside Sondheim’s own memoir, Finishing the Hat. In examining Sondheim’s understanding of his own work, ‘Kaddish for Steve’ discovers a Jewish way of reading and writing within both the musicals and the memoir that closely aligns with Boyarin’s concept of ‘Jewissance’. The article concludes with a remembrance of Sondheim as spiritual and artistic teacher, honouring his continued influence on contemporary musical theatre and comparing his role in the lives of his many students to that of a rabbi.

Mythological Images and Their Interpretations in Jewish Art of Eastern Galicia, 18th – 19th Century

This study analyzes the mythological representations of sea creatures, the hippocampus, and the Leviathan in the Jewish art of Eastern Galicia. It identifies the formation of a distinctive symbolic and sign system within Jewish art, serving as a means to convey fundamental religious and philosophical principles. The prohibition of anthropomorphic depictions contributed to the development of an entire cycle of animalistic and botanical images, illustrating the diaspora Jews' conceptualizations of the Land of Israel, the Jerusalem Temple, the Gardens of Eden, the commandments of the Torah, and the Talmud. Based on the study of artworks, including preserved illustrations from the destroyed synagogues in Khodoriv and Hvizdets during the Holocaust, as well as ritual objects such as Torah shields, Torah reading pointers, Hanukkah lamps, and the decoration of tombstones-matzevot, it has been established that Jewish art developed its own program of ornamentation and the use of symbols and signs. The features of the iconography of mythical sea creatures have been identified. It is emphasized that the traditional representation of the hippocampus as a creature with the body of half horse and half fish in Jewish art monuments was replaced by depictions of a creature with the body of half goat and half fish, or half lion and half fish. Such transformations can be explained by the influence of folklore and the reinterpretation of folk art. The symbolism of the hippocampus is associated with perceptions of the sea that surrounds the Land of Israel and serves as a metaphor for the transition to another, beautiful, paradisiacal world. The iconography of the depiction of the Leviathan is also connected to its symbolism. The Leviathan coiled in a ring is a traditional symbol of anticipation of messianic times, and the Leviathan coiled around a city or specific structures embodies the concept of the temple, alluding to a sacred space, as the skin of the mythical creature will be used for the tent of the righteous. Representations of the hippocampus and Leviathan on tombstones-matzevot embody the idea of anticipating messianic times and resurrection. The exploration of symbolism in Jewish representational and decorative art provides insight into the traditional Jewish culture of Eastern Galicia.

Breaking the Taboo: Ritual Impurity in Israeli and American Jewish Feminist Art

ABSTRACT: The article examines works by two Orthodox artists, an American, Mierle Laderman Ukeles (b. 1939) and an Israeli, Hagit Molgan (b. 1972), both concerned with the Jewish laws and rituals of niddah (menstruation) and tevilah (immersion). The analysis of the similarities and differences between works from two major Jewish centers, Israel and the United States, provides insight into how critical responses in works of art point to complex cultural divides. Scholars and curators of Jewish art tend to examine Jewish-Israeli art as distinct from Jewish art created elsewhere. Due to this disconnect, the relationship between Jewish-Israeli art and its patrons around the world has received little attention before now. Consequently, the discussion of art created in different spaces and times contributes to a richer, more contextualized understanding of diasporic art.

The zodiac: Renaissance of the astrological symbol in Eastern European wooden synagogues from the 17th and 18th centuries

The article presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the complex relationship between intangible elements of culture that led to the presentation of the zodiac in Jewish folk art and architecture. The zodiac appears to be one of the most common astrological symbols that are found in both ancient and contemporary synagogal art. Although it primarily originates from Chaldean and Babylonian astrology, and despite strong culture-based differences, the zodiac was used in a form of floor mosaics in ancient Jewish art as well as in ceiling paintings from wooden synagogues of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The article summarises an analysis of the ancient origin, meaning, and renaissance of the artistic application of the idea of the zodiac in the art and architecture of Eastern European vernacular wooden synagogues from the 17th and 18th centuries. The comparative research is made on the basis of an identification of related canonical and non-canonical texts, their interpretation, studies on the partially preserved ancient buildings, and the available photographic documentation of wooden synagogues and their reconstruction. Secondarily, the article contributes to a recognition of the main cultural factors influencing the development of Jewish art and architecture in this part of Europe.

A Plagiarized Testimony?: Authorship, Legacy, and the Holocaust Art of Henryk Beck and Zinovii Tolkachev

ABSTRACT This article explores the case of an alleged plagiarism of Holocaust staple artistic images by two different artists on opposite sides of the WWII frontlines. From 1941–1944, Zinovii Tolkachev (1904–1977), a Soviet artist on a military mission, and Henryk Beck (1896–1946), a Holocaust survivor and artist in hiding, had created at least two pairs of identical works. Tolkachev’s images, included in his 1944 series ‘Majdanek’ became known as the earliest artistic representation of the Holocaust in East European art. Identical images created by Henryk Beck three years prior to those of Tolkachev remained unbeknownst to the general public until recently. By providing a comparative analysis of Tolkachev’s and Beck’s personal biographies, war-time itineraries, and artistic language, this essay seeks to reenact the historical circumstances for a possible encounter between the two artists, to identify the genuine author, and to understand the underlying personal motifs for this plagiarism. Bringing my analysis beyond the images’ iconography and visual semantics, I conceptualize these works of art as complex Holocaust texts bridging personal testimony, material culture, military history, Holocaust resistance, cultural geography, and art studies. A story of a migrating Holocaust image, the case of Beck-Tolkachev challenges our knowledge of Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish artists’ relations during the war and reveals methodological uncertainties in dealing with the artistic legacy of the Holocaust.

The Body as Memory: Breast Cancer and the Holocaust in Women’s Art

The Holocaust is a living trauma in the individual and collective body. Studies show that this trauma threatens to be reawakened when a new and traumatic experience, such as illness, emerges. The two traumas bring to the fore the experiences of death, pain, bodily injury, fear of losing control, and social rejection. This article examines the manifestation of this phenomenon in art through the works of three Jewish artists with autobiographical connections to the Holocaust who experienced breast cancer: the late Holocaust survivor Alina Szapocznikow, Israeli artist Anat Massad and English artist Lorna Brunstein, daughters of survivors. All three matured alongside the rise and development of feminist art, and their works address subjects such as femininity and race and tell their stories through their bodies and the traumas of breast cancer and the Holocaust, transmitting memory, working through trauma, and making their voices heard.

Samuel Hirszenberg, 1865–1908: A Polish Jewish Artist in Turmoil, written by Richard I. Cohen and Mirjam Rajner

Samuel Hirszenberg, 1865–1908: A Polish Jewish Artist in Turmoil, written by Richard I. Cohen and Mirjam Rajner