Looking at Jewish Art
PERLMAN, ALICE L.
Looking at Jewish Art ALICE L. PERLMAN or those who love Judaica and the stories these objects tell about Jewish history, two recently published books are a must. Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson's...
...Ancient Jewish Art by Gabrielle Sed-Rajna...
...Chartwell Books, Inc., 1985...
...Some of the more unusual items she has chosen are Purim cake forms, Yom Kippur paddles**, fragile paper pieces and calendars for counting the omer (the days between Passover and Shavuot...
...Sed-Rajna's book, like the one by Ungerleider-Mayerson, is lavishly ilustrated with large-format full color plates...
...At the same time these works maintain a solid Jewish character in their use of familiar symbols and themes...
...An understanding of the architectural elements is critical to any discussion of this aspect of Jewish art...
...It is worth noting that sculpture and statuary never did become a Jewish art form or the subject of Jewish art, probably because of the proscription against idolatrous image-making...
...The book is organized first by the Jewish life cycle (e.g., marriage, the home, birth) and then according to the Jewish holiday calendar...
...Ancient Jewish Art discusses and dismisses the subject in just a few pages, while Jewish Folk Art seeks to apologize for the existence of a Jewish art...
...Jewish Folk Art is lavishly illustrated with exceptionally beautiful color plates...
...Yet it is not clear why items designed and made by professional artists, such as the mizrach on page 74 and the silver spice boxes on page 129, are included in a book on folk art...
...Ancient Jewish Art, by Gabrielle Sed-Rajna, is highly readable and organized chronologically, using an art-historical approach that portrays the development of Jewish themes, image and narrative in the long history of Jewish art up to the 18th century C.E...
...Unfortunately, there seem to have been problems in the editing...
...Summit Books, 1986...
...The text provides an excellent analysis of the origins of such art forms as calligraphic styles, micrography, and carpet pages...
...8' Jewish Folk A rt: From Biblical Days to Modern Times by Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson...
...The book could also use a more informative preface...
...Used for punishment during the confession on the eve of Yom Kippur in earlier times that everything people make and use has the potential to be classified as "folk art...
...A final chapter covers the synagogue and its accoutrements...
...Ungerleider-Mayerson was curator and then director of the Jewish Museum in New York, and her familiarity with the range of materials found in American and international collections is impressive...
...Taken together, Jewish Folk Art and Ancient Jewish Art provide the reader with both a good historical background to Jewish art in the context of world art and an understanding of the more personal, or folk, art...
...Sed-Rajna also gives the reader insight into artistic techniques and the organization of workshops...
...Some captions are missing, others are confusing (where is the tallit described on page 151...
...The author must not only categorize every object found in a traditional Jewish home, but she must also illustrate the object's variations in India, Yemen and Galveston, Texas...
...This, of course, occurred during the period of general secularization of art in Europe...
...The accompanying text is lively, well written and filled with anecdotes and Jewish folklore...
...Her intention is to show the influence of local traditions and art movements on objects of Jewish significance...
...This has always puzzled me, because while it is clear that Torah does forbid the making and worship of idols, it is equally clear that Torah does not require Jews to live and pray in stark unembellished surroundings...
...The second part of Ancient Jewish Art is devoted to the more familiar art forms of manuscript illumination and precious metal work...
...Most books on Jewish art fail to include such a discussion, so Sed-Rajna's contribution is particularly welcome...
...In the Islamic world, the Jews conformed remarkably to the Islamic aesthetic and Islam's absolute prohibition against human or animal images...
...On the other hand, as soon as a class of Jews arose who could afford to patronize the arts and artists, there also appeared a group of Jewish professional artists who painted and drew Jewish subjects...
...Such an art-historical analysis has its advantages, but it ends up omitting many art forms that the calendar/life-cycle approach includes...
...This presentation illustrates the difficulties in describing the entire material culture of a people scattered throughout many lands...
...In the first half of the book she emphasizes synagogue buildings, including the famous synagogue wall paintings from Dura Europos, mosaic floors from Israel, and the architecture of Diaspora synagogues...
...She shows us * Works of art that hang on an eastern wall, indicating the direction to face while praying...
...Prior to the 18th century, most major artistic works were commissioned by either the church or the aristocracy for placement in churches or the homes and estates of the wealthy...
...Fewer than 20 pages are devoted to ceremonial art, while the rest of the book is filled with photographs of internationally recognized architecture and illuminated manuscripts and discussions of their place in the wider world of art...
...It should not surprise us that Jewish artists were not commissioned for these works which we now label the fine arts...
...Specific genres of materials, such as mizra-chim* and amulets, appear in several chapters, making it difficult for the reader to understand the whole...
...It is obligatory that each book on Jewish art begin with the statement that Torah prohibits the depiction of images, and go on to discuss the apparently contradictory existence of Jewish art...
...Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson's Jewish Folk Art is a very fine collection of some of the more unusual examples of Judaica, rarely seen and often overlooked in museum exhibits...
...In the area of architectural design, however, the Jews did come aesthetically close to the high art traditions of the surrounding majoritarian cultures, and Sed-Rajna is entirely correct in emphasizing the correspondence and obvious influence of these art forms on one another...
...You can actually see the texture of fabrics and read the Hebrew in the photographs...
...283 pp., S50.00...
...240 pp., $29.98...
...The text is solidly printed in large type and the captions are fully informative...
...and often the caption text repeats the page text...
Vol. 13 • March 1988 • No. 1
