Reflections of an Era
Soltes, On Z.
BOOKS Reflections of an Era Chagall to Kitaj: Jewish Experience in Twentieth Century Art Avram Kampf Praeger, 1991 208 pp , $65.00 Reviewed by On Z. Soltes What is Jewish art? Do we refer to...
...And it confuses the view of labor of...
...The first chapter, 'The Quest for a Jewish Style," is superb...
...Because this volume is an expansion of the earlier 1984 work of the same name, there's little excuse for the myriad details that are not tied up...
...Do we refer to the art—its subjects, symbols, style, content, intent and purpose—or to the artist—his or her birth or conviction, conscious or unconscious identity...
...His discussion offers, at the outset, a framework for defining Jewish experience in the 20th century: "large migrations from east to west, from close-knit communities to a strange atomized world...a tension between tradition and innovation, the options that life offers and the decisions it forces on us...
...I wish the book had ended there...
...Remarkably, the text evinces little in-depth understanding of the Holocaust experience and the visual response to it...
...Have no Christians done this...
...And yet, this is a good book—but it begs to be great...
...Kampfs study "rests squarely on life experiences collectively shared, intensified, interpreted and transformed by the artist," a thematic approach, he explains, rather than an analysis by periods, styles and schools...
...The discussion of their relationship to the Jewish folk art tradition, of the relationship between artists and the Hebrew and Yiddish theater, of the debate regarding modern Jewish art involving Nathan Altman, Eliezer Lissitzky, Marc Chagall, Ephraim Moses Lilien, Yekhezkel Dobrushkin, Isachar Ryback and others verges on the definitive...
...For example: a book that addresses the 'Jewish experience" clearly needs to clarify what is meant by "experience" when the author asserts that Ben Shahn "was not interested in the religious experience as such...
...In Chagall to Kitaj, Professor Avram Kampf sidesteps the difficulties of defining Jewish art and addresses, rather, the Jewish experience in art...
...fered by William Gropper's Lower East Side sweatshop Tailor with that reflected in Yochanan Simon's Sabbath in the Kibbutz (especially given the nuances of response to Jewish tradition encompassed by the image of Shabbat on a kibbutz...
...Shahn, who may not have been interested" in organized religion, was demonstrably interested in the "religious experience...
...In offering a summary statement of the Jewish experience in the 20th century, Kampf includes "the uniqueness" of conceiving . "the biblical source as a metaphor for i contemporary events...
...And how can one fail to acknowledge the universe of difference between Maryan Maryan's experience as a child in Auschwitz and R. B. Kitaj's experience growing up in Ohio during the same period...
...There are other problems, such as juxtaposing works that are not appropriately juxtaposed or making chronological leaps in each chapter that leave the untutored lost...
...That it isn't disappoints this reader...
...Ori Z. Soltes directs the B'nai B'nth Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C...
...While the text has many fine points, it offers many problems...
...Focusing on the 20th century, he resists the temptation to "claim that whatever filters through a Jewish mind can be termed Jewish experience.' To define the study in this way would have made an extremely complicated issue simple," as he explains in his introduction...
...Kampf unravels many of the brilliant threads in the tapestry of the complex world that encompassed the Jewish artists of the Russian Pale of Settlement up to and after World War I and the Russian Revolution...
...This is followed in the next chapter by an extraordinarily condescending tone toward the pioneers of Eretz Yisrael and the founders of Israeli art...
...In juxtaposing the Holocaust experience of Yosl Bergner—who left Europe in 1937—and that of Arik Brauer—who was taken to a labor camp in 1942—the author neglects the : crucial difference between their respective Holocaust experiences...
Vol. 18 • February 1993 • No. 1
