The nation without art : examining modern discourses on Jewish art
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The nation without art : examining modern discourses on Jewish art
(Texts and contexts)
University of Nebraska Press, c2001
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-261) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Looking through the history of art, a reader might conclude that Jews could not create art - and such an assumption would be no accident. The discipline of art history - even the first scholarly studies of Jewish works of art - encourages the idea of the nonartistic Jew, as we see with disturbing clarity in this book. Using telling case studies ranging over two centuries, The Nation without Art illuminates the rise of the paradigm of the nonartistic Jew, as well as the ways in which theorists, critics, and artists have sought to subvert, overcome, or work within it. Cases that Margaret Olin examines include that of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, whose efforts to use art to create a Jewish nationality in Palestine raise important issues of national identity, and the third-century Synagogue of Dura Europos, whose discovery in 1932 served a symbolic function for scholars struggling against the Third Reich. Among thinkers who supported or challenged concepts of Jewish art, Olin considers the philosopher Martin Buber, the critic Clement Greenberg, the nineteenth-century rabbinical scholar David Kaufmann, and the filmmaker Chantal Akerman.
Her work broadens our understanding of the relation of Jews to the visual image, critiques the nationalist, ethnocentric paradigms of current disciplines, and offers insight into the tenacious art historical discourses that thinkers must inhabit uncomfortably or escape with considerable difficulty. Margaret Olin is an associate professor of art history and theory at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Forms and Representation in Alois Riegl's Theory of Art.
Table of Contents
Contents: List of Illustrations Preface: Reflections from Vienna Part 1: Defining Jewish Art 1. Jewish Art Defined: From Bezalel to Max Liebermann 2. The Nation with Art? Bezalel in Palestine Part 2: Reclaiming Jewish Art 3. David Kaufmann's Studies in Jewish Art: Die (Kunst)Wissenschaft des Judentums 4. Martin Buber: Jewish Art As Visual Redemption "5. "Jewish Christians" and "Early Christian" Synagogues: The Discovery at Dura-Europos and Its Aftermath " Part 3: Abstaining from Jewish Art 6. C[lement] Hardesh (Greenberg): Formal Criticism and Jewish Identity 7. Graven Images on Video? The Second Commandment and Contemporary Jewish Identity Notes Index
by "Nielsen BookData"