PERSONAL
AND COLLECTIVE JEWISH EXPERIENCES
The Volunteer, Detail, by Moritz Oppenheim, 1834. The Jewish Museum, NY.
In many instances and passages of life, personal or collective socio-ethnic experiences play major roles in shaping and defining the ethnicity of art and the religious background of an artist. It is not always the faith of the artist that categorizes and identifies the religious nature, race, ethnic origin and nationality of an artist or his/her work. Unforgettable personal experiences, pain, sorrow, fear, incertitude, despair, hunger, poverty, homelessness and hopelessness caused by racial and ethnic biases, social injustice and persecution redefine and frame the landscape, colors, structure, composition, vibes and “psyche” of a piece of art. “After the Pogrom” painted by Maurycy Minkowski retraces, illustrates and captures the fear, panic and hysterical trauma felt by Jews in Eastern Europe. It was a humanistic tableau of the decadence of the human race, the social prejudices, the despair and frightening hopelessness of the Jewish refugees; a personal and a collective experience of the suffering and persecuted Jewish people. And because Maurycy Minkowski was physically challenged (He could not talk or hear), his personal “physical “ condition and related experiences added an extra sense of isolation, fear, separation, despair so closely attributed to and associated with prosecuted and persecuted Eastern Jews .“Czarny Sztandar” (The Black Banner), a masterpiece by Samuel Hirszenberg is another example of a personal emotional and religious Jewish experience. This fabulous painting depicts the funeral scene of a Rabbinic leader. Through the dark and somber colors of melancholic Hebraic lamentations, the painting has become an authentic Jewish mourning scene. Ironically enough, several totally different Jewish experiences, divergent and convergent in collective Jewish attitude and social reactions, and determination (Of a new generation of brave Jewish nationalists) to fight back, instead of fleeing, mourning or hiding, deeply influenced Jewish artists who were not accustomed to paint Jewish uprisings, revolts and public protests. “Birth of Jewish Resistance” painted by Lazar Krestin, after the “Kishinev Pogrom” in 1903, is an enlightening and a very convincing a propos example. Once again, the artist transmits a strong message based upon current Jewish efforts and perpetual fight to secure stability, security and new direction in the daily life of struggling Jews.
PREDOMINANT AND DRASTIC JEWISH CHANGES: In Europe, new social and intellectual changes in the Jewish communities prompted and influenced Jewish artists to illustrate and paint the drastic intellectual, artistic, philosophical and cultural changes among cultured and avant-garde Jews. Max Lieberman, the pioneer of German Expressionism echoed Jewish intellectualism. However, Lieberman did not completely abandoned the Jewish traditional nostalgia. His famous masterpiece “The Artist’s Wife and Granddaughter”, painted in 1926, portrayed the warmth and sweetness of a German-Jewish family fading away amid tumultuous and frightening European political events. Around 1935, all his artwork was removed from the German museums by the Nazi party and its hoodlums.
THE BEGINNING OF A JEWISH ART MOVEMENT: Jewish migration and radical changes in Jewish communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries forced or invited leading Jewish artists in France, Russia, Eastern Europe and in the United States to focus on recapturing the spirit, essence and soul of Judaic history and culture. In that context, Jewish artists felt the need for creating an authentic Jewish art; a pure Hebraic art. And Boris Schatz took the lead. He went to Jerusalem to establish the “Bezalel School”. Around 1920, many artists from various parts of Europe joined Schatz in his efforts to create an authentic Jewish art and to protect and promote “Zionism Idealism” through paintings, illustrations, drawings, sketches and sculpture reflecting bursting Jewish optimism. However, instead of creating a “Jewish Art”, they produced a “Hebraic Art”, later to be known as the “Hebrew Art”. This new breed of Jewish artists, ardently and diligently, began to paint scenes from the daily life of Jewish families in Palestine,” paysages” and “stills” from small Jewish towns, and the world they lived in.
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