Imagining Jewish Art: Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj

by Aaron Rosen

Overview

Imagining Jewish Art: Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367602543
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Pages:	140
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

List of Illustrations xi

Introduction 1

1 Marc Chagall: Fostering a Family of Images 19

2 Philip Guston: Recasting the Past, or How to Make a Golem 49

3 R. B. Kitaj: The Diasporist Unpacks 77

Conclusion: Brushes with the Past 105

Appendices 111

I Musical Iconography in Marc Chagall and Matthias Grünewald 111

II R. B. Kitaj and the 'Western' Tradition 112

III Baseball and Jewish-American Identity 113

Bibliography 115

Index 123

Editorial Reviews

The book is at its strongest when it employs formal comparisons to demonstrate the close visual conversations with European ‘Masters’ of religious art (such as Grünewald, Uccello and della Francesca) that Chagall, Guston and Kitaj each engage in.

Literature and Theology, 27.1 (March 2013), 116 - Alana M. Vincent

A probing and accessible interdisciplinary contribution to the field of modern Jewish art.

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 29.4, Summer 2011, 177-79 - Samantha Baskind

Towards the end of his book, Rosen explains that his intention has been to illustrate ‘something of the unique, productive tensions which can arise when the themes and symbols in works by non-Jewish artists are made to "speak Jewish"’ (106). In this he is entirely successful. The reader learns a good deal about the three artists, and can see in practice how a Jewish artist, interested in questions of Jewish history and identity, may engage the art-historical tradition in producing a new kind of visual imagery.

Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 9.3, 2010, 437-39 - Janet Wolff

Unashamedly scholarly yet written in a style that is refreshingly accessible, achieving a rare and satisfying balance between detailed, even minute, analyses of specific works of art and a broader sense of purpose, underpinned by an intimate knowledge of a wide range of theological and philosophical texts.... Imagining Jewish Art concludes with an excellent and immensely thought-provoking chapter entitled ‘Brushes with the Past’, suggestive of enough new avenues of intellectual enquiry to fuel several more volumes. While other scholars (both Jewish and non-Jewish) may indeed take up some of these challenges, I have little doubt that we shall be hearing more of Aaron Rosen in the future.

Art & Christianity, 62, Summer 2010, 14 - Monica Bohm-Duchen

For lovers of American art, Jewish art, history or theology, Dr Rosen has approached the subject comprehensively... Making an exceptional input to the exchange of ideas and channel of communication between religion and the fine arts, Dr Rosen processes how any type of Jewish art may serve deep-seated Jewish ideas of family, tradition, and homeland... Dr Rosen communicates his ideas succinctly, in an accessible manner.

The American

Bypassing past scholars, critics, and curators who have sought the quintessential nature of Jewish art... but failed to come up with the answer, Rosen is your man.

The Jewish Telegraph

Rosen's effort to identify and elucidate the Jewish concerns of these three very different artists is penetrating and his analysis of the works in question is consistently insightful. Though the exact nature of Jewish art remains slippery, Rosen's book is a worthy investigation of the ways in which the most evidently Jewish art can borrow from the least Jewish sources, and the ways in which less apparently Jewish art can have unexpected Jewish resonances.

Zeek at Jewcy - Ezra Glinter