Sotheby’s Chanukah Auction: December 19, 2012

Silence. There is an overwhelming silence that dominates the Isidor Kaufmann masterpiece, Rabbi with Young Student (catalogue #93) offered for sale at the Sotheby’s December 19th auction. Kaufmann’s most engaging paintings for me are the deeply psychological portraits, usually of Hasidic men, young women and youths. It is noteworthy that Kaufmann (1853 – 1921) and Freud (1856 – 1939) were contemporaries and both lived in Vienna during the same period.

Different Modernist Trajectories: Schoenberg, Kandinsky, And The Blue Rider At The Jewish Museum

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) were two of the most important modernist artists in the early twentieth century.

Abie Rotenberg – Journeys 5

Did Abie have a problem letting go and allowing others to give input into the songs on the album? Without them, this album might not have happened, he says.

The Middle Eastern Conflict In C-major

Barry Frydlender's nearly life-sized photograph Shirat Hayam depicts the August 2005 dismantling of the 16-family Gaza seaside settlement Shirat Hayam under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.

Weisberg’s Visions

There is a special class of Jewish artists who toil in the rich fields of Tanach and Jewish practice for years and years, quietly establishing a foundation of visual and intellectual markers for generation of artists to come. Ruth Weisberg is clearly one of these founders. Her seminal work articulates an approach to the Jewish narrative deeply informed by a Jewish feminism.

Bonhams: Fine Judaica

It is a rare season indeed when two major auction houses show not only resplendent offerings of Judaica, but also multiple examples of highly unusual and rare Jewish-themed fine art. That is indeed the case now both at Sotheby’s December 19th auction and the Bonhams recent December 10th auction.

Toby Cohen’s Hovering Hassidim

One of my favorite characters in all of literature is the senile patriarch José Arcadio Buendía, of Gabriel García Márquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, who, before getting tied to a tree for his own protection, decides he would like to capture God in a daguerreotype. José's ultimately unsuccessful design solution is to jump out from around a corner hoping to catch the deity unawares.

The Puppet Master Who Denied That The Holocaust (Had Ended)

Puppeteers are supposed to be jolly sorts, who associate with Sesame Street, the Muppets and Mister Rogers's Neighborhood.

Generations

Two Jewish holidays particularly command us to be connected with our vast history. Most notably Passover demands that we feel as if we too went out of Egypt with the Jewish masses. Less obvious is Tisha b’Av.

Janet Shafner’s Biblical Women

By the Bible's own admission, the laws and procedures pertaining to the red heifer constitute some of the greatest chukot, or mysteries, of the entire scriptures. Per Numbers 19, an unblemished, never-been-harnessed red heifer, if slaughtered by a priest outside of the camp in the proper way - which includes the following ingredients: a piece of cedar wood, hyssop and crimson wool - can purify someone who has touched something unholy. The great mystery of the red heifer, the para adumah, though, is that the very object that purifies the ritually unclean also makes all the priests who come in contact with it unclean. It is the original double-edged sword.

A Jewish Art Primer (Part III) – Jewish Painting: The Past and Future Collide

As the Enlightenment marched across Europe in the form of the Napoleonic conquests, the effects on Jewish Art were unmistakable.

The Jewish Cemetery: Jacob van Ruisdael’s Homage To Religious Freedom

Not far from Amsterdam, in the village of Ouderkerk on the River Amstel, lies the Portuguese-Jewish cemetery called Beth Haim. Here in this pastoral necropolis repose the remains of Jews who fled the Iberian Peninsula in the wake of the Inquisition, exiles who chose banishment over baptism, who had fortuitously managed to survive the torture chambers or dodge the stake in the relentless drive by the Roman Catholic Church to cleanse the land of heretics.

Hyman Bloom’s Studio – Paintings and Drawings (1940-2005)

“Hyman Bloom: Paintings and Drawings (1940 – 2005),” currently at White Box (the cutting edge international art space on Broome Street), is a rare opportunity to observe the creative process of one of the most important practitioners of 20th century Jewish Art in America.

Forcing The Messiah Any Day That He Might Come

"I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah," declares Maimonides in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, "and even if he tarries, nevertheless I shall await him any day that he might come."

Holzman’s Torah For The Eyes

Earlier this year I was presenting my survey of Jewish art, “A Jewish Art Primer,” in a West Hartford, Connecticut synagogue and during the intermission a local artist, David Holzman, introduced himself to me. He relayed his rich and fascinating artistic background and then produced a portfolio of 8 black and white prints that he generously gave to me as a gift. As a tantalizing glimpse into recent work, they are truly amazing and I would like to share them with you.

Between Man And G-d And Art: Installing Jewishly Merav Ezer’s Plastic Arts

In a sense, the history of the Jewish people is a history of installation art. The thunder and lightning, booming shofar and floral assortment at Sinai were intense aesthetic experiences.

Hebrew Bible From Lisbon At The MET

Within Shakespeare’s worldview, an assassination like Macbeth’s of King Duncan upset the so-called Great Chain of Being, or the cosmological organizational chart, in which power structures that were clearly articulated could only be disrupted at a cost.

Sotheby’s Tel Aviv Israeli Picture Book

Autour du Coq Rouge (Around the Red Rooster), painted in 1982 by a 95-year-old Marc Chagall (1887-1985), the most famous Jewish artist of the 20th Century, puzzles us with its mysterious loveliness and grace. The Chagall bursts upon us in a passionate torrent, scintillating our visual sensibilities with pinks, hot violets and lush greens that are only partially soothed by the flickering blues of distant skies.

Chagall’s ‘Window’ Synagogue: Hadassah Hospital

Upon walking into the synagogue at Hadassah Hospital, one is forced to look up.

Piety And Art: Zvi Malnovitzer’s Paintings

Piety and paintings of pious Jews, what a dangerous mix! It takes considerable courage to dedicate oneself to making art, not to mention to do so within the Orthodox community.

Farbrengen: A Gathering Of Images: Photographs Of Jerry Dantzic

A farbrengen is a gathering of Hasidim in the presence of their holy Rebbe to learn Torah and hear his words of wisdom. This exhibition is such a gathering. The hitherto unseen photographs by the photographer Jerry Dantzic present the collective fabric and texture of the Lubavitch community. The Torah life of a hasid is seen in a joyous wedding dance, tender moments at the bedeckening and under the chupah, a l'chaim to the Rebbe, and rapt attention at leining on Purim morning.

Process, Loss and History

New York has gone through a William Kentridge craze this year. There have been scattered exhibitions in galleries throughout the cities, in addition to lectures and live performances. From the blockbuster Five Themes show at the MoMA, the Metropolitan Opera's production of Kentridge's directed-and-designed multimedia version of Shostakovich's The Nose, the South African artist has been a dominant voice on the New York art scene. For those who missed the incredible MoMA retrospective-or for those who simply wish for another Kentridge fix-a final salvo can be caught at the Jewish Museum's exhibition of part of Kentridge's Nine Drawings for Projection series.

World War II Art And Propaganda

One of the greatest insights Jacques Derrida laid out in his conceptualization of Deconstruction was that a thing can coexist with its opposite, and in fact, neither can be properly understood without the other.

The Paintings Of Brocha Teichman

When Brocha Teichman was a young girl growing up, she always drew pictures.

Rembrandt Etchings

Walking out of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington, D.C. the stench of mass murder was overpowering.

Art And Auschwitz: Art Created In The Holocaust At The Brooklyn Museum

The Holocaust was the largest mass murder in human history. It casts an indelible shadow over everything that follows, twisting morality and normative values in unfathomable ways. The vast complicity of Western Civilization in the pre-meditated murder of six million Jews taints all culture and intellectual life to this day.

Lynda Caspe: Biblical Reliefs and Cityscapes

Lynda Caspe’s current exhibition at the Derfner Museum is an extraordinary event. In this show of 12 bronze relief sculptures and 14 cityscape paintings we have the opportunity to see the full scope of her last six years of work that, as least with the sculptures, marked a radical change in subject matter and technique.

A Local, Baltimore Angle On Some Of The Hardships Of Holocaust Refugees

The Jewish Museum of Maryland's "Lives Lost" exhibit offers a meditation on a "dramatic but little known story" - according to the museum Associate Director Anita Kassof.

Maus: Flash Back To The Present – Survivor Memory Into Holocaust Art, Part I

Elie Wiesel encapsulates the problem of Holocaust art by insisting that, "Auschwitz defies imagination and perception; it submits only to memory. It can be communicated by testimony, not fiction."

Harry McCormick’s Paintings: A Unique Jewish Genre

At the Chassidic Art Institute one artist, Harry McCormick, has rather amazingly fathomed the authentic heartbeat of the individual Jewish life. This exhibition, running until July 25, shows a mere 16 paintings, but six of them reveal a deeply perceptive and sensitive chronicle of Yiddishkeit.

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