Jewish Art in America: An Introduction

by Matthew Baigell

Overview

In this first book-length study of Jewish art in America, Matthew Baigell explores works from the early settlers of America to the present. It concentrates on exploring and examining Jewish subject matter employed by artists as they illustrated aspects of their religious and ethnic heritage and as they responded to major events over the decades, including the Great Migration, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel, as well as the dispersal of Jewish artists around the country and the rise of feminism and spiritualism in the late-twentieth century.

Subjects include genre scenes of "the Jewish street," religious and spiritual themes derived from the Bible and the Kabbalah, and images that record the artists' participation in and witnessing of major events in their lifetimes. The author also considers the often asked questions: Is there a Jewish art? and, Is there a single Jewish Experience?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742546400
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	11/27/2006
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.19(w) x 9.35(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Matthew Baigell is professor emeritus of art history at Rutgers University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction Chapter 3 Until 1920, Preliminaries and Beginnings Chapter 4 The 1920s, Settling In Chapter 5 The 1930s, Social Issues Chapter 6 The 1940s, The Holocaust Years and After Chapter 7 The 1950s and After, The Older Generation Chapter 8 The 1950s and After, The Younger Generation Chapter 9 The 1970s and After, Representative Figures Chapter 10 The 1970s and After, Later Holocaust Responses Chapter 11 The 1970s and After, Spiritualism Chapter 12 The 1970s and After, Feminism Chapter 13 Conclusion Chapter 14 Works Cited Chapter 15 Index

Editorial Reviews

What Matthew Baigell is proposing is something quite unique and certainly cutting edge: the presentation that there is a Jewish art in America which is distinct to its practitioners and which does not necessarily conform to European conceptions of Jews and Jewish art and which at the same time in America is both part of the mainstream and a unique stream unto itself. Very fresh and in some ways radical.

Seth Wolitz

The editors hope that 'by historicizing the Jewish art question, the essays in this volume pose the question in different ways and, above all, keep it alive and unpredictable as a question that can shed light on the relationship between Jews, the arts, and modernity' (18)…. What is impressive about The Art of Being Jewish, and marks it as the most significant edited volume in the field since Catherine Soussloff's Jewish Identity in Modern Art History, published a decade ago, is the overall rigorousness and variety of its contributions…. Once thought to be a liability, it is precisely the imprecision of the term 'Jewish art,' its fecund ambiguity, which makes it most worth holding on to.

Religion and The Arts

A pioneer in the field of Jewish American art, Baigell has fittingly written the first full-length introduction on the subject. A welcome and much-needed contribution.

Samantha Baskind

In this first book-length study of Jewish art in America, Matthew Baigell explores works from the early settlers of America to the present. Baigell concentrates on Jewish subject matter employed by artists as they illustrated aspects of their religious and ethnic heritage and as they responded to major events over the decades, including the Great Migration, Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel, as well as the dispersal of Jewish artists around the country and the rise of feminism and spiritualism in the late-20th century.

Jewish Book World

[Baigell] provides an excellent background for understanding the various contexts in which American Jews, including artists, have operated....[a] worthy addition to one's library.

American Jewish History

Given his unmatched expertise in Jewish American art, and his experience as an author of general narrative history in the field of American art, I could think of no one more suited to the task of putting together the a textbook on Jewish American Art history than Matthew Baigell.

Daniel Morris

The book's...merit lies in its useful documentation of the work of artists, some of them like Max Weber or Ben Shahn, reasonably well known, but in many instances much less familiar and perhaps worthy of greater attention that they have received.

Choice Reviews - W. Cahn

[Baigell] provides an excellent background for understanding the various contexts in which American Jews, including artists, have operated....[a] worthy addition to one's library.

November 2008 American Jewish History

The book's...merit lies in its useful documentation of the work of artists, some of them like Max Weber or Ben Shahn, reasonably well known, but in many instances much less familiar and perhaps worthy of greater attention that they have received.
— W. Cahn, emeritus, Yale University

Choice