The Art Thread

[andak01]

Suggested topics:

The first two, only since I think it might be more thematic to the forum.

Great Jewish Artists - My picks (Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, Max Beckmann)

Great Jewish Art Collectors and Patrons

Color Theory

Conceptual Art

[andak01]

Not a topic of interest I guess.

[Mediocrates]

We're probably not knowledgeable on the subject.

[Mediocrates]

I do like Modigliani but I'm not an art student who could tell you the theory of it. I also enjoy the intimacy of Raphael Soyer.

[andak01]

I do like Modigliani but I'm not an art student who could tell you the theory of it. I also enjoy the intimacy of Raphael Soyer.

Him I met many years back in the 80's. There was an opening for Isabel Bishop and he was there. I remember laughing at the time that the median age at the opening was 90 and everybody was about five foot nothing. It was like a convention for dried apples! It must have been the year before he died. He's was good, and he had brothers I believe. Here it is, Moses and Isaac, also painters.

Here's something to look at.

This is really late work. His classic work was during the 1930s and 40s.
http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists...S&artist=24158


http://www.paramourfinearts.com/phot...-%20Behind.jpg

http://www.tfaoi.com/am/6am/6am5.jpg

He was in New York with Isabel Bishop. I'd say he was Ashcan school, but almost a generation after the founders. It started in Philadelphia. Robert Henri was one of the founders.

Here's Isabel Bishop.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-583...l-on-canvas-by

[dayag]

I do like Modigliani but I'm not an art student who could tell you the theory of it. I also enjoy the intimacy of Raphael Soyer.

I love Modigliani's work. I bought a copy of "Jeanne Hebuterne in Red Shawl" the last time I was in Jerusalem.

I visited his grave at Pere LaChaise.

[andak01]

Back to the art thread. Question, is there a Jewish aesthetic and what is it? I submit that there is and IMO the embodiment of it was Chagall. Maybe this is my Fiddler on the Roof stereotype of what it is to be Jewish. Or maybe Fiddler on the Roof comes from Chagall... Wow, I was right! Who learned that one today? I did. Or subconsciously I remembered it. Anyway it's nice to make connections.

Fiddler plucks at the same chord. The musical is milder and gentler, and this Tevye is a watered down version of Aleichem’s Tevye. Indeed, the name Fiddler on the Roof was drawn from a well-known, much loved image by Marc Chagall.

http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visito...?articleID=650

Here's the painting.

http://www.fiddlingaround.co.uk/Reso...en-fiddler.jpg

Now the question next is, where does that come from? I was lucky enough to go to Prague a few years back and I saw in one of the national museums there a world of wonder, an aesthetic that had been closed to me because many works from behind the Iron Curtain were not allowed to travel and there wasn't much information or reproductions of those works here in America. Now, can we get to what Chagall saw that inspired him to such a wonderful work of fancy?

Let's start with his background. He's Belarus, but I need to know when he was there, what did he see and when did he leave. When was the painting painted and who was he hanging around with?

Here's a version painted 1912-1913.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

1913 puts him in Paris. And I already wanted to say a Braque/Picasso influence, but just wanted to confirm. Cubism was developed in the first decade of the 20th century and Braque and Picasso became so close that is is difficult to tell their work apart at this point. Chagall arrived in Paris in 1910. But Fiddler, one of many painted by Chagall bridges the gap between Cubism and the later Surrealist movement. This cubism is only skin deep. He's got more interest in the surreal subject matter.

http://www2.nysun.com/article/50418

http://www.aspenpost.net/2006/10/31/...r-on-the-roof/

What do the Jews here think of Fiddler on the Roof? Is it some Uncle Tom stereotype or is it something really owned and admired with fondness.

[KettleWhistle]

Back to the art thread. Question, is there a Jewish aesthetic and what is it? I submit that there is and IMO the embodiment of it was Chagall. Maybe this is my Fiddler on the Roof stereotype of what it is to be Jewish.

I think it's really silly to think of a "Jewish asthetic". Due to our history, the Jews were spread through various countries, and unlike other cultures couldn't develop a distinct singular stile of their own. I'm not a fan of Chagall, and I wouldn't call him an embodiment of Jewish aesthetic. Don't get me, wrong, I do consider him a great artist, but his style is bit off from what I like. Regarding the Jewish aesthetic, I think this is something that's yet to develop, here in Israel. As for the Jewish artists from other places, they generally learned from their gentile counterparts, and mimicked their styles, albeit, of course, with their own flavor.

Regarding the Fiddler on the Roof, I'd say it's a really bad example of anything, actually. The title is that of a bad English translation of a story by Shalom Aleichem that factitiously described the social changes within the Jewish society at the end of the 19th century. The fictional character of the "Fiddler on the Roof" is that of a Jew who doesn't really understand what's the world is coming to, but has no choice but to deal with it. I don't think Chagall's painting is a good representations of this mixture of helplessness and baseless hope interwinded together in Shalom Aleichem's fictiional Tevie the Milkman, a.k.a. the Fidler on the Roof.

[andak01]

Well, that's just the kind of communication I'm after. Remember, embodiment of Jewish to me is me as an American Muslim thinking about Jewishness. It'll always be something that I can't fathom. Having lived in NYC is a help that I have more experience with Jews than maybe someone from the heartlands. But even there, outside of the occasional wedding, I didn't experience that from anything like the inside.

I suspected when I brought it up there might be a lukewarm reaction. But you're right, it isn't accurate to think of Jews as one culture.

[andak01]

Let's take this as far as we can.

In life, as in his art, Chagall floated over adversity. He skirted the race laws of Imperial Russia to study art in St. Petersburg. He made his exit of the Iron Curtain just as Kazimir Malevich's " Suprematist Academy" was moving in on his Vitebsk Free Academy. He took his last step on Vichy soil, with the help of Varian Fry and other American supporters, just as the Reich was sealing up the French borders.

http://www2.nysun.com/article/50418

Yehuda Pen, Chagall's teacher in Vitebsk
http://www.chess-theory.com/images1/...rc_chagall.jpg

http://www.belarusguide.com/images/people/pen.jpg

http://www.1001art.net/spen.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehuda_Pen

Pavel P. Chistyakov, Yehuda Pen's teacher
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tovNaSvGRM.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Chistyakov



So he moved from Vitebsk to St. Petersburg (1906, age 19) to Paris (~1910) to USA (1941).

[KettleWhistle]

Well, unfortunately, the indigenous European Jewish art was quite pathetic as it was only limited to Judaica items, and didn't include any human paintings d/t graven images prohibition. So there there were various symbols, like the Lion of Judea, various Hebrew writings, colorful mozaics on the windows of synagogues, usually without much meaning. But these pale in comparison to any contemporary European art. With the emancipation in W. Europe, and in a 100+ years the secularization of Jews in E. Europe, Jewish artists started looking looking beyond Judaica items, and art that reflected them and the life in general started to appear. However, the techniques and influences came from their host culture, and not from them.

Chagall's movements actually were very typical for E. Euopean Jews seeking education or some prominent career. I have a (now very old) relative who basically walked/hitchhiked from E. Romania to France to study medicine in Sorbonna U. because he couldn't get into any medical school anywhere else, and his family wouldn't support him in his endeavors in as much as paying for a train ticket. He returned upon graduating to his small town in Romania in 1938 or 1939, only to have his father (a Rabbi) lambass and laugh at him saying some medical terms in Latin. He left the house after a bitter argument, and the area came under Nazi control pretty soon. He never seen his father again.

The point is not the touchy story, but the fact that such was typical. There were few worthy schools behind the Pale, and so E. European Jews who wanted secular education would very often either find ways to subvert Russian anti-migration laws that prohibited them from entering Russian heartland to study in Moskow, St. Petersburg, or some other city, or would go to Europe, usually France, and try their luck there. Those who couldn't manage to accomplish such and weren't satissfied with a country-bumkin life in some small E. European town, would either join some socialist movement and usually end up in Israel, or would come to the US. Chagall's tale is very typical for an E. European Jew who managed it in Europe.

[andak01]

A little more free association. The Saint Petersburg Academy was modelled after the French and Roman academies. Like them, it would have limited itself to mythical and religious subjects. The reaction to that occurred in the 1870 and was called Peredvishniki. And no, I can't say that ten times fast. This was the realist movement in Russia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peredvizhniki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Academy_of_Arts

Chagall wasn't accepted into the Imperial Academy and instead studied under Nicholas Roerich. This guy is weird? Don't take it from me. H.P. Lovecraft referred to the "strange and disturbing paintings of Nicholas Roerich" in his Antarctic horror story At the Mountains of Madness. I'm not sure I want to know that Lovecraft considered disturbing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Roerich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:N...m_Overseas.jpg

[Mil]

There were Jewish artists like Levitan and many others who have absolutely nothing to do with Chagall or his school.

[andak01]

There were Jewish artists like Levitan and many others who have absolutely nothing to do with Chagall or his school.

You're absolutely correct, because it's clear that he was much more influenced by his time in Paris with Picasso than by any of his teachers in Russia. But this Russian school I'm not as familiar with, so I took a diversion. But the interesting thing in Russia are the icons. And though I see a lot of Braque/Picasso rubbing off, there is also mixed with cubism the flatness of the icon. I know he wasn't Christian, but any curious artist in St. Petersburg must have been familiar with them. So from the Russian standpoint, that may have proven more of an influence than his teachers.

[KettleWhistle]

I know he wasn't Christian, but any curious artist in St. Petersburg must have been familiar with them. So from the Russian standpoint, that may have proven more of an influence than his teachers.

Probably not a Jewish one. The Russian Orthodox Church is deeply anti-Semitic. Many priests there would consider a Jew entering a church to be a desecration. They certainly wouldn't let one come near an icon.

Regarding the artistic styles, Russian icons have roots in the Byzantian art. I don't think there is any cubism or Picasso in there.