Testimonials – Visual Midrash and Jewish Art
“Art which reflects the Jewish experience.”
the Seminar in Jewish Art held in 1984 defined Jewish art as “art that reflects the Jewish experience.” Although sounding simplistic, the definition avoids the identification of art with nationalism, and it avoids identifying Jewish art with a particular style or styles. Rather it is a very open definition that allows inclusion of both European art and art that was created in the Muslim world, as well as the hybrid forms created in the Bezalel School in Jerusalem during the first decades of the twentieth century that fuse art nouveau with Ottoman forms and techniques. The definition clearly states that Jewish art is the result of the various historical experiences of the Jewish people, such as migrations and expulsions. As Brendel said of Roman art, Jewish art is in a state of continuous evolution. It is not a unified corpus, but a diversified body, encompassing contrasting aims according to time and historical circumstances.
Jewish Art and Visual Culture: A Century of Academic Achievement VIVIAN B. MANN
Jewish art is a series of facts. For thousands of years we were a barren people. We shared the fate of our land. A fine, horrible desert sand blew and blew over us until our sources were buried and our soil was covered with a heavy layer that killed all young buds. The excess in soul power that we possessed at all times expressed itself in the exile merely in an indescribably one-sided spiritual activity that blinded the eyes to all the beauty of nature and of life. We were robbed of that from which every people takes again and again joyous, fresh energy — the ability to behold a beautiful landscape and beautiful people. The blossoming and growth beyond the ghetto was unknown to and hated by our forebears as much as the beautiful human body. All things, from whose magic the literature spins its golden veil, all things, whose forms are forged through art’s blessed hands, were something foreign that we encountered with an ineradicable mistrust. … The very thing in which the true essence of a nation expresses itself to the fullest and purest, the sacred word of the national soul, the artistic productivity, was lost to us. Wherever the yearning for beauty raised itself with tender shy limbs, there it was suppressed with an invisible, merciless hand. … A whole and complete Jewish art will be possible only on Jewish soil, just like a whole and complete Jewish culture as such.
Martin Buber
Art as a vital part of our being “Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power…Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.” ―
Abraham Heschel
“I wonder,” said Agam, “why all the museums preserve the past. With our means of communication [we could] become enthusiastic about a place where projects concerning the future, the chrystalization of our future, would be shown and explained…’
as quoted in “Homage to Ya’acov Agam” P. 151
“Making art, like Jewish practice, is premised on the belief that a careful attention to process itself is necessary to imagine and ultimately reach an unknown, but desired, outcome. Artmaking and Jewish life both demand surrender and determination; precision and wild abandon; patience and urgency; solitude and community. And at the very center of both Judaism and experimental artmaking is a generative tension between modernity and tradition; between a commitment to the lineage that formed us, and the desire to see and represent the world anew.”
Maia Ipp wrote in her widely shared 2019 essay Kaddish for an Unborn Avant-Garde: