Ahasuerus at the easel Jewish art and Jewish artists in Central and Eastern European Modernism at the turn of the last century

544 Pages·2014·4.923 MB·English

by  Sandqvist, Tom

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Tom Sandqvist
Tom Sandqvist
Ahasuerus at the Easel
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Tom Sandqvist is Professor and Docent in Theory of Art and Art History based in Stock- d st
holm. Ahasuerus at the Easel continues the discussion in the author’s previous book The na
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Sacred Cause (Peter Lang 2013) on Central and Eastern European Modernism.
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ISBN 978-3-631-65163-6 www.peterlang.com
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Tom Sandqvist
Tom Sandqvist
Ahasuerus at the Easel
This survey asks a seemingly simple question: Is there an affinity between the emer- l m Ahasuerus at the Easel
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gence of modern art and various Avant-Garde movements such as Russian Suprematism rs
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and Polish or Hungarian Constructivism around about the turn of the last century and nn
the process of Jewish assimilation in the Habsburg empire and Russian tsardom respec- Ceer Jewish Art and Jewish Artists
tively? What about the possible connection between “Hebraism”, Jewish Messianism, d
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Avant-Garde movements of the region? Was Russian Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, Pro- s
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Tom Sandqvist is Professor and Docent in Theory of Art and Art History based in Stock- ds
holm. Ahasuerus at the Easel continues the discussion in the author’s previous book The na
aE
Sacred Cause (Peter Lang 2013) on Central and Eastern European Modernism.
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www.peterlang.com
265163_Sandqvist_AM_A5HC PLA research new.indd 1 16.04.14 11:44
Ahasuerus at the Easel

Tom Sandqvist

Ahasuerus at the Easel

Jewish art and Jewish Artists
in Central and Eastern European
Modernism at the Turn
of the Last Century
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sandqvist, Tom.
Ahasuerus at the easel : Jewish art and Jewish artists in Central and
Eastern European Modernism at the turn of the last century / Tom Sandqvist.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-3-631-65163-6
1. Jewish art–Europe, Central–20th century. 2. Jewish art–Europe, Eastern–
20th century. 3. Modernism (Art)–Europe, Central. 4. Modernism (Art)–Europe,
Eastern. 5. Art and society–Europe, Central–History–20th century. 6. Art and
society–Europe, Eastern–History–20th century. I. Title.
N7417.6.S26 2014
704.03'9240409041–dc23
2014010557

First version published in Swedish:
Ahasverus vid staffliet. Judisk konst och judiska konstnärer i den central-
och östeuropeiska modernismen, © Bokförlaget Atlantis.

Cover photo: © Ann Edholm

ISBN 978-3-631-65163-6 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-04476-8 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/ 978-3-653-04476-8
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2014
All rights reserved.
PL Academic Research is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.
Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙
Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
www.peterlang.com
Contents
I. Introduction ................................................................................................... 9
The Narrow Horizon ..................................................................................... 9
State of the Art and Methodological Reflections ........................................ 11
Assimilation and Integration ....................................................................... 18
II. Attaching ..................................................................................................... 21
Ahasuerus Tries to Conform ....................................................................... 21
“The Jewish Century” and the “Ordeal of Civility” .................................... 27
III. Jewish Art .................................................................................................... 35
Jewish Art – Is There Any at All? ............................................................... 35
Art Historical Orientalization, the Second Commandment,
and the Haskalah ......................................................................................... 36
Oriental “Savages”, Folk Art and Emerging Jewish Renaissance .............. 44
IV. The Russian Context ................................................................................... 53
Revolutionary Development ....................................................................... 53
Restrictions, Settlements, and Financial Contributions, After All .............. 56
Mark Antokolski .......................................................................................... 60
Isaac Levitan ............................................................................................... 70
Jewish Patrons and Russian-Jewish Popular Art in the Avant-Garde ......... 84
Jewish Renaissance ..................................................................................... 92
Jehuda Pen in Vitebsk ................................................................................. 95
Renaissance and Revolution ..................................................................... 100
Marc Chagall ............................................................................................. 109
The Jewish Kazimir Malevich .................................................................. 130
The New Theater and Natan Altman ......................................................... 140
Naum Gabo and El Lissitzky .................................................................... 149
V. Poland – The Partioned Country ............................................................... 175
Łódź, the “Jewish” Industrial City ............................................................ 175
Difficult to Conform to Polish Society ...................................................... 180
Galicia and Jewish Self-Hatred ................................................................. 187
Maurycy Gottlieb ...................................................................................... 193
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The School in Kraków, Samuel Hirszenberg, Maurycy
Minkowski, and Enrico Glicenstein ....................................................... 208
Jung Jidysz ............................................................................................. 217
Futurists and Constructivists .................................................................. 231
Jewish Art Life in Kraków, Marcel Słodki, and Bruno Schulz .............. 243
VI. In Bohemia and Moravia ....................................................................... 255
The Letter to His Father ......................................................................... 255
A Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Ghetto .............................................. 258
Alexandr Brandeis and Adolf Wiesner .................................................. 265
From Jewish Prague to Far East: Emil Orlik ......................................... 271
VII. Jews and Magyars .................................................................................. 279
Michael Lieb becomes Mihály von Munkácsy ...................................... 279
Jewish Counts and Barons – the Hungarian Situation ........................... 282
Cognitive Dissonance, the City, and the Arts ........................................ 290
István Farkas and Hungarian Art Progress ............................................. 295
Nyolcak – Six Jewish Artists of a Total of Eight ................................... 303
Anna Lesznai ......................................................................................... 328
Lászlo Moholy-Nagy ............................................................................. 335
VIII. Paris – Point of Impact ........................................................................... 365
A “Barbarian Horde” in Montparnasse .................................................. 365
Sonia Delaunay ...................................................................................... 369
Chaïm Soutine and Jacques Lipchitz ..................................................... 379
Poles in Paris .......................................................................................... 390
IX. Art, Assimilation, and Jewish Modernity ............................................... 411
Intellectual and Artistic “Nomadism” .................................................... 411
Golem and the Biblical Ban on Images ................................................. 420
Non-Figurative Image and Typographical Experiments ........................ 424
Jewish Conception of Time, Messianism, Revolutionary
Art, and Martin Buber’s Hasidism ......................................................... 435
Shtetl Culture, the Book, and Polyphonic Language ............................. 450
“Democratic” Everyday Objects, Pantheism, and Arthur
Segal’s “Gleichwertigkeit” ..................................................................... 461
Eclecticism ............................................................................................. 471
A “Postmodern” Sound Box .................................................................. 480
6
X. Sources and Bibliography ......................................................................... 491
Unpublished Material ............................................................................... 491
Internet ...................................................................................................... 491
Literature ................................................................................................... 493
XI. Illustrations ............................................................................................... 511
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