The Role of Exhibitions in the Definition of Jewish Art and the Discourse on Jewish Identity

Abstract

1 Morris Myer, “Iz faran a yidishe kunst? In shaykhes mit der yidisher kunst oysshtelung in der vaytshepeler art galerie” (Is there Jewish Art? In the Context of the Jewish Art Exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery), Di tsayt, May 26, 1927, 2 (Yiddish); the translation from this text is mine. 2 Cecil Roth, “Introduction,” in Jewish Art, ed. Cecil Roth (London, 1961), 17–36. 3 Philip Dodd as cited in Janet Wolff, “The ‘Jewish Mark’ in English Painting: Cultural Identity and Modern Art,” in English Art 1860–1914: Modern Artists and Identity, eds. David Peters Corbett and Lara Perry (Manchester, 2000), 184. 4 Examples of the former (cultural historical) approach to art by Jewish According to Di tsayt editor Morris Myer, who reviewed the 1927 Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, the definition of Jewish art was a straightforward matter: “In order to answer the [. . .] question whether we do have Jewish art or whether it is possible to have specific Jewish art, one has to clarify what Jewish means, or rather, what Jewishness means.”1 Basing himself on a spiritual interpretation of Jewish identity, he developed a list of criteria by which to define Jewish art and then classified the artwork on display in accordance with those criteria. Now, as then, various ideas abound as to the definition of Jewish art, but more recent authors have had less confidence in the validity of universal and firm classifications. In Jewish Art, Cecil Roth noted that it would be difficult to find common denominators in the work of all Jewish artists. However, he added that there are also no fixed categories for French or Spanish art: “for it is only by postulating an artificial unity, based on geographical and similar considerations, that one is able to regard the art of any country in all periods as a whole.”2 Philip Dodd has similarly argued that the Englishness of English art is not predetermined, but is constituted and reconstituted for different purposes at different times, and would I suggest that the same fluctuation applies to other art historical categorizations, whether they are conceived nationally, ethnically, or otherwise.3 The concepts of art and identity are in constant flux, so the relationship between the two necessarily fluctuates. If the definition of an artwork as Jewish requires at least an implicit concept of Jewishness, then shifting definitions of Jewish art can provide insight into changing notions of Jewish identity. This article explores the art discourse produced in and by exhibitions of Jewish art in London in the first quarter of the twentieth century and discusses its relationship with the shifting discourses on Jewish identity.