Femmes Fatales, Biblical Heroines, and Sensual Beauties: Who Is the Modern Jewess in the Art of Ephraim Moses Lilien

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925) was one of the most important Jewish artists of modern times. As a successful illustrator, photographer, painter, and printer, he became known as the "first major Zionist" artist. Surprisingly, there has been little in-depth scholarly research and analysis of Lilien's work available in English.In this article, I summarize my research findings from my recent monograph, Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation (Bloomsbury Press, 2020), and consider how radical Lilien's complex depictions of women were for this period. Most of the historiography on Lilien has concentrated on his iconography of the muscular [male] Jewish body, discussed among scholars of Zionist art historiography. There has been little debate on his images of the modern Jewess. Like other vanguard male artists at the end of the nineteenth century, painting continued to be a male preserve. His work mirrored the misogyny inherent among non-Jewish avant-garde artists. Ironically, as a secular Zionist, Lilien pushed the limits of Jewish visual representation in the interests of Jewish cultural literacy. This paper considers that paradox in regard to the burgeoning interest at the fin de siècle in German Orientalism and the tensions inherent in the navigation of German Jewish identity.Using an interdisciplinary approach to integrate intellectual and cultural history with issues of gender, Jewish history, and visual culture, this article explores fin-de-siècle tensions between European and Oriental expressions of Jewish femininity. Lilien's female images offer a compelling glimpse of an alternate, independent, and often sexually liberated modern Jewish woman.