{"title":"The Paracca Family of Architects and Druja Synagogue: Magnate Patrons and Jewish Clients of Eighteenth-century \"Vilnius Baroque\"","authors":"R. Noyes, Rūstis Kamuntavičius","doi":"10.3828/aj.2021.17.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/aj.2021.17.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores Jews' role in mediating artistic exchange between Italy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century, through a case study examining the cultural and historical context surrounding the construction of the Druja synagogue (ca. 1765–1766) by the Paracca family of immigrant Italian architects and masons, for the burgeoning Jewish community affiliated with the region's reigning noble families. The article explores the circumstances surrounding the Druja synagogue as a manifestation of the so-called \"Vilnius Baroque\" school of late Baroque–Rococo architecture in the Grand Duchy. The synagogue design reanimated the grandeur of the past and represented notions of Italy in honor of Baltic Catholic patrons and Jewish clients. Jews emerge as scions and mediators of the geopolitical, spiritual and cultural crossroads at Druja, a historical inflection point when emerging divisions of conceptual geography gave rise to the notion of an \"eastern Europe.\"","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"17 1","pages":"25 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44653507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Carol Zemel (1941–2021)","authors":"M. Olin","doi":"10.3828/aj.2021.17.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/aj.2021.17.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"17 1","pages":"181 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44796730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Unknown Illuminated Judeo-Persian Manuscript of Nizāmī's Khosrow and Shīrīn","authors":"Orit Carmeli","doi":"10.3828/aj.2021.17.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/aj.2021.17.7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This is a brief presentation of the mid-seventeenth-century illuminated Judeo-Persian copy of Nizāmī's Khosrow and Shīrīn from the collection of the Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem. The Khamsa of Nizāmī Ganjavi (d. 1209) is one of the most famous medieval Persian love stories and one of the most admired poetical works ever written in the Persian language. Khosrow and Shīrīn (composed 1175/6–1191) is the second book in the Quinary and recounts the tragic love story of the Sasanian king Khosrow II Parviz and the Armenian princess Shīrīn. Nizāmī's poetry, in addition to other works of Persian classical masters, was regarded by the Jews of Iran as an integral part of their literary and cultural heritage. Over the years these renowned poetical works were largely transliterated into Judeo-Persian and copies of the texts can be found in various public and private collections. The manuscript in question and other illuminated Judeo-Persian manuscripts clearly testify to their owners and patrons' awareness of long-established Persian artistic tradition and cultural conventions, representing Jewish–Persian encounter in text and image.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"17 1","pages":"131 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49353222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"A Child in Every Artist?\": Vjera Biller and Jewish Primitivism in the Berlin Sturm Avant-garde","authors":"Mirjam E. Wilhelm","doi":"10.3828/aj.2021.17.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/aj.2021.17.5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article centers on the \"forgotten\" Jewish avant-garde artist Vjera Biller, among the most active contributors to the Berlin-based 1920s expressionist movement Der Sturm. Through an in-depth analysis of the artist's fragmented oeuvre, including her Venice series, it examines Biller's art practice, her leitmotif of children, and its links to the aesthetics of interwar German Expressionism. It contrasts her approach with that of her contemporary Sturm colleague Marc Chagall and shows how both artists drew extensively on children's art and \"the primitive\" for inspiration. Biller also pioneered the inclusion of popular culture elements such as cartoons and comics as an avant-garde art form.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"17 1","pages":"107 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48995397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yehuda Pen, The Sholem Aleichem of Painting","authors":"Galya Diment","doi":"10.3828/aj.2021.17.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/aj.2021.17.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article is about Marc Chagall's teacher in Vitebsk, Yehuda Pen (1854–1937), and the school for painters that he established at the turn of the twentieth century. From it, in addition to Chagall, came the likes of El Lissitzky (1890–1941) and Osip Zadkine (1888–1967). It is proposed that in addition to training and enabling these better-known artists to \"paint in Yiddish,\" Pen, who is hardly known in the West (and who was mysteriously murdered in 1937, at the peak of Stalin's purges), was himself (while academically trained) a truly and remarkably groundbreaking Jewish, Yiddish painter.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"17 1","pages":"61 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70326318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dreaming of Raphael: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Michael-Beer-Stiftung for Jewish Artists","authors":"Inka Bertz","doi":"10.3828/AJ.2020.16.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJ.2020.16.6","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In his will, the poet and playwright Michael Beer (1800–1833) provided an endowment for a prize to support Jewish painters and sculptors to travel to Italy for one year. The grant was placed under the auspices of the Berlin Academy of Art and awarded from 1836 to 1921. This essay focusses on the establishment of the prize, exploring the mindset and motivations of the donor, situated in their historical, social, and ideological contexts. It opens insights into early nineteenth-century Jewish-Christian networks, as well as into contemporary views on national art and the aesthetics of the classical tradition, private patronage and public institutions, Jewish emancipation, antisemitism, and civil rights.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"69 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43124811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art Collecting by the Galician Jewish Aristocracy: From Majer Jerachmiel von Mises to Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki","authors":"Sergey Kravtsov","doi":"10.3828/AJ.2020.16.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJ.2020.16.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article discusses the construction of a Jewish aristocratic identity through art collecting and patronage, in parallel with other “aristocratic” activities and lifestyles. The focus is a particular Galican family ennobled by Franz Joseph I in 1881. The family’s ambitions and achievements are known from a memoir by Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki (1890, Lviv–1958, London), who was a great-great-grandson of the community head Rachmiel von Mises (1800–1891), a distant cousin of the artist Moses Ephraim Lilien (1874–1925), and a grandson of the banker Ignacy Lilien, who financed Moses Ephraim’s education. The article considers the self-construction of the family members as art connoisseurs and artists. These included the banker, industrialist, artist, and art collector Maurycy Nierenstein (1840–1917); painter Helene von Mises (1883–1942); architect Marya Lilien (1900–1998); and economist, lawyer, army officer, and collector Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"31 - 50"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43183558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jewish Art Collectors in Poland and the Works of Maksymilian Gierymski before World War II","authors":"A. Barra","doi":"10.3828/AJ.2020.16.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJ.2020.16.5","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:From the end of the nineteenth century and up to the beginning of World War II, many of Maksymilian Gierymski’s (1846–1874) works were part of the collections of respected Jewish collectors, including Maksymilian Adam Oderfeld, Edward Rejcher, Stanisław Rotwand, Adolf Peretz, and Abe Gutnajer. They combined buying Polish art with providing financial support for many Polish cultural institutions. Thanks to these collectors the Polish public had better knowledge of Gierymski’s art. They bought his works at a time when the best examples of his oeuvre were abroad. 1939 was a tragic turning point for their activity. Collections were destroyed or stolen, including Gierymski’s work, and most of these items were not catalogued. Nevertheless, the collectors’ knowledge, passion, and expertise raised the bar for standards in Polish art collecting generally. The forgotten activity of Poland’s Jewish collectors is an essential part of the history of nineteenth-century Polish art.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"51 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46781954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Patronage versus State Patronage: Polish and Polish-Jewish Artists React to the Trauma of March ’68","authors":"Artur Tanikowski","doi":"10.3828/AJ.2020.16.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJ.2020.16.7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Social tensions in communist Poland were exacerbated with the launching of anti-Zionist propaganda in June 1967. Warsaw students organized numerous protests after the authorities tightened censorship, and later banned the staging of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady at the National Theater, considering it to be anti-Soviet. Government forces stifled student protests with numerous arrests, at times causing serious injuries, dismissals from the university, and ultimately the expulsion of Polish citizens of Jewish origin from Poland. The restrictions affected Holocaust survivors who were employed in art schools and cultural institutions. This group included Artur Nacht-Samborski, Jonasz Stern, Eugeniusz Eibisch, and Gizela Szancerowa, among others. Notable artistic testimonies of the experience of March ’68 events and their effects were left by painters and sculptors from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, its students, graduates, and lecturers: Witlod Masznicz, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Ewa Kuryluk, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, and others in his studio – Barbara Falender, Henryk Morel, Grzegorz Kowalski, and Krzysztof M. Bednarski. In Cracow, artists belonging to the Wprost (Explicit) group, including Maciej Bieniasz, Zbylut Grzywacz, Leszek Sobocki, and Jacek Waltoś, commented on the events of March ’68 boldly and on an ongoing basis.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"124 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45446310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Italian-Jewish Patrons of Modern Art in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy","authors":"L. Modena","doi":"10.3828/AJ.2020.16.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJ.2020.16.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:With a focus on art donations, this article explores several case studies of Jewish Italian patrons such as Sforni, Uzielli, Sarfatti, Castelfranco, Vitali, and others who supported artists of movements that were considered modern at their time: the Macchiaioli (1850–1870), the Futurists (1910s), the Metaphysical painters (1920s), the Novecento group (1920–1930s), and several post WWII cases. It reflects on differences in art donations by Jews in Italy and other European countries, modes of reception, taste, meanings and strategy of donations, thus contributing to the social history of Italian and European Jewry and the history of collections and donations to public museums.","PeriodicalId":41476,"journal":{"name":"Ars Judaica-The Bar Ilan Journal of Jewish Art","volume":"16 1","pages":"29 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43165485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}