the mandala-like Sri Yantra to Judaism’s “fire and water” windows from a San Francisco synagogue to Sir William Richmond’s mosaics in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The latest design, called the “Peace Silk,” incorporates “the golden rule” as expressed in the scriptures of many faiths, from Islam to Shinto to Yoruba.
(Above) “Moses Praying While Joshua Fights the Amelekites,” engraving, 1627/30, by Jan Lievens. Art of the Bible.
“If the masters cannot make a living out of their work it will fade away. They have to be protected like an endangered species. This is our heritage, our identity,” tazhib artist Mehdi Moghiseh told the Daily Star’s Hiedeh Farmani, who observed in the subheading, “Artists spend months perfecting a piece, but are unable to sell their work in a climate prizing modern art.”
Judith Esterow, associate publisher of ARTnews in New York, writes:
Dear Menachem Wecker:
We noticed your link to our ARTnews 200 top collectors list on your website and want to make you aware that the “Art News Blog” (through which you made the reference) is in no way affiliated with ARTnews magazine. Thank you for your reference to our publication, but we would appreciate your clarifying this to your audience if you plan on referring to ARTnews magazine in the future.
Thank you.
I read the post again, and I can see the confusion. I did not mean to confuse Art News Blog, which is a very interesting blog which I try to visit as often as I can, with the magazine ARTnews, which I hold to be the best art publication in print (my only complaint on behalf of art bloggers is that they don’t make much of their content available online, although this does seem to be getting better). I apologize for the ambiguity.
In a brilliant piece in the Guardian, George Saunders reminds us that Americans are stupid and that writing headlines requires common sense:
Anyway: sloppy writing, that’s our problem. Also failure to fact-check. Look at this one: Man Discovers Picasso Painting In Attic. Hello! Picasso’s dead! If not, he’s, like, 200 years old, and I doubt he can 1) climb the stairs into some dude’s attic or 2) paint once he gets there.
Makoto Fujimura’s works “speak to his evangelical Christian faith. But to find it takes some digging,” according to the AP’s Eric Gorski. Gorski says according to Dick Staub, “These artistic evangelicals, though still relatively small in number, are striving to be creators of culture rather than imitators.”
Though Ami Isseroff worries that “rightist extremists” will exploit his piece while “the anti-’Zionists’ will quote what I write here (out of context as usual) as proof of ‘Jewish Zionist Islamophobia,’” he still writes on Middle East Analysis of a piece in Al Ahram English weekly, “Behold, a work of Islamic art! A veritable souvenir of the desert! A tome worthy of the tomb of a Pharaoh and of the utterances of the Islamic sages!” The piece is on Jewish psychosis.
While the Church appears to be exclusionary in regard to other religions, it’s not above getting grumpy when it feels slighted. Just before the new seven wonders of the world were announced, the Vatican’s Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, head of the pontifical commission for culture, said that it was “surprising, inexplicable, even suspicious” that Christian art such as Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel didn’t make the short list. Brazil’s Christ the Redeemer statue, selected as a wonder, was deemed too touristy.
Although the grammatical error in Paul Washer’s podcast “Who’s Slave Are You?” bothered me, I listened to it anyway. Washer suggests that everyone serves some master, whether it is Jesus or drugs or TV, and it is clear to which God he encourages his listeners to enslave themselves.
This got me thinking about religious art. Is there a sin of idolatry in paint handling per se, as opposed to in content? Here are a few questions to all the religious painters out there. Do you see religious significance in your decision to either control your media or to be controlled by them? Is there a such thing as a humble painter or one plagued by the sin of pride? Is Jackson Pollack to be thought a very religious painter, because he allows the drips to speak on their own accord?
Richard McBee writes on the Arch of Titus in The Jewish Press and remembers seeing Am Yisroel Chai (”the Jewish nation lives”) scriibbled in chalk under the relief the first time he saw it. “That is how I still understand what this ancient monument means,” he writes.
(Above) “Bugs Bunny dresses as Groucho for the cartoon Slick Hare (1947), where he’s trying to hide in plain sight in the Mocrumbo restaurant. However, Elmer dresses as Harpo, prompting Bugs to walk off with one of Groucho’s signature lines ‘I think I’ll slip out of these wet things and into a dry martini.’” Wikipedia.
Keillor explains:
Bugs Bunny was designed to be the epitome of cool, modeled on Groucho Marx, with a carrot rather than a cigar. He is never fazed by what the world throws at him. He nonchalantly chews on his carrot in the face of all his enemies, speaking in a Brooklyn accent.
It is the rare band that tries to meld Judaism and punk rock, and this fact can make Yidcore seem more radical than it actually is. Indeed, despite the on-stage shenanigans and the dyed hair and facial piercings of frontman Bram Presser, Yidcore is not all that transgressive.
“Although it has become a somewhat sappy and romanticized notion, the individual artist really does pose a threat to all totalitarian regimes,” writes Santiago Ramos in First Things on Why Dictators Fear Artists. “The romance should not take away from the reality of the artist’s power.” Perhaps that’s why a Spanish court is censoring an unruly caricature, as Al Jazeera reports.
Art News Blog posts on the magazine’s article on the top 200 art collectors worldwide. The list seems to include a good deal of folks interested in religious art.
(Right) A Twombly, though not The kissed one, looks like it might have gotten some action from a lipstick-covered maiden.
Seattle’s Good Shepherd Center chapel now houses music shows, reports the Post-Intelligencer. This might be part of a larger movement of churches and artists collaborating, as IHT reports. Whereas recently, collaborations between churches and artists “has waned somewhat, partly because religious sanctuaries were not always thought to be the most appropriate settings for modern art,” a new “wave of contemporary art installations is being unveiled in cathedrals, churches and chapels across Europe, religious spaces are once again becoming showcases for many artists.”
On this week’s 700 Club podcast, Pat Robertson addresses a question on witchcraft in Harry Potter. Robertson says Rowling explores magic outside of God, whereas Narnia’s Aslan is a true Christ figure.
“Despite wars and various papal decrees during these years forbidding Christian Europe to engage in business with Islamic regions,” writes Elaine Pasquini for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs on Venice and the Islamic World, “Venice continued her established relationship with her eastern Mediterranean neighbors.”
Fatwas are not deterring Saudi investors from their interest in Prince Alwaleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holdings, and he attracted $2.3-billion, despite the fact that “the company’s holdings in hotels and banks violated Islam’s ban on usury and alcohol.” This is of course the same prince who gave $20-million to the Louvre, reports the Financial Post.
The BBC on The work of Naji al-Ali, see above right, 20 years after the fatal shooting of “the Arab world’s foremost political cartoonist, Naji Ali, creator of the character Handhala, (purposely shoeless) child of the Palestinian refugee camps.” HT: The Angry Arab.
Soldiers didn’t get embedded Ottawa artist Karen Bailey’s joke, when she held up a pen in response to their questions about where she kept her weapon, reports the Ottawa Citizen. Her sketchbooks filled with faces of Afghani patients, who “‘made great models,’ Bailey jokes guiltily.” And here’s the Iconia angle:
Some Muslims object strongly to having their image being captured in drawings or paintings. Even some Islamic art museums are loath to exhibit images of real people. This issue, says Bailey, was never raised with her by the Canadian military nor by any Afghanis.
Somehow, while digesting the patients, she also has to work on “that collection of old ladies having tea for her planned exhibition at Dale Smith Gallery in Ottawa next year.”
Last night, I saw Simon Schama of The Power of Art on the Colbert Report. Colbert asks Schama questions like why he gets to be an expert on art, and why passion needs to be unleashed. They talk about a number of things, including Caravaggio’s David with Goliath’s head. Schama insists it’s Caravaggio’s attempt to get sympathy after he murdered someone, but as far as I know that is debatable.
Click here for a hilarious post on “MSPAINT STEPHEN INTO FAMOUS ART! (SIMON SCHAMA ON THE SHOW TONIGHT).”
Judith Dotzel hates eyebrows, but she sure can restore religious are. See the Times Leader’s tease and the full-length piece. Of course, here studio is a former Catholic church, and the language almost feels like an aesthetic Second Coming, “a crucified Christ lies in waiting for restoration, the body removed from the cross, the arms gently detached and set aside.”
(Right) Isaak Rabinovitsj, sketch of a costume for Salomé by Oscar Wilde, 1919, photo Jewish Historical Museum, from a show on Russian Jewish art. See the EJP article here.
Art and the Bible shows Pieter Aertsen’s “Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace”:
During the Babylonian exile, the Jews are required to worship statues of their monarch, Nebuchadnezzar. Three men refuse. As a result they are thrown into a burning furnace, which they somehow manage to survive.
Paintings-by-the-Numbers is a feature which rates objets d’art on a scale of 1 to 10 as art and as religion. The average of the two numbers becomes the object’s score.
Today’s object is the burqini, the marriage of the burqa and the bikini.
See the Reuters video here. FrontPageMagazine’s Stephen Brown wrote, “Young Muslim women will definitely save money on bikini wax and suntan lotion at the beach this year.” NBC points out “The Burkini is made from ultraviolet- and water-protected polyester.”
Shk. Bibi Nasser Al-Sabah, who worked for a time in her parents’ Islamic Art Museum before becoming chairwomen of the Social Work Society of Kuwait, is one of harmonie22’s five favorite people. Read the post here and the Arab Times piece here.
“I hope I will live to see a book written by an Arab-Muslim scholar on the Taj Mahal, for example,” said Robert Hillenbrand at a recent workshop organized by the UK Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) and the Supreme Council of Culture (SCC). Al Ahram reports that Hillenbrand charged that most Muslim scholars “‘are imprisoned in the box of their own countries,’ with political or financial constraints preventing them from touring the Islamic world.”
Abie Zayit writes on “a little-known phenomenon in the Hareidi world,” namely “the proliferation of movies made specifically for this population.” He says a recent Ha’aretz piece “makes light of these efforts” but “some of them are very good.” He also mentions the film school Ma’ale “which markets its students’ films. Most of them do not fit into the category of ‘Jewish films’ that teach about ritual mitzvot, but they do revolve around specific religious themes, often bein adam le-cheveiro [between man and man] kind of things.”
And Abby Vish writes on “Sources for Hamsa”:
I do not know a specific sefer [book] that delineates the origins of the chamsa; however, several months ago I went on a similar quest to find out what the chamsa represents and found some interesting answers.
I had received a chamsa as a gift, and on my first day wearing the necklace I decided to ask people if they knew what it represented. I got a wide range of answers. Some answered that it isn’t Jewish at all and that its origins date back to Arabic culture that was adopted into Middle Eastern Jewish culture, and many other answered similarly saying no one really knows if it is Jewish or Arabic. One person, however, offered a very different response. The person explained that it is a symbol to remind us of God’s yad chazakah that took us out of Egypt that protected us from the Egyptians. This is why people view the chamsa as having protective qualities, for just as God protected us as he took us out of Egypt, so to He will protect us now.
I’m working on a piece for which I am seeking Muslim clerics to discuss the intersection of Islamic law and art. If that’s you, or if you have any contacts, I reside here.
Rebecca runs a wonderful interview with new Jewess Mare Winningham here. The finale:
JEWESS: …if you could choose a fantasy lineup of Jewish women — dead or alive, musician or non, Biblical or contemporary — for a Jewess band (you can choose the musical genre), who would be in it and what would they play?
WINNINGHAM: Sarah on stand-up bass.
Rebecca on guitar.
Rachel on fiddle.
Leah on mandolin.
Obviously, The Beloved Matriarchs Jewgrass Band.
My review of Motti Lerner’s play “Pangs of the Messiah” at Theater J appears in this week’s Jewish Press, titled “Forcing The Messiah Any Day That He Might Come.”
From left to right: Joel Ruben Ganz (Benny), John Johnston (Avner), Michael Tolaydo (Shmuel). Courtesy of Theater J.
Here’s the entire interview:
MW: You ended the Murder of Isaac with a violent death, and you did the same in Pangs of the Messiah. Is that something you do often–lead up to such a dramatic conclusion? Is it fair to say both plays are pessimistic?
ML: I think that a dramatic conlusion is necessary in any play. In both The Murder of Isaac and Pangs of the Messiah the issues at stake are matters of life and death and the internal actions of the characters are so total that there’s almost no other conclusion. But I don’t think the plays are pessimistic. Writing a tragic end is very optimistic - the tragic end paradoxically strengthen the spectator and encourages him to choose life.
MW: The set design has the Hebrew biblical verses of God promising Israel to Abraham on the floor. The characters literally trample God’s promise throughout the play. Is that intentional?
ML: It is a wonderful choice by the designer who probably read what Shmuel says at the end: Only the salvation of the Land of Israel exists in the world? Only the purification of the Temple Mount? There are people who have to live in this country…
“For some years, America’s popular reading list has … [ignored] political complexities of the region in favor of a simple narrative,” she writes.
In fact, the New Orientalism represents the “cavernous and complicated story” of Iran as “‘us’ and ‘them’ scenarios … Bottom line: Iran — like many other countries in the Middle East — is more than a country of victims and villains. It has much to offer the world.” In fact, those victims and villains become “ghosts,” but for that, you will have to read the article.
Trade and Industry Minister Eli Yishai says of the book launch: “It is forbidden, according to Jewish values and Jewish culture, that a thing like this should take place at 2 a.m. on Saturday. Let them do it on another day.”
Leaving aside questions that he implies that the law only forbids this at 2 a.m., and that Jewish culture precludes this book launch, it’s funny how many reports (like the Reuters one above) are pointing out that “Many religious Jews have tried to prevent their children from reading the books, citing its ‘pagan’ content.”
The Al Jazeera anchors left it short and sweet: “It’ll take a lot of magic to get out of that one.”
In last week’s Jewish Press, Richard McBee explores an exhibit of Ita Aber’s work at the YU Museum. McBee uses the show, “Ita B’Ita: Ita Aber in Her Time: 60 Years of Creativity and Innovation by Ita Aber” (through October 14), as a springboard for discussing “women’s art.” I had the chance to see the show at YUM last Sunday, and although small, it’s quite interesting work. I think McBee’s use of the word “whimsy” is quite right.
Rebecca notes the article over at Jewess, but doesn’t critique it, so here are my two cents.
(Right) Miriam Cup (2000), Sterling Silver, mock pearls, stitched by Ita Aber. Photo: McBee.
Early on, McBee admits he needed some convincing:
Could there be such a thing as Women’s Art? From my liberal modernist perspective such a notion is foreign, threatening and, indeed, heretical. I have long clung to the belief that art is a universal value, a vast spectrum of aesthetic experience that, with the tools of modernist form and patient understanding, can be understood despite its national origin and gender orientation.
The piece is a journey for him, though, as he comes to realize there is something feminine about Aber’s work. Candidates for that mysterious thing are “whimsy” (which is “seldom seen in the august canons of classical Western Art”), an “overtly joyful” and “material” approach which “perhaps only a woman could [wield]” and “the mask as a symbol of feminine mystery and allure” (”Central to a woman’s power is that which is withheld; the unseen becoming easily as important as that, which is revealed”).
McBee never really clarifies what is feminine about the art as opposed to the material and technique. He ends with a positive note, but without explaining why Aber’s work is new or particularly feminine any more than is Cassatt’s work or any other woman artist who deals in feminine content:
And so what does one do when a new kind of aesthetic appears on the horizon? Creatively incorporate that part of its vision that finds a personal resonance, of course. And most importantly, look more carefully at other artists who may share this aesthetic. And certainly gratitude is in order. One must tip one’s hat to Ita Aber and say to her Women’s Art: “Well done, Sister!”
Here’s an animated version of the biblical story of Lot from Neely Comics (not safe for work). HT: Jake Hartz.
“Who says the Bible is boring? Our favorite scriptural scribbler, Brad Neely, breathes new life into the Sodom and G-town yarn, complete with sexy angels, ca-ca eating and lots of things that’ll send you to straight to Hell.
Brought to by packs of feral animals and Super Deluxe.”
I took the above picture of Intersection II (1992-3) by Richard Serra in MoMA’s sculpture garden. Serra is part of MoMA’s Richard Serra: Sculpture: Forty Years show, and is Jewish, as I pointed out here. In the cavernous forms, there might be a discussion to be had about any number of religious issues (Jonah in the whale, the passageways through the Red Sea, birth/rebirth and the womb). I will post more on this when I’ve done some more research and thinking.
(Right) “Saint Jerome Writing,” which hangs in the Oratory of Saint John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, may be a Caravaggio. Source: Al Jazeera. One expert says, “It does not have the spirit of Caravaggio in it.”
“There seems to be a real stigma about Christianity, that it’s not fun or God is only a very serious thing,” said Tom Schoensteadt in an interview with CP about The Hills Alive Festival, “we want to show people that it’s not all about the traditional and that this helps them to have a good time and help others see and experience what Christianity is about.”
1. Is there any such thing as idolatry today, and if so, how, if at all, does that overlap with art?
2. Is there a value to Jewish art beyond its practical utility as beautifying commandments?
3. What are the restrictions, if any, on viewing art from a Jewish perspective, vis. nudity, idolatry, other religious works, works depicting sins, etc.?
The rabbis at EH replied (at length). Their answers are posted below. I will respond to their comments and follow up with them soon:
1. Regarding the question whether or not there is “avoda zara” now a days, and the implications this question has on the Halacha’s attitude towards art:
“Avoda zara” in its Halachic definition exists also now a days, since:
1. At least part of the sects in Christianity are considered “avoda zara”, and therefore Christian art can be considered real “avoda zara” (for example statues and pictures of the crucified or his mother which are placed in the church and are the center of the prayer and religious ceremonies) or as ‘vessels’ of “avoda zara” (”meshamshey avoda zara”) [pictures carried during religious parades or ceremonies] or as ‘decorations’ of “avoda zara” (”noyey avoda zara”) [pictures which are used to decorate churches, etc.].
2. Also blatant idolatry still exists in the world – in the Far East, in primitive African tribes, etc. Art of these religions can also be considered idolatry, vessels of idolatry or idolatry decorations.
3. At least part of the Halachot of “avoda zara” which refer to art objects is relevant in any case, even if in the modern world there was no “avoda zara” at all. Indeed, there are Halachot, which stem from “chashad” (’suspicion’, meaning that one may not possess a picture or statue which is used for idol worship, since someone who might see this object in his possession, might suspect that the person worships the object). Regarding these Halachot, there might be an option to discuss their validity in a case where there is no idolatry in the world. Yet, other Halachot – the prohibition to create certain shapes and the prohibition to enjoy objects which are vessels, or were once vessels, for “avoda zara” are not dependant on the existence of idolatry in the world.
Religion News Service has selected my article “Artists Blend American, Muslim Identities on Canvas” as its Article of the Week. See the full article here, and an entry on RNS’ blog here. Hopefully this will inspire some publications to run the story. So far, it’s been all Dallas Morning News’ religion blog.
"Iconia has been on my blogroll from the very beginning" -Sincerae
Iconia
Iconia is a blog about religion and art by Menachem Wecker.
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Iconia is part of the Canonist network of religion blogs.
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