Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art by Ben Schachter

Author:Ben Schachter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press

FIG. 8 Ken Goldman, With Without, 2011. Performance, digital print. This is photographic documentation of a performance in which the artist shaved his head except for the area upon which a kippah, or skullcap, would rest. This gives the appearance that the artist is in fact wearing a head covering even when he is not. The artwork critiques the idea that religion and art are exclusive realms.

With Without also touches on identity in the same way as another work discussed by Norman Kleeblatt in his essay “‘Passing’ into Multiculturalism” (1996). Kleeblatt, then chief curator of the Jewish Museum in New York City, discusses how assimilation and group identification pose a dilemma between fitting in and accepting difference. In his essay, Kleeblatt discusses Dennis Kardon’s double self-portrait, Lover’s Quarrel (1994). As in With Without, the painting depicts two figures, seen from the back, wearing head coverings. Kleeblatt describes the disposition of the men. They are, “attached . . . as if they were Siamese twins. A scar appears at the joint between the two nearly identical figures. One of the likenesses is wearing a baseball cap—the current popular male fashion accessory—the other a skullcap. These two selves, the secular and the religious, signal Kardon’s continuing dilemma—a legacy of the assimilatory values that still affect many minority Americans—about whether to separate or integrate these two aspects of self.”17 Kardon presents assimilation as a personal dilemma.

This is not the case for Goldman. Goldman, like some other religious artists, ostensibly rejects the separation between art and religion, not to mention religion and contemporary society. He applies strategies and processes established by modernist and contemporary art; however, Goldman’s work is not simply a creative demonstration of identity. He challenges the notion that art and religion are separable.

While all this discussion about identity and assimilation is interesting, Goldman’s real target is Ofrat and the critic’s demand that the artist must leave his religion at the studio door—and for that matter, any critic who demands a separation between art and Judaism. Goldman metaphorically thumbs his nose at Ofrat in With Without. Goldman recognizes Ofrat’s demand for what it is: a false choice. If Jewish art is about Judaism, then it does not have to be about some abstract notion of faith, spirituality, or blind rejection of modernism. What’s more, Jewish art forcefully states that religion is part of the modern world, and therefore the art world.

Motifs

The artworks in this chapter share a desire to examine Judaism as a religion, inclusive of its laws, customs, and even of its issues that are worthy of critique. However, describing Judaism as a religion limits possible interpretations of texts. Some artists see Jewish law as the way to live a religious life, while others see them as texts to be carefully interpreted. Many communicate their understanding of a text in nontraditional forms, within the framework of visual art. Some work includes assembled or modified things, influenced by Dada and Surrealism, that look as if they can be handled, used, or worn. Such qualities evoke both art-historical references and the activity associated with the object.

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