Art in Jewish Culture 2900-JSL-SZT
The aim of the class is to enable students to acquire a broad body of knowledge about Jewish art: its specific characteristics and significance for the Jewish community from antiquity to the present day, and to see the connections between the changing nature of Jewish art and the social, cultural and political processes that Jews have gone through in different periods.
During the course of the class, we will look at the various forms of Jewish artistic creativity, shaped by religion, migration, environmental influences, emancipation and acculturation, and modern ideologies. We will discuss the ancient roots of Jewish art, Diaspora art: synagogue architecture, handicrafts, illuminated manuscripts, as well as modern painting and sculpture and contemporary art. We will try to distinguish characteristic forms, symbols, motifs and themes. We will consider Jewish culture in its wide geographical scope, originally created in ancient Palestine, developed and shaped over the centuries in the European Diaspora, then also on other continents and in the State of Israel.
In the first block of classes, we will consider the foundation of Jewish thought on art contained in the Bible and rabbinic writings, and the ritual aspect of art. The main issue here will be the biblical prohibition of making images contained in the second commandment and the subsequent interpretations of this prohibition by rabbinic authorities - often ambivalent, vacillating between rejection and acquiescence. Since this ambivalence was the result of changing relations with the non-Jewish environment, our discussion will require consideration of various external factors influencing the development of Jewish culture, such as contacts with other Middle Eastern cultures, then - with the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, and with the Christian and Islamic worlds.
Another issue discussed will be the impact on Jewish artistic creativity of the emancipation process taking place in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and the related processes of secularization, acculturation and assimilation. As a result of these, Jews began to participate in the life of their surroundings, pursuing new professions and co-creating various areas of social, cultural and political life. The result of these processes was also the separation of artistic creation from the life of the Jewish community and the emergence of modern artists, trained in academies and participating in the main currents of European art. In this class, we will become acquainted with the profiles of modern Jewish artists, who in various ways attempted to combine their Jewish identity with participation in the international art world, often introducing specifically Jewish themes and motifs into their work.
Since the result of emancipation, in addition to acculturation and assimilation, was the development of Jewish nationalism and the related birth of a secular, modern Jewish culture, in this class we will also discuss theses related to the discussion of Jewish art at the turn of the 20th century and the search for a modern Jewish artistic style. An issue related to the birth of a new secular Jewish culture is also the creation of collections of Judaica, the establishment of museums and the organization of exhibitions of Jewish art.
In the last block of classes, we will consider the impact of the Holocaust on art and the notion of "Jewish identity" and the "Jewish experience" of the artist, which is important for the contemporary discourse on Jewish art.
Type of course
Prerequisites (description)
Course coordinators
Assessment criteria
Reading the texts assigned for the class, participation in the discussion, lecture, trip to the POLIN Museum.
Attendance in class (min. 60%)
Written exam
Bibliography
Magdalena Maciudzińska-Kamczycka, Żydzi i judaizm w zwierciadle sztuki antycznej, Toruń 2014
Fragmenty Biblii: Księga Wyjścia 24-31 (Przybytek), Pierwsza Księga Królewska, 5-8 (Świątynia Salomona)
Joseph Gutmann, The Dura Europos Synagogue Paintings and Their Influence on Later Christian and Jewish Art. Artibus et Historiae, 1988, 9 (17): 25–29
Jewish texts on the visual arts, red. Vivian B. Mann, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
Katrin Koggman Appel, Hebrew Manuscript Painting in the Late Medieval Spain: Signs of a Culture in Transition, The Art Bulletin, vol. 84, nr. 2 (June 2002)
Maria i Kazimierz Piechotkowie, Bramy nieba: bożnice drewniane na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej, Warszawa 2016
Maria i Kazimierz Piechotkowie, Bramy nieba: bożnice murowane na ziemiach dawnej Rzeczypospolitej, Warszawa 2017
Maria i Kazimierz Piechotkowie, Krajobraz z menorą: Żydzi w miastach i miasteczkach dawnej Rzeczpospolitej, Wrocław 2008
Ewa Małkowska-Bieniek, Opowieść o Przymierzu i czasach ostatecznych. Próba analizy ikonograficznej malowideł sklepienia synagogi w Gwoźdźcu, Biuletyn Instytutu Historii Sztuki, 2013, 75/2
Tamar Shadmi, From Functional Solution to Decorative Concept Stages in the Development of Inscribing Liturgical Texts on Synagogue Walls, Ars Judaica 2010
Monika Krajewska, Czas kamieni, Warszawa 1982
Andrzej Trzciński, Symbole i obrazy, Lublin 1997
Judaica w zbiorach Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie, oprac. Ewa Martyna, MNW Warszawa 1993
Tamara Sztyma-Knasiecka, Dylematy asymilacji w twórczości artystów żydowskich z Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej na przełomie XIX i XX wieku, w: Czerpiąc z korzenia szlachetnej oliwki. Dzień Judaizmu w Poznaniu, 2004-2007, ed. J. Stranz, Adam Mickiewicz University Editorial Office, Poznań 2007
Tumarkin Goodman, S. (red.), The Emergence of Jewish Artists in Nineteenth-Century Europe, katalog wystawy, The Jewish Museum, New York 2001 (fragment)
Art and Its Uses. The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn, Richard I. Cohen, Oxford University Pres, London-Oxford 1990
Jerzy Malinowski, Malarstwo i rzeźba Żydów Polskich w XIX i XX wieku, Warszawa 2000
Jewish Artists and Central-Eastern Europe, red. Jerzy Malinowski, Renata Piątkowska, Tamara Sztyma-Knasiecka, Warszawa 2010
Artur Kamczycki, Syjonizm i sztuka. Ikonografia Teodora Herzla, Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, Poznań – Gniezno 2014
Martin Buber, Address on Jewish art [w:] Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The First Buber: Youthful Zonist Writings of Martin Buber, 1999
Martin Buber, Lesser Ury oraz Address on Jewish art [w:] Gilya Gerda Schmidt, The First Buber: Youthful Zonist Writings of Martin Buber, 1999
R. Cohen, Jewish Icons. Arts and Society in Modern Europe, University of California Press, Berkely, 1998 (fragment)
R. Piątkowska, Skarby naszej przeszłości. Muzea żydowskie w Polsce, M. Adamczyk-Garbowska, A. Markowski, A. Trzciński, M. Wodziński (red.), „Studia Judaica” 2013, t. 16, nr 2(32), s. 3-45
Polak, Żyd, artysta : tożsamość a awangarda, katalog wystawy, red. Jarosław Suchan; współpr. nauk. Karolina Szymaniak. Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, 2010
Malinowski J., Grupa “Jung-Idysz” i żydowskie środowisko “Nowej sztuki” w Polsce 1918 – 1923, Warszawa 1987
Jerzy Malinowski, Barbara Brus-Malinowska, W kręgu École de Paris. Malarze żydowscy z Polski, Warszawa 2007
Artur Tanikowski, Malarze żydowscy w Polsce, cz. 1 i 2, Edipresse, Warszawa 2006
Baigell M., , Żydowscy artyści w Nowym Jorku w czasach Zagłady, tlum. Piotr Paziński, „Mirdrasz”, X 2003, s. 32-39
Eleonora Jedlińska, Sztuka po Holocauście, Łódź 2001
Małgorzata Stolarska, Sztuka pod znakiem zapytania. Problem tożsamości jako paradygmat w badaniach nad pojęciem sztuki żydowskiej i próbach jej legitymizacji przez krytykę artystyczną i historię sztuki późnego XX wieku i XXI wieku, w: „Dzieje krytyki artystycznej i myśli o sztuce”, Materiały z konferencji naukowej, Toruń, 13-15 VI 2007, red. Małgorzata Geron, Jerzy Malinowski, Toruń 2009
Harold Rosenber, Is There a Jewish Art?, “Commentary Magazine”, lipiec 1966
Sztuka polska wobec Holokaustu, katalog wystawy, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny 2013
Additional information
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