Non Fiction: Art Books

Anish Kapoor

David Anfam, Johana Burton and Donna de Salvo

Phaidon Press ISBN 9780714843698

October 2009

Born in Bombay and based in London since the 1970s, Anish Kapoor (b. 1954) has been a vital force in contemporary art for over three decades. His sculptures are hermetic but unmistakable, both for their striking abstract forms and for their distinctive use of materials, from the traditional (marble, bronze) to the high-tech (stainless steel, fibreglass). His work, in its pursuit of the sublime and the spiritual, updates an artistic lineage that spans from Abstract Expressionism to German Romantic painting and beyond. At the same time, his sustained exploration of the uncanny, centred on the morphology of the human body, gives his work its unique and timeless psychological depth. This is the most complete monograph ever published on the artist, covering more than thirty years of work and illustrated with hundreds of full-colour images, including sketches and technical diagrams from his most ambitious projects. It also features an extensive chronology covering the artist's life in detail and illustrated with snapshots, sketches and ephemera, some never before published. Kapoor has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Turner Prize in 1991 and a CBE in 2003. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at major museums around the world, including Haus der Kunst in Munich, Musee des Beaux-Arts in Nantes and Tate Modern in London, as well as important international exhibitions, such as Documenta 9 in Kassel, Expo '92 in Seville and the 44th Venice Biennale, where he represented Great Britain. He is also responsible for some of the world's best known public sculptures, including Taratantara (1999, Gateshead and Naples), Sky Mirror (2001, Nottingham, and 2006, New York) and Cloud Gate (2004, Chicago).

The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness

Mel Alexenberg

Intellect ISBN 9781841501369  

This book develops the thesis that the transition from premodernism to postmodernism in art of the digital age represents a paradigm shift from the Hellenistic to the Hebraic roots of Western culture. Semiotic and morphological analysis of art and visual culture demonstrate the contemporary confluence between the deep structure of Hebraic consciousness and new directions in art that arise along the interface between scientific inquiry, digital technologies, and multicultural expressions. Complementing these two analytic methodologies, alternative methodologies of kabbalah and halakhah provide postmodern methods for extending into digital age art forms. Exemplary artworks are described in the text and will be illustrated with photographs.

Menashe Kadishman

Edited by Jacob Baal-Teshuva

Prestel ISBN 9783791338446

August 2007

An in-depth monograph on the celebrated Israeli artist

Most renowned for his arresting sculpture Falling Leaves, Menashe Kadishman is a highly instinctive and at the same time conceptual painter and sculptor whose works are exhibited at some of the world’s most important museums. Born on a kibbutz, Kadishman was a shepherd for many years. This experience informs much of his work, especially his brightly hued sheep’s heads and sheep imagery. Kadishman’s unique ability to weave nature and art to tell stories of humanity make him among the most lyrical of living artists.

Here his career is traced from his artistic studies and early exhibitions to his recent works. A variety of critics draw attention to Kadishman’s themes, which embrace history, warfare, the Bible and the Holocaust, while others place him within the context of other artists at work today. A generous sampling of colour plates and black and white images illustrate Kadishman’s incredible range and deeply personal style.

Jacob Baal-Teshuva is a curator and writer who divides his time between

New York and Miami. He is the author of many books on art, including Andy

Warhol: 1928-1987 (Prestel).

Jewish Art: A Modern History

Samantha Baskind and Larry Silver

Reaktion Books ISBN 9781861898029

June 2011

Covering nearly two centuries, Jewish Art: A Modern History examines the art made by Jews across Europe, America and Israel. Written by two leading scholars in the field, this is the first broadly accessible book to address the subject in both an introductory and a critical manner. 

Samantha Baskind and Larry Silver provide a chronological, geographic and thematic framework, to examine Jewish artists against the background of an emerging modernity. The shifting Jewish identities are discussed, as well as the effects of the diaspora and anti-Semitism, which are woven directly into analyses of specific works of art. The authors ask 'what is Jewish art?' and examine the ambiguities of the Jewish experience, both religious and cultural. Rather than providing reductive classifications of the subject, they consider the variety of ways Jewish artists have defined themselves and their works. 

Looking at the work of European artists including Moritz Daniel Oppenheim and Maurycy Gottlieb, Camille Pissarro and Marc Chagall, to those in the USA such as Miriam Schapiro and Eva Hesse, Barnett Newman and Archie Rand, as well as contemporary Israeli artists, Jewish Art provides a comprehensive and lucid account of a complex subject. It is ideal for all general readers interested in the subject, and invaluable to students of Jewish art and history, as well as scholars in the field. 

This lavishly illustrated volume, featuring numerous works published for the first time, offers a coherent discussion of the vexed question of what constitutes Jewish art today.

Samantha Baskind is Associate Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio. Her other books include Encyclopedia of Jewish American Artists (2007) and Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art (2004). 

Larry Silver is the James and Nan Farquhar Professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Transformation: Jews and Modernity (2001). 

Reinventing Ritual Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life
Daniel Belasco

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300146820

September 2009

A guidebook to the most current trends in contemporary Jewish art and

design, "Reinventing Ritual" provides an unprecedented look at the work and thought of contemporary artists as they respond to the needs and practices of traditional culture. Beautifully illustrated with new art from Israel, Europe, and the Americas, this publication features both traditional and avant-garde sculpture, textiles, architecture, metalwork, and ceramics by forty leading artists.

Author Daniel Belasco surveys current trends in Jewish ritual art and the influences of feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and new media; Julie Lasky provides a groundbreaking discussion of the role of recycling and social consciousness in contemporary Jewish design; Danya Ruttenberg, a recently ordained rabbi, offers a lively perspective on the constantly evolving Jewish impulse 'to concretize the encounter with the Divine'; Arnold M. Eisen writes an absorbing and personal commentary on the role of ritual in Jewish life today; and, Tamar Rubin contributes an illustrated timeline covering key Jewish cultural and historical events from 1994 to 2008.

The Sistine Secrets: Unlocking the codes in Michelangelo’s defiant masterpiece

Benjamin Blech and Roy Doliner

JR Books ISBN 9781906217556 

July 2008

Erudite, beautifully written and highly readable, this provocative book finally cracks the Michelangelo code!

The Sistine Chapel ceiling in the Vatican is the largest fresco painting on earth, in one of the holiest places in the Christian world. Now, thanks to the thorough cleaning of the chapel, and the diligent work of scholars, its ‘true colours’ are gradually being revealed.

Millions flock to see this masterpiece every year but very few people know that the legendary sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti, who spent four and a half years tortuous painting it, had a hidden agenda. He embedded subversive messages into his great work of art, encouraging people to rebel against the repressive and hypocritical Roman Catholic Church of the time. He even included insulting gestures at the corrupt and syphilitic Pope Julius II, who had commanded him to paint it!  Fortunately for Michelangelo, the ceiling is so high and so overwhelmingly detailed that his coded messages just about escaped the scrutiny of the papal ‘censors’ at the time.

None of the Vatican’s guide books mention these hidden messages. And they certainly don’t mention the fact that though there are more than 300 figures on the Sistine ceiling, not one is from the New Testament! Indeed, Michelangelo studied Judaism while he was being educated in Florence, and The Sistine Secrets eloquently argues that he used his multi-layered painting to ‘preach’ Jewish wisdom and tolerance between all religions.

Professor Benjamin Blech is an internationally recognised author and lecturer and is recipient of the American Educator of the Year award. Roy Doliner is a specialist on the Renaissance in Rome, and is often a docent to visitors to the Vatican museums.

The Art and Life of Josef Herman Lund Humphries 
Monica Bohm Duchen

Lund Humphries ISBN 9780853319450

March 2009

Born in Warsaw in 1911 into a working-class Jewish family, Josef Herman arrived in Britain (via Belgium) in 1940, settling first in Glasgow and then in the South Welsh mining village of Ystradgynlais. By the early 1950s, known mainly for his images of Welsh miners, he had established himself as a major figure in contemporary British art and his work featured prominently in the 1951 Festival of Britain. By the end of the decade, examples of his work had entered virtually every important public collection in the UK. Further public recognition came in 1981, when he was awarded an OBE, and in 1990, when he was elected a Royal Academician.

Herman was no follower of fashion, however, and throughout his long life remained true to his conviction that art and morality should never be far apart, that technique, though important, should always be subservient to subject-matter, and that working men and women - whether in Poland, Wales, Burgundy, Suffolk or Mexico - embody a profound and universal human archetype.

This monograph is the first book to look at all aspects and phases of Herman's career in equal detail, and to place his life and work in a broader cultural context. Generously illustrated, it includes images both familiar and unfamiliar, some of them - as the result of the author's extensive researches - reproduced for the very first time. It aims both to introduce this important artist to a new public, and to reveal a creative spirit of far greater diversity and complexity than even Herman's longstanding admirers will have suspected.

Rubies and Rebels: Jewish Female Identity in Contemporary British Art

Monica Bohm Duchen with a foreword by RB Kitaj

Lund Humphries ISBN 9780853317036

Women artists belonging to other minority groups have for some time felt able, even compelled, to explore issues of identity in their work. This book is the first to focus on the work of Jewish women artists working in Britain today, whose sense of Jewish and female identity is central to their oeuvre.

The book reproduces works by twenty contemporary Jewish women artists. The artworks included range widely: from work that addresses issues of identity in a direct and explicit manner to work where such references are more oblique; from work which is affirmative to work that adopts a more critical approach.

In spite of this diversity, certain recurring preoccupations are in evidence: notably, the importance of the female biblical figure; the richness of religious customs; the power of the family, and of the women within it; the complex experience of immigration; and the dark shadows of the Holocaust.

The accompanying essays are by Monica Bohm-Duchen, curator and author of several books, who examines the work of the artists featured in the book; the renowned art historian Griselda Pollock, who looks at the relationship between feminism and Judaism; and Julia Weiner, former curator of the Ben Uri Art Gallery, who examines the history of Jewish female artists in Britain from 1700 to 1940.

Pissarro's People

Richard Brettell

Prestel ISBN 9783791351186

June 2011

This definitive portrait of Camille Pissarro by one of the world’s foremost authorities on Impressionism and French painting reveals the deep connection between Pissarro’s humanitarian concerns and his creative output. 

Throughout his career, the Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro produced a vast oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and prints inspired by his fascination with and commitment to politics. Many of these works reflect the tensions between his anarchist ideals and the realities of life in a capitalist society, however, most examinations of Pissarro have approached his art and politics as separate spheres. Published to accompany a major exhibition, this survey by a renowned expert on Impressionist painting offers a selection of canvases and works on paper that embody Pissarro’s pictorial humanism at the highest level. Exhaustive archival study, interviews with surviving family members, and research drawn from thousands of newly discovered letters inform this rich and authoritative book. Including individual portraits of each of the family members Pissarro so often inserted into his paintings, it also examines his relationships with fellow artists, writers, neighbors, merchants, and domestic servants. The result is a refreshing and landmark reconsideration of the artist’s magnificent body of work.

Warhol's Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered

Richard Meyer

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300141153

June 2008

When it first appeared in 1980, Andy Warhol's "Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century" was adored by Jewish audiences even as it aroused antagonism from critics. Why did Warhol create this series? How did he select the figures to be portrayed? How has the passage of time reshaped the meaning of these portraits?This handsomely illustrated book examines the history of these silk-screen paintings and prints, delving into Warhol's refashioning of portraiture, his deep interest in repetitive art forms, and his embrace of commercialism. Richard Meyer shows how Warhol's unorthodox approach to portrait painting was a product of both his seriousness as an artist and his avowed interest in making money, and he explains how Warhol selected ten figures - from Bernhardt and Buber to Freud and Kafka - who would ensure the timelessness of his series. The volume, which also includes discussions of the celebrated subjects of "Ten Portraits", images of related prints, and a timeline, offers new insights into a significant series by an iconic American artist.

Belisario: Sketches of Character

Jackie Ranston

The Mill Press ISBN 9789768168160

November 2008

Born in the Caribbean island of Jamaica in 1794 to a family of wealthy Jewish merchants and notorious slave traders, Isaac Mendes Belisario is paradoxically remembered for having preserved the culture of the slaves with his works of art.

In the first historical study of this little-known painter and lithographer, the author begins by tracing the dramatic lives of the old and distinguished Sephardic Jewish families from whom Belisario is descended.

On the distaff side is the family Lindo, living double lives as crypto-Jews until they are denounced by their household slaves and escape the clutches of the Spanish Inquisition to live in seventeenth-century London. Here they are joined by another émigré, Jacob Mendes Belisario and his family; the poor but proud aficionados of the opera who elude the prying, predatory eyes of the Inquisition but still display the emblems of the kings of Spain on their coat of arms and remain loyal to the legend of their family name.

From the chocolate-maker to the rabbi, each generation marks time in London before this swirling Jewish family history moves to the island of Jamaica where its members seize the opportunities offered by the New World; but their meteoric rise is thwarted by the actions of such historical figures as Napoleon and Toussaint L’Ouverture, whose exploits unknowingly combine to witness their downfall.

Based on hitherto unpublished records of the period, Isaac Mendes Belisario’s story unfolds as he lived it – his privileged youth in Kingston, Jamaica; the sudden exile to England; his father’s flight to Tortola and the fight against slavery; his own triumphant early exhibits at the Royal Academy and the Old Water Colour Society overshadowed by his life as a stockbroker until he returns to the land of his birth where his art finds full flow on the eve of Emancipation with his Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica.

Against the lively backdrop of nineteenth-century Jamaica, with all its splendours and squalors, Belisario produces works of rare distinction – impressive both as a portrait of the less celebrated of Jamaica’s inhabitants and in their depiction of the turbulent age in which he lived.

Jewish Identity in contemporary Architecture

Angeli Sachs and Edward van Voolen

Prestel ISBN 9783791330570

April 2004

This international exploration of Jewish buildings including museums

, modern synagogues, community centres and schools demonstrates

how these important structures lend architectural shape to the Jewish

identity.

Accompanying a touring exhibition, this important work demonstrates

the fundamental differences among fifteen buildings throughout the

world. It covers sites in America, where the architecture of Jewish

institutions looks back on a legacy of uninterrupted development; in Israel, where the great wave of immigration adopted modernist as well as Mediterranean traditions; and in Europe, where rebuilding and reconciliation attempt to balance a history of pain and tragedy. Includes works by Daniel Libeskind (The Jewish Museum, San Francisco), Frank O. Gehry (Jewish Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem) and Mario Botta (Cymbalista Synagogue and Jewish Heritage Centre on the campus of Tel Aviv University).

Angeli Sachs is an art historian and architecture and design editor who lives in Munich, Germany. Edward van Voolen is an art historian, rabbi and curator of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

Human Expressionism: The Human Figure and the Jewish Experience

Eliane Strosberg

Somogy ISBN 9782757201701

April 2008

For over 2000 years, Jewish Art, although exploring specific themes, blended with local cultures and aesthetics. At the turn of the xxth century, a significant number of Jewish artists invested western culture whilst remaining faithful to their heritage.

This book is dedicated to the various aspects of their artistic endeavours that were influenced by their Jewish roots, and most notably the representation of the human face, a theme very close to their hearts. Their take on such a widely explored subject proved highly unusual: they used it to express love and sorrow, but also to fight nihilism.

Throughout a twentieth century that saw the gradual vanishing of the human face in art and life alike, these Jewish artists kept on celebrating it, thus creating a specific form of expressionism that is seen by many as an attempt to hang on to whatever was left of humanity in a century so utterly devoid of human values.

My Grandparents, My Parents and I: Jewish Art and Culture

 Edward van Voolen

Prestel ISBN 9783791333625

September 2006

A fascinating and enlightening examination of art through the lens of Jewish culture and history.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Rabbi and art historian Edward van Voolen has brought together numerous works that expand our view of Jewish life and art. Organised in a loosely chronological order, this book introduces readers to works that reflect the dramatic events of the past and explore the eternal search for Jewish identity.

He points out the Jewish aspects of works by predominantly nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists such as Modigliani, Pissarro and Frida Kahlo, among others, and discusses these themes within the paintings of Barnett Newman and the sculpture of Richard Serra. His accompanying text explores the connection between Judaism and art and culture, helping readers approach familiar images through a new and exciting perspective.

Edward van Voolen is curator of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. His previous books include Jewish Identity in Contemporary Architecture (Prestel).

Chagall: Love and Exile 

April 2008

Jackie Wullschlager

Allen Lane ISBN 9780713996524

October 2008

The story of Mark Chagall's life reflects the dramas of his time. He was born in extreme poverty in Vitebsk in the Jewish Pale Settlement in Russia, the city which inspired and haunted his paintings until he died. He went to Paris immediately before the First World War and was a central part of the artistic ferment in those extraordinary years; in Germany in the 1930s his pictures were among the first to be included in the Nazi 'Decadent Art' exhibition. He survived the Second World War in America, like so many of Europe's greatest thinkers, writers and artists, and afterwards returned to form an uneasy triumvirate with Picasso and Matisse in the south of France, where he largely abandoned easel painting and became a creator of murals and stained glass, receiving commissions from all over the world – including Germany. He died in 1985 at the age of ninety-eight, immensely wealthy and the world's most famous artist.

Jackie Wullschlager's biography is the first which does full justice to Chagall. She is the only writer to have been granted access to the Chagall family papers, and to have seen the extensive correspondence between Chagall and his first wife Bella, the inspiration for much of work. The book reproduces many photographs and drawings from the archive which have never been publicly seen or published before. This engrossing and deeply engaging book will be the authoritative biography of its subject for the foreseeable future.