New York/New Work: Contemporary Jewish Art from NYC’ at the Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art, 2015

106 David Sperber

Notes on an Exhibition: ‘New York/New Work: Contemporary Jewish Art from NYC’ at the Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art, 2015. Curators: Dvora Liss and David Sperber.

The Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art to the Biennale, and it goes without saying that the provides a platform for artists who examine aspects Israeli art world ignored it completely. Jewish art is of Judaism and the Jewish world through their work. an established discipline in academia outside of Israel, Ram Ozeri, the Biennale’s founder, described it as “an and yet Israeli academia views the field with suspicion. opportunity for the world of Jewish content and the In 2015, the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan world of contemporary art to meet. [. . .] The term ‘con- University held a conference entitled “Constructing temporary Jewish art’ challenges the Israeli art world and Deconstructing Jewish Art.” Organized to examine and offers an alternative to the prevailing definitions of what exactly constitutes Jewish art, the conference was belonging.” The second Jerusalem Biennale was held in held following an assessment of the department by 2015, for six weeks, beginning on September 24. Atypi- the Council for Higher Education, which questioned cally for Biennale exhibitions, most of the participating whether the university was justified in maintaining a artists were women. Held in seven locations around separate department for Jewish art at all. Jerusalem, nearly 150 Israeli and international artists Biennale exhibitions of contemporary art are took part in ten different exhibitions. characterized by transcultural perspectives and often Among the various exhibitions was one entitled group works of art from around the world together.1 “Women of the Book,” curated by Shoshana Gugen- This constellation is certainly applicable to Jewish art, heim, Ronit Steinberg, and Judith Margolis, which was since Judaism is diasporic, active in many different the result of a seven-year project during which women places at the same time.2 Accordingly, the Biennale artists from eleven countries created works on parch- of 2015 asked for proposals from curators and artists ment, each devoted to one of the weekly Torah from all over the world. Groups outside of Israel that portions. Another exhibition was “Bezalel: In&Out,” responded to the invitation included: the Jewish Art curated by Shirat-Miriam Shamir and Ido Noy, which Salon ( JAS), which is based in New York; the Jewish showed primarily works by teachers in the Jewelry and Artists Initiative ( JAI), from California; and a group of Fashion Design Department at the Bezalel Academy, Jewish and non-Jewish artists from Argentina. Although the most important school of art in Israel. The works there is nothing new in international Biennales about in the exhibition sought to challenge the boundaries showing artists from around the world together, in between contemporary art and Judaica and, essen- the Jewish-Israeli context it is not self-evident and, tially, created Judaica with a twist. The perspective of as I demonstrate below, largely undermines the basic the exhibition “Ima Iyla’a: The Art of Motherhood” is structure of the Israeli art world. This rejection could described by its curators Nurit Sirkis Bank and Noa explain the complete disregard shown by the Israeli Lea Cohn as a “post-feminist” perspective on mother- art world toward the Jerusalem Biennale. hood. This exhibition showcased many ultra-Orthodox The exhibition “New York/New Work: Contempo- (“Haredi”) artists. Susan Nashman Fraiman curated rary Jewish Art from NYC,” which I curated with Dvora “A Fine Line,” an exhibition of works that explore Liss in the Van Leer Institute as part of the Biennale, questions of boundaries and balances: between the and was shown later in the Museum of Art, Ein Harod, sacred and the profane; between friends and enemies; presented contemporary Jewish art from New York. between the public and the private; and between the Using the perspective of Jewish art in the United States, real and the imaginary. we proposed a discussion of “fields of art” through the Most of the media coverage of the Jerusalem Bien- works of one group of American artists who address nale was in English and provided, for the most part, Judaism through artistic expression. We considered an uncritical perspective. The very concept of Jewish what is happening or might happen in Israel in this art is so foreign in Israel that even journalists with an connection, and thereby demonstrated the importance allegedly Jewish or religious agenda paid no attention of the Biennale. In 2013, the art historian Matthew

1 Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction 2 Daniel Boyarin and Jonathan Boyarin, “Diaspora: Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 11–31. and the Ground of Jewish Identity,” Critical Inquiry 19.4 (1993): 693–725.

Baigell termed our era the “Golden Age” of American Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum, and The Jewish art.3 He noted that since the 1970s, and par- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. On the other ticularly the 1980s, American artists have focused on hand, the “Jewish” art created by these artists was not Judaism from a personal perspective, which is very initially accepted into the province of American art.6 different from how artists had previously looked at it. The existence of Jewish contemporary art as a defined No longer does the discourse on Judaism stem from field in the United States enabled a canonization pro- paintings of dancing Hasids or simple biblical stories; cess of their “Jewish” works. When a particular field now the subject is addressed through complex, criti- of art gains a certain level of symbolic capital and cal, and inquiring perspectives that result from deep prestige, there is a trickle-down effect from the canon knowledge and textual re-interpretation. But art, like it creates to more central and hegemonic domains. culture in general, exists in fields and is experienced Accordingly, once Jewish art was excluded from the through discourse. Therefore, in our attention to the broad field of American art, a canonization process American Jewish art world, we must look not only at took place in the Jewish field, which trickled down to the works themselves, but also at the field in which they the general field; for example, the works of Rand and are created. Accordingly, the exhibition “New York/ Aylon are included in Art & Today by Eleanor Heartney New Work” was based on the fact that the province of under the rubric of “Art and Spirituality: Rediscovering Jewish art in the United States exists as its own defined Transcendence,”7 and the works of Siona Benjamin are and developed field, alongside other domains of art. included in Art+Religion in the 21st Century by Aaron Like any field, that of American Jewish art produces a Rosen under the rubric of “Creative Differences.”8 canon of work and operates through agents—artists, In Israel there is no defined field of Jewish art that museums, galleries, curators, scholars, collectors, and allows for the canonization of art that addresses Jewish audiences. Groups and associations of artists who content from a diversity of perspectives. Israeli artists draw their inspiration from Judaism have also helped who incorporate Judaism into their art necessarily turn to develop the field of Jewish art in the United States.4 to the only local field of art. However, the Israeli art “New York/New Work” presented new works by art- field often rejects them—particularly in the case of ists who are members of New York’s Jewish Art Salon art that draws on clearly traditional, nonsecular, per- ( JAS), one of the most important groups in the field spectives. An Israeli artist who chooses to engage the of Jewish contemporary art and certainly the largest.5 world of Jewish content and wants to be accepted in Unlike a group of artists who embrace a similar artistic the Israeli art field is faced with at least one condition: approach or common themes, the JAS, aware of the if the artist deals with Jewish content, he must detach influence that an artists’ association can have within his work from Jewish tradition.9 In practice, most of the the broader art world, functions primarily to advance art that is perceived as being “too Jewish” is rejected displays of Jewish art. by the Israeli art world. At the same time, the Israeli The Jewish art created by some of the artists in art scene also rejects Jewish diasporic art. Works that the New York exhibition is included in the canon are included in the canon of American Jewish art are of American Jewish art, but these artists have also generally disregarded in Israel. Helène Aylon told me produced works without any Jewish content. On the in an interview earlier this year that one of her collec- one hand, their “not Jewish” art is displayed and col- tors offered to acquire her feminist work “All Rise: For lected by the most important American museums, for Women Judges on a Beit Din” (2007–2009), a piece that example, abstract works by Archie Rand are found in represents a new religious law court for women judges the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Helène Aylons’ (dayanim), for the Israel Museum, but that the museum works were exhibited and collected by important responded that it would be interested in acquiring oth- museums in the United States such as the Museum of ers of her pieces, but not her “Jewish” works.

3 Matthew Baigell, “We Are Living in a Golden Age of Jewish 6 Matthew Baigell, American Artists, Jewish Images (New York: American Art and We Really Don’t Know It,” in Jewish Cultural Syracuse University Press, 2006), 7. Aspirations, ed. Ruth Weisberg (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue 7 Eleanor Heartney, Art & Today (London: Phaidon, 2008), University Press, 2013), 1–31. 274–276. 4 Richard McBee “Contemporary Jewish Art: An Assessment,” in 8 Aaron Rosen, Art+Religion in the 21st Century (London: Thames Jewish Cultural Aspirations, ed. Weisberg, 2013, 38–39. & Hudson Ltd., 2015), 114, 125, 234. 5 Ruth Weisberg “Jewish Cultural Aspirations: An Introduction,” 9 David Sperber, “Israeli Art Discourse and the Jewish Voice,” in Jewish Cultural Aspirations, ed. Weisberg, 2013, xviii. Images 4 (2010): 109–129.