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Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015, 216 Pp. 72 B/W Illus

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Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015, 216 Pp. 72 B/W Illus Document généré le 30 sept. 2021 02:25 RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne Canadian Art Review Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015, 216 pp. 72 b/w illus. $ 45 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-253-01542-6 Nicholas Chare Volume 43, numéro 1, 2018 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1050830ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1050830ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Association d'art des universités du Canada) ISSN 0315-9906 (imprimé) 1918-4778 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce compte rendu Chare, N. (2018). Compte rendu de [Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015, 216 pp. 72 b/w illus. $ 45 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-253-01542-6]. RACAR : Revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, 43(1), 111–113. https://doi.org/10.7202/1050830ar Tous droits réservés © UAAC-AAUC (University Art Association of Canada | Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des Association d'art des universités du Canada), 2018 services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ der bildenden Künste (1843). Musto’s Carol Zemel article illustrates how the inception Looking Jewish : Visual Culture of art history as an academic disci- and Modern Diaspora pline, together with the material Bloomington : Indiana University Press, chosen for inclusion, was dependent 2015 on nineteenth-century constructions 216 pp. 72 b/w illus. of civilisation, replete with their cul- $ 45 (hardback) isbn 978-0-253-01542-6 tural hierarchies and other prejudices. Undoing and rewriting this disciplin- ary trajectory remains an ongoing and complicated process. Civilisation and Nineteenth-Century Nicholas Chare Art contributes to the ever-expand- ing body of scholarship published In her 1948 book A Short History of Jewish Jewish artists from relative obscurity since the 1990s that interrogates the Art, Helen Rosenau, an art historian and elevating them to the modern- relationship between imperialism educated in Germany but forced to ist pantheon. Drawing on remarks and artistic production in the West flee the country in 1933 due to Nation- about diaspora by the artist R.B. Kitaj, and its former colonies. The volume al Socialism’s persecutory policies she outlines the term as referring to complements Manchester Univer- toward Jews, discusses artists of the modes of living and working across sity Press’s series Studies in Imperial- diaspora — the painful dispersion or two or more distinct, yet interrelat- ism, which has published a number scatering of the Jewish peoples — a ed societies at once. This “working of important, related books over the reality Edward Carter draws aten- across” provides a means of resist- last decade. Particularly worth men- tion to in his preface to her book. ance against conforming to “any tioning in this context is Tim Bar- With respect to modern diasporic conventional aesthetic or national ringer, Douglas Fordham, and Geoff artists, Rosenau remarks, “The var- style” (2). Modern diaspora therefore Quilley’s 2007 volume Art and the Brit- iety of these artists is such that it potentially constitutes an enabling ish Empire, which was motivated by the seems almost impossible to gauge dislocation, a form of opportunity premise that “the concept of empire any specifically Jewish traits…. How- to look beyond extant categories and belongs at the centre, rather than in ever, in spite of the impact of their positions, a promise to be explored. the margins, of the history of British respective national schools, certain Diasporic identity is ofen conceived art” (3) ; it informed important exhib- traits of abstraction, of individualiz- negatively as incomplete assimila- ition projects, such as Tate Britain’s ation, of interest in personality and tion, yet this ambivalent status may Artist and Empire : Facing Britain’s Imperial the moral content of the work of art also provide liberating aspects. Past (2015–2016) and the reinstalla- survive, even with assimilated Jewish Through her engagement with tion of the permanent collection of artists, and relate them to their own diasporic art, Zemel makes an the Yale Center for British Art, themed past history” (19). For Rosenau, cul- important contribution to ongoing Britain in the World (2016). The essays in tures of the diaspora are sensitive to debates in diaspora studies about Civilisation and Nineteenth-Century Art fol- social change. She observes that, “in how to conceive and study diaspora. low Barringer, Fordham, and Quilley’s our own age the Jewish evolution By way of the importance she accords guiding principle, but within the lim- enters a new and contrasting phase, art and visual culture of the diaspora its of a more focused topic, and with a confronted as it is with atempts of as forms of social resistance, and broader geographical scope. Through destruction in the physical sense, and also as a result of the atention she subjects that cut across race, gender, by the problems of nationalism versus pays to ambivalence as a character- geography, and historical timeframes, assimilation, and liberalism versus istic of diasporic identity, she pos- this collection of essays offers a orthodoxy” (21). itions herself alongside postcoloni- wide-ranging and nuanced perspec- The problems Rosenau identi- al thinkers such as James Clifford, tive into the conceptual complexity fies feature significantly in Carol Homi K. Bhabha, Franz Fanon, and and malleability of the notion of civil- Zemel’s Looking Jewish, a thoughtful Paul Gilroy. Zemel, however, dif- isation in nineteenth-century art. ¶ and sophisticated analysis of art and fers from these thinkers, who have visual culture in the modern diaspora. each influenced art history, in the Nina Amstutz is Assistant Professor in the For Zemel, diaspora refers not solely, sustained focus she accords to the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. or simply, to a displaced ethnic group visual as a locus of reflection upon — [email protected] living in a broader national milieu. diaspora. Looking Jewish is a work Her aim is not to celebrate an eth- of art history that explores paint- nic art production, thereby rescuing ing, photography, prints and other racar 43 (2018) 1 : 109–128 111 ⇢ Carol Zemel, Looking Jewish : Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora A Young Jew and Two Women in an Alley images of Jews by Jews and for Jews” media. Because of its spirit of experi- (1920) enables her to tease out how (2) frequently allows her to draw mentation, as art history it merits the painting figures separateness atention to agency as it manifests being placed alongside endeavours and difference and the impact of a through diasporic cultural pro- such as Adrian Rifin’s Ingres Then, fast-changing world upon Jewish ductions — the Jewish “look” being and Now (2000), T. J. Clark’s The Sight life in Galicia. Zemel also provides self-produced. This is evident, for of Death : An Experiment in Art Writing a sustained and powerful analy- example, in Chapter Four, which cen- (2006), and Griselda Pollock’s Encoun- sis of Schulz’s The Booke of Idolatry tres on representations that examine ters in the Virtual Feminist Museum : Time (1920–1922), a series of erotic prints stereotypes of Jewish femininity, the Space and the Archive (2007). Its narra- in which the artist explores his desire Yiddishe Mama (the Jewish Mother) tive is not straightforwardly linear, for female domination. Schulz’s and the Jewish Princess. Zemel con- even if it is roughly chronological. It foot fetishism, already signalled in siders how artists, including Eleanor also does not track relations among Encounter (in which the young Hasid, Antin and Amichai Lau-Lavie, contest artworks through a prism of categor- bowing, seems to focus particular- and subvert such stereotypes. Rhon- ies including nation, style, or period. ly on the legs and feet of the women da Lieberman and Cary Liebowitz’s Zemel, rather, allows the concept of he passes in the alley) reaches its Chanel Chanukah (1991), for instance, diaspora to travel within and across apotheosis here. For Zemel, how- calls atention to the Jewish Princess various periods and media. Looking ever, The Booke of Idolatry is much more and critiques the stereotype for the Jewish performs something of the than a masochist’s “spank bank.” vacuous materialism it embodies. conceptualisation of the diasporic it Her remarkable reading traces how The chapter foregrounds Zemel’s ultimately elaborates, not straight- Schultz uses eros and idolatry in the sensitivity to gender issues, a sensi- forwardly accommodated within art prints “to evoke the tensions of Jew- tivity already signalled in Chapter history as it has been traditionally ish difference and accommodation Two in relation to masculinity, here conceived, yet all the more promis- at the same time” (67). Zemel argues involving a more expansive explora- ing for this lack of ready fit. that the tableaux stage an encoun- tion of Jewish gender ideals. Zemel begins with an analysis ter between the individual and the The final chapter examines dias- of the photographers Alter Kacyz- social, embodying both private fan- poric values in contemporary art, ne and Moshe Vorobeichic, Jews tasy and social metaphor. The dias- focussing on three artists unified by from the Pale of Setlement, who pora Jew’s social anxiety as it inter- their perceived use of allegory — R.B.
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