In the twentieth century, the avant-garde movements promoted abstraction and formal experimentation in the visual arts, often eliminating the representation of the human form altogether.
Yet many Jewish artists resisted this trend and continued to depict the human figure with sympathy and understanding. Although most of these artists did not portray overtly Jewish themes,
could it be that their stubborn devotion to the figure was itself a reflection of their Jewishness? Did the figure serve as a means of expressing, in a secular artistic setting, aspects of
their Jewish intellectual heritage, such as their humanistic ideals, passion for social justice, and opposition to the nihilism that pervaded so much modern art—and so much of modern
life?
The author, polymath intellectual Eliane Strosberg, prefaces her exploration of these fascinating yet difficult questions with an overview of Jewish cultural history, in which she
demonstrates that figurative art has actually had a place in Judaism for thousands of years, despite the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven images. She transitions into the modern
era with a penetrating analysis of the remarkable self-portraits that Pissarro painted at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. As she traces the complex relationship of Jewish artists to the
human figure, Strosberg devotes particular attention to the immigrant painters of the École de Paris, like Soutine and Modigliani; the American social realists, like Ben Shahn and Raphael
Soyer; and the masters of the postwar School of London, like Lucian Freud and R. B. Kitaj. However, she does not neglect the experiences of Max Liebermann in Germany, Frida Kahlo in Mexico,
or the Sots Artists in the Soviet Union, among others.
Illustrated throughout with beautiful color reproductions of works by the artists under discussion, The Human Figure and Jewish Culture is an essential addition to any library of
Judaica or art history.
