Transformations of a traditional folk art : the revival of Jewish papercutting / Jayne Kravetz Guberman.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Guberman, Jayne Kravetz.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Folklore and folklife.

Folklore and folklife--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Folklore and folklife.

Folklore and folklife--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

xix, 369 leaves : illustrations ; 29 cm

Production:

1994.

Summary:

This dissertation focuses on late twentieth-century efforts to reintroduce papercutting as a means of ethnic, religious, national, and personal expression among Jews. The prior Jewish papercutting tradition, closely associated with the religious rhythms of communal life, reached its zenith in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe. In the early decades of the twentieth century, growing secularization and technological advances in printing caused a precipitous decline in papercutting as a widespread folk art. Based on archival research in Jewish museums, and extensive fieldwork among artists, museum staff, gallery and gift shop owners, artists' agents, and consumers, this dissertation examines the "revival" of Jewish papercutting among Israeli and American Jews. Where other folkloristic studies of revivals have examined the engagement of outsiders with a community's traditional cultural forms, this study finds that the Jewish papercutting revival is essentially an internal phenomenon, whose key participants identify with, reinterpret, and re-present cultural forms arising from their group's own historical and cultural experiences. The dissertation seeks the roots of the revival in contending notions of "Jewish art," "folk art," and "tradition" among Jewish artists, ethnographers, and Zionists in the early decades of the twentieth century, noting particularly the role of the Jewish ethnographer, Giza Frankel. It then examines the revival's development in Israel and the United States from the 1950s to the present, focusing on the varying constructions of "tradition" and "authenticity" of key individuals operating as part of an "interpretive community." Four contemporary artists--Yehudit Shadur, Martin Farren and Joan Benjamin-Farren, and Diane Palley--form the central case studies. The dissertation demonstrates how, in response to trends such as feminism and individualism, contemporary papercutters have transformed "the tradition" through innovative approaches to Jewish iconography and the creation of new and re-worked genres. It concludes that, far from being a marginal phenomenon, revivals constitute a primary strategy by which modern communities relate to and transmit a notion of heritage, by reclaiming selected aspects of the expressive culture of the past and reshaping them according to contemporary priorities.

Notes:

Thesis (Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife) -- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1994.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 95-21040.

OCLC:

187450758