Mirroring evil : Nazi imagery/recent art / edited by Norman L. Kleeblatt.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kleeblatt, Norman L.

Jewish Museum (New York, N.Y.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National socialism in art--Moral and ethical aspects--Exhibitions.

National socialism in art.

Art, Modern--20th century--Exhibitions.

Art, Modern.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

xviii, 164 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 28 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Jewish Museum under the auspices of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America ; New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, [2001]

Summary:

Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art features recent work by thirteen internationally recognized artists who use imagery from the Nazi era to explore the nature of evil. Their works are a radical departure from previous art about the Holocaust, which centered on tragic images of victims. Instead, these artists dare to invite the viewer into the world of the perpetrators. The viewer, therefore, faces an unsettling moral dilemma: How is one to react to these menacing and indicting images, drawn from a history that can never be forgotten? The artists represented in Mirroring Evil impel us to examine what these images of Nazism might mean in our lives today.

Essays in the catalogue explore themes of moral ambiguity in makers and viewers of art, institutional responsibility in exhibiting controversial artworks, and the complicated issues of representing or even imagining the perpetrators. Entries about the individual artworks discuss in greater depth the artistic, ethical, and historical complexity of the images that the artists dare to engage.

Contents:

Foreword: Looking into the Mirrors of Evil / James E. Young xv

The Nazi Occupation of the White Cube: Transgressive Images/Moral Ambiguity/Contemporary Art / Norman L. Kleeblatt 3

Acts of Impersonation: Barbaric Spaces as Theater / Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi 17

Childhood, Art, and Evil / Ellen Handler Spitz 39

"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" Revisited: On the Ethics of Representation / Lisa Saltzman 53

Playing the Holocaust / Ernst van Alphen 65

Playing It Safe?: The Display of Transgressive Art in the Museum / Reesa Greenberg 85

Distanced Mirrors Reflections on the Works of Art

Keeping One's Hands Clean: Six Commissioned Portraits of a Perpetrator: Christine Borland's L'Homme Double, 1997 99

Male Fantasies of Hitler: Confusing Gender and Identity Roee Rosen's Live and Die as Eva Braun, 1995 101

Transforming Images into Symbols: Mischa Kuball's Hitler's Cabinet, 1990 105

The Conflation of Good and Evil: Piotr Uklanski's The Nazis, 1998 108

A Feminist Rejoinder to Uklanski's The Nazis: Elke Krystufek's Economical Love series, 1998 111

Impersonating the Victim: Consorting with History Alan Schechner's Barcode to Concentration Camp Morph, 1994, and It's the Real Thing

Self-Portrait at Buchenwald, 1993 114

Impossible Bedfellows: Adolf Hitler and Marcel Duchamp: Rudolf Herz's Zugzwang, 1995 117

The Villain Speaks the Victim's Language: Boaz Arad's Safam, 2000, and Marcel Marcel, 2000 121

Fascinating Fascism: Then or Now? Maciej Toporowicz's Eternity #14, 1991 123

Mirrors of Innocence and Violence: Alain Sechas's Enfants Gates, 1997 126

Toying with Terror: Zbigniew Libera's LEGO Concentration Camp Set, 1996 129

Fashioning Terror: Tom Sachs's Giftgas Giftset, 1998, and Prada Deathcamp, 1998 132

Staging Depravity: Mat Collishaw's Burnt Almonds (Gustav and Helga), 2000 134.

Notes:

Catalog of an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York, March 17-June 30, 2002.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-161).

ISBN:

081352959X

0813529603

OCLC:

45575645