Jewish icons : art and society in modern Europe / Richard I. Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Richard I.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews in art.

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Jews--Intellectual life.

Jewish art and symbolism.

Art and society.

Jews in art--Identity.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 358 p. ) ill. ;

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"With the help of over one hundred illustrations spanning three centuries, Richard Cohen investigates the role of visual images in European Jewish history. In these images and objects that reflect, refract, and also shape daily experience, he finds new and illuminating insights into Jewish life in the modern period." "Pointing to recent scholarship that overturns the stereotype of Jews as people of the text, unconcerned with the visual, Cohen shows how the coming of the modern period expanded the relationship of Jews to the visual realm far beyond the religious context. In one such manifestation, orthodox Jewry made icons of popular tabbis, creating images that helped to bridge the sacred and the secular. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the study and collecting of Jewish art became a legitimate and even passionate pursuit, and signaled the entry of Jews into the art world as painters, collectors, and dealers. Cohen's exploration of early Jewish exhibitions, museums, and museology opens a new window on the relationship of art to Jewish culture and society."--Jacket.

Contents:

The Visual Image of the Jew and Judaism

Ceremonial Art, Patronage, and Taste

The Rabbi as Icon

Nostalgia and "The Return to the Ghetto"

Self-Exposure, Self-Image, and Memory

Images of Jewish Fate.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-348) and index.

ISBN:

0-520-91791-X

0-585-05496-7

OCLC:

1414457184