Richard I. Cohen. Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. xviii, 358 pp.
Richard I. Cohen has contributed greatly over the last decade and a half to the study of the relationship between Jewish art and society.See, for example, two books that he edited or co-edited: Art and Its Uses: The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society (Studies in Contemporary Jewry: An Annual, Vo...
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| Format: | Electronic Review |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Pennsylvania Press
2002
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| In: |
AJS review
Year: 2002, Volume: 26, Issue: 2, Pages: 378-381 |
| Further subjects: | B
Book review
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Richard I. Cohen has contributed greatly over the last decade and a half to the study of the relationship between Jewish art and society.See, for example, two books that he edited or co-edited: Art and Its Uses: The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society (Studies in Contemporary Jewry: An Annual, Vol. VI) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) and From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage, and Power 1600-1800 (Munich: Prestel, 1996). His most recent book, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe, is a thoughtful, well-written, and original account of how Jews interacted with the non-Jewish world through art. This text is not a seamless narrative. Rather, Cohen rightly has organized it as separate essays, fragments of a history of the relationship of Jews to modern art. The book's greatest strengths lie in its interdisciplinary approach, its exploration of little-known objects, and its examination of a broad range of Jewish art patrons. Organized chronologically, the book begins with a chapter on early modern Christian images of Jewish rituals. The second chapter explores Jewish ceremonial objects, and subsequent chapters examine portraits of rabbis, nostalgic images of the ghetto, the history of Jewish art collections, and representations of Jewish homelessness and hopelessness. The word “icon” in the title appears in two contexts. On the one hand, it refers to portraits of rabbis, which had a hagiographical function.Cohen's third chapter is entitled “Rabbi as Icon.” On the other hand, it refers to David Roskies' description of Samuel Hirszenberg's Exile (1904) as “the first icon of Jewish suffering” (p. 234). |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4541 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Association for Jewish Studies, AJS review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0364009402350116 |