El Lissitzky’s Shifs-karte, 1922: Contexts and Commentary
This article analyzes El Lissitzky’s illustration that appeared in Ilya Ehrenburg’s eponymous short story in the ironically titled Russian book Shest’ povestey o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings, 1922). The story, the illustration, and contemporary Expressionist avant-garde Yiddish po...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2025
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| In: |
Images
Year: 2025, Volume: 18, Issue: 1, Pages: 58-77 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article analyzes El Lissitzky’s illustration that appeared in Ilya Ehrenburg’s eponymous short story in the ironically titled Russian book Shest’ povestey o legkikh kontsakh (Six Stories with Easy Endings, 1922). The story, the illustration, and contemporary Expressionist avant-garde Yiddish poetry, all from the same year, appeared in the immediate aftermath of the pogrom wave that swept across the ravaged former Pale of Settlement between 1917 and 1921 (primarily in Ukraine) during the Russian Revolution, the civil war, and the Soviet - Polish war of 1919-1922. Over one hundred thousand Jews were slaughtered; hundreds of thousands more were displaced from their homes; and still others were tortured, raped, and humiliated. Whereas the story is a memorial to a major center of Jewish life, Berdichev, the illustration is Lissitzky’s ode to the idea of Jewish art. Shifs-karte was his visual statement of despair based on what he saw as the end of the "folk" upon which Jewish art depended. Not all writers and artists agreed with Lissitzky; on the contrary, they envisaged a national cultural renaissance that politically and culturally rivaled Zionism. This article serves as the background for a detailed interpretation of the illustration. The irony of Lissitzky’s turn to abstraction as a means of "transcending" his hitherto powerful Jewish identity is that it provided the basis for a critical view that interprets his "Prouns" - the epitome of abstract art - as his secret, kabbalistic adherence to the commandment prohibiting realism or the literal representation of images. |
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| ISSN: | 1871-8000 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Images
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340199 |
