Seduced by the Sacred: Forging a Jewish Art
The Jewish Art Salon is pleased to present Seduced by the Sacred.
- Curated by:
- Richard McBee at rmcbee@nyc.rr.com
- Joel Silverstein at joelartcrit@aol.com
- Dates:
- Opening, Sun. October 3, 2010.
- Exhibit is free and open to the public:
- October 3 - November 22, 2010
- For more info: Jewish Art Salon
- 2 Exhibition Locations:
- The Charter Oak Foundation in Hartford CT, 21 Charter Oak Avenue, Hartford CT 06106, Tel: 860.249.1207
- The Joyce D. and Andrew J Mandell JCC of West Hartford, 335 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford CT, Tel: 860.231.6339
Seduced by the Sacred: Forging a Jewish Art
The Jewish Art Salon, founded in 2008, comprises over 150 visual art professionals. As Jews in the visual arts, they explore how Jewish identity defines and fulfills personal creativity and expression. This new generation of Jewish artists came of age after the 1970’s and craved more authentic religious and cultural experiences. It was not uncommon for these Jews to be drawn to traditional forms of Jewish study such as the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud and the Kabbalah even though they were born to non-religious backgrounds with little or no Hebrew education. As these artists became more familiar with Jewish ideas of the sacred, their knowledge of art history beckoned. How to address the sacred in the visual arts from a modern Jewish perspective?
The sacred is traditionally thought of as the place where the Divine meets the mundane. While this realm fundamentally exists beyond our everyday experience, at times it can be brought into our reality by key rituals, objects, visions or texts. For thousands of years, the use of art was an important factor in stimulating this experience. Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu artists created sacred art often used in religious worship. The visual languages were clearly defined. While there always has been ritual Jewish art, Jews were relative latecomers to Western fine art traditions. During the late 19th century, as Jewish artists increasingly engaged in Western fine art production, the beginnings of Modernism effectively banned explorations of the sacred. This pushed more and more Jewish artists into assimilation alienating them from their religion and Jewish culture. One hundred years later the cultural landscape has radically changed. Postmodernism’s eclectic view of religion, identity and art has opened up the dramatic possibility of exploring a Jewish modern understanding of the sacred.The very nature of the sacred; beyond proof and rationality, immutable, intractable, once again became desirable and easily connected to the entire history of Judaism. Christian art had fixed iconography and history; Jewish art reveled in its own indeterminability. An invisible God and the space of encounter invite radical re-understandings of texts and images.
The Sabbath song Lechah Dodi, refers to the mystical marriage between God and the Jewish people, welcoming the Sabbath Bride in a holy interaction of the sacred and the mundane. We, the curators, are using this poem as a paradigm for Jewish artists who are willing to encounter experiences far greater than themselves. This paradigm explores the love and the sense of the forbidden that comprises the unique faith of the Jewish artist working at this time, forging bold new ideas about Jewish Art.