Jewish Art

Quinn: Hello and welcome back to Pictorial on Relay FM. I’m Quinn Rose and I didn't go to art school, but I still love to learn about art in my own time anyway.

Betty: Hi, and I’m Betty. I am also someone who did not go to art school, but like Quinn, I love learning about art and do it all the time. So I proclaim myself an expert, like I do all the time on this podcast. [laughs]

Quinn: We are halfway through a little mini series about religious art. And today we're talking about Jewish art, and this is my topic to lead off today.

Betty: Last week I talked about Christian art. So now we are, we're kind of going backwards in time, I just realized. I don't think we deliberately planned this, but this is kind of happened.

Quinn: Ah, yeah, that was not deliberate, but I guess that is how it shook out. Let's pretend that was what we were going for. We're going backwards in time, guys.

Betty: That’s right.

Quinn: Well, I am going to start pretty close to the beginning of Judaism with the beginning of this conversation here, with sort of a general background and some aspects of Jewish art. The main thing that I want to start with with this first section here is why there isn't a ton of visual arts from many eras of Jewish history. And there are a few different reasons for that. One is a religious reason. Very similar to how there isn't representational art in Islam, there also is not a lot of representational art in Judaism, especially older Jewish art and especially certain eras of Jewish art, which I'll get to in a second. And this is based on the second commandment, which is basically “thy shall not make a false image of a God.” And so very similar to, as we talked all about in the Islamic art episode, there are a religious restrictions—or at least, different people interpret it different ways, but historically there are religious restrictions on creating representational art.

Betty: That makes sense.

Quinn: Yeah. And that was especially prevalent in areas where there was a very large Muslim population or there was a Muslim ruling population over Jewish communities in different times and places in history. So obviously there are some aspects of like their own religion, but also culturally, if it's a Muslim dominated area and there is no representational art for their culture, you're not going to get a lot of Jewish representational art either. And so it’s, they kind of went hand in hand in that way. Now, the other reason why there isn't perhaps a lot of visual art is because there is so much Jewish literature. They are sometimes known as the “people of the book." There has been a ton of incredible literary arts and texts and all of the stuff that has come out of Judaism. And there's also been a historically very high literacy rate in Judaism as compared to like Christian literacy rates of like, you know, the Middle Ages and stuff like that. And so there was less of a demand for pictures basically, like there's less a demand creating visual art to depict stories of the Bible and religious stories because people could read them and they were making those texts that people could read.

Betty: I think this is kind of similar to when we were talking about Islamic art and a lot of like, because of this tradition of not depicting icons and like physical things there ended up being a lot of calligraphy, cause it's literally passing down the texts and the scripture.

Quinn: Yes. Yes, there’s a lot of similarities to be drawn there, which is very interesting. That all being said as a background to this, and I'm not really going to get into the literary arts, even though that is obviously awesome, that doesn't tend to be our focus here on this podcast, we’re more about this visual arts. But artistry and beauty has been deeply ingrained in Judaism since basically the very beginning, especially through a concept called Hiddur Mitzvah. And that literally translates to making a mitzvah, or commandment, beautiful. Which basically means in practice is that when you’re doing like a Jewish ceremony or ritual of any kind you could use like very basic items to do so, but it's part of Jewish faith to make those items beautiful, to choose things that are decorated, to choose like food that is, you know, fancy and beautiful than food that you might normally be eating. It's all about appealing to all of the senses and elevating the senses. And the idea that you will enhance any kind of ceremony that you're doing through these aesthetics.

Betty: Yeah, actually that makes sense. Cause like I guess if I think about it, I'm not Jewish, but I have been to a Seder for Passover and it's not just about eating food. There's a plate and there's exact places where you put things and it's organized in a really like aesthetically pleasing way that has symbolism and meaning. So it definitely seems like a, a principle that's carried through Judaism, like all this time.

Quinn: One really cool thing about this that I found is that there is a reciprocity of beauty and that by doing this process of using and choosing beautiful items and sounds and smells and all this stuff, you become beautiful as you perform the mitzvah. This is, it’s so pleasant to me about that idea of like, it's about honoring your God, but it's also about like you becoming better through the process of thoughtfulness and intention and beauty. In the show notes there's some examples of stuff like this, where it's like, oh, these are items that have practical purposes for different ceremonies or holidays or anything like that. But they are also have these carvings in them or decorations in them or all these different things that like, there's just another step taken to make them aesthetically beautiful as well as practical. Even though they have to remain being practical items. So it's this beautiful marrying of the two.

Betty: Looking at some of these pictures, like they, it seems like there's a cup and I'm assuming that's, there's like a candle holder and some other object that seems to be a vessel of some sort. But they, they all seem functional, but it's like beautifully carved and shaped into, like, I assume these are maybe silver or maybe some sort of metal and yeah. And it looks like there's even text that's carved onto some of them. And it just seems, it actually seems very like these designs seem very simple, but also like elegant.

Quinn: Yeah. There's definitely a lot of different ways that you can go about it and different approaches you can take. And on one hand, I do think that there can be some pitfalls of that because you don't want to be focusing on aesthetics at the expense of the actual religious meaning of something or to like, and I think I was speaking of this from the perspective of someone who has a background in Christianity. And so you see this sometimes in Christianity where it's like, there's a value judgment placed upon monetary ability that's like, oh, the more you can pay the better person you are. And that kind of thing is, has many times cropped up in various Christian churches as a flaw. And so obviously I think that there are some pitfalls there in tying things that, in tying aesthetics to things like religion and morality and related stuff like that. But that being said, assuming in good faith that, you know, we're not going to like judge people who can't afford the fanciest cups or things like that, this really does remind me of some things that we've talked about in the past of like the spiritual aspects of things like modern art and using aesthetics as a way to access higher levels of emotion and even of thinking and it's like it's baked right into these ceremonies in Judaism, which I think is really cool.

Betty: I didn’t get into it too much last episode when we talked about Christian art in terms of architecture, but yeah, there was definitely was a shift between Catholicism and then Protestantism because there was that shift into getting away from, you know, tying religion with like money and value. And so that's one of the reasons why Protestant churches in general are much simpler in design rather than the extravagant, like decoration everywhere in the Catholic churches. So that kind of is, yeah, like that's a parallel to what you were just mentioning.

Quinn: Yeah. There are different ways to approach things like this, I will say. Moving on from one general concept to another slightly less general concept. I don't know why—you come here with like specific pieces of art and I'm like, I would like to talk about concepts in different religions, but—

Betty: Hey, no problem.

Quinn: But I do have something that, I do have a couple of specific pieces that I want to talk about, but first I want to talk about the hamsa. So this is something that probably lots of people listening have seen before. But if you haven't, the hamsa is a palm shaped amulet. It's often abstracted. And so it is a five fingered hand, sometimes with the thumb off to one side, and sometimes it's done more symmetrical so you kind of have three fingers and then two things that look almost like thumbs coming off the side. It often has an eye in the palm of the hand. And the hamsa’s actually is a symbol that is extremely popular and common in several different cultures, including Islam which we didn't talk at all about on that episode, but it is been used as a sign of protection throughout history. It's often believed to ward off the evil eye. It's been connected to use in bettering fertility and lactation. And among Christians in the Middle East, generally, it's a general bearer of good fortune. So yeah, this is a symbol that originated in the Middle East and is—I’m going to get into its history specifically in Judaism in a second, but like it's very common in Judaism and Islam as well as Christians in the Middle East. So it's like—and in recent decades, it's really spread everywhere. So this thing is all over the place.

Betty: I've definitely seen these designs before and like, this is one of the things that's like, it's quite intricate, or it can be quite intricate and beautiful. But I think it's, it's also great. Cause it seems to be something that like, kind of like everyday people would use as like amulet to ward off to ward off—I don't even know, is it to ward off evil spirits?

Quinn: It's used in different ways. Like the most common way I believe is about the evil eye, warding off the evil eye, which is why it's believed that this did originate in Judaism. Because the evil eye is a very prominent feature in Judaism.

Betty: Is it meant to symbolize the hand of God or is it, could that be interpreted differently as well?

Quinn: Great question. So in the history of the symbol, there are references all the way right back into 10 commandments time to the “strong hand of God.” And also has been seen as God's hand reaching down from the heaven like symbolized as the hamsa. And so it's, yeah, it's definitely very closely tied to the idea of the hand of God. It is specifically also an open right hand. If it's not a symmetrical shape, it’s, the thumb is placed as if it is a right hand. So its roots in Judaism are very closely linked to this idea of, you know, God's strong hand leading Jewish people out of dangerous situations and helping them, which is where that came from. And it's now just an absolutely iconic symbol that's been used really in pretty much every way. It's also an extremely common tourist item. I actually have a hamsa bracelet that I got from my friend when she went to Istanbul. Like, it's just a very common thing to like get as a tourist item. Which is very interesting.

Betty: Yeah, like I see it a lot in like jewelry and like necklaces and stuff like that. So it does seem, it does seem very transportable in that way. 

Quinn: Yeah. I'm going to include a link in the show notes that you can see, which is an exhibit that was in 2018, which was the re-imagined hamsa exhibit that included 555 of the symbol at the Museum for Islamic art. And this was from Jewish people and from Arabic people. It was basically celebrating its roots and its deep history in both of those cultures, as well as exploring its use in modern times. Like they had a whole section that was just hamsas that were bought like at marketplaces and stuff like that. As well as like specifically curated pieces that like—there was one, there's one piece of art here which was these giant hamsa is on the wall and they all have faces and they're anthropomorphized. There are some that there's huggable hamsas, where they have them on pillows. There's one really cool one, which is a work by Rory Hooper. That’s the hamsa cam, which has made on a printed circuit board and features an HD surveillance camera where the evil eye would normally go.

Betty: Wow, that’s amazing. 

Quinn: That one’s so interesting to me. Because the symbolism of the hamsa is like, it's supposed to ward off the evil eye that, but in here, like it's symbolizing… So if we're going to carry over that symbol, like it's symbolizing warding off the evil eye of surveillance and you know, the panopticon, but also like it has one in there.

Betty: It’s got an evil eye that's incorporated into, into the hand itself. 

Quinn: Yeah. The symbolism and the literal situation that's happening are different.

Betty: That's really cool. Like yeah, I see, like, there's like minimal designs in here. And then, like you said, there's the anthropomorphic ones on the wall. It looks almost like, like some sort of Keith Haring graffiti, but instead of like, you know, babies, it's giant hands.

Quinn: Yeah, I just thought this exhibit was really cool. And I especially liked the way that it celebrated both its use in the Islamic world and the Jewish world as well as… and also just this place in the, in the commercial world today. And like, instead of saying like, “ugh, can you believe this? It's so commercial now,” but also being like, but even just highlighting that and being like, hey, like this is a hamsa iPhone case. They make those now. And showcasing that alongside the fine art as, as just a way to present all of that to people I think is really interesting.

Betty: Yeah. Like some of these look really, some of these just look really aesthetically pleasing, that I would wear them as jewelry. 

Quinn: I think that we could all use some warding off of the evil eye.

Betty: Yeah. If I can have a nice piece of jewelry and also be protected. Hey, why not?

Quinn: Okay. So I have talked mostly about more ancient Jewish art and lots of deep roots in history. And unfortunately, I don't have what you had with the Christian episode where you have like a whole timeline to move forward in time. No, I just have old stuff. And then I have one modern artist that I do want to talk about just a little bit here. Because obviously there are, as with any major religion, there are tons of Jewish artists. But I wanted to highlight just one today to talk about his work and a little bit of his connection with his Jewish heritage. And that is Marc Chagall. Are you familiar with Marc Chagall at all? 

Betty: I am somewhat familiar with Marc Chagall. Again, I did work on a show that had his, had his works in it. I'm not like a big expert on Chagall, but I have some general awareness of who he is.

Quinn: You're not a Chagall-head.

Betty: No. [laughs]

Quinn: Well, the reason why I wanted to highlight him a little is first of all, he has been referred to as the “quintessential Jewish artist of the 20th century.” So that's prominent. And his upbringing and life as a Jewish man is very entwined into his art, into his painting and other forms of fine art creation. So I think he's just like a really interesting little case study in modern Jewish art.

Betty: Earlier today, I wasn't looking up too much about this because obviously this is your topic, but I just quickly Googled Jewish art. And I think the second result I found, I saw a painting of Chagall. So it seems like a lot of people do agree with the fact that Chicago is the quintessential modern Jewish artist.

Quinn: It is interesting cause there's, there's obviously so many Jewish artists just like there's so many Christian artists and Muslim artist and like all this stuff, but before the purposes of what we're doing here today, it's not just about like, oh, this artist is Jewish. It's about like art that is quintess—to borrow the phrase, quintessentially Jewish and very informed by Jewish faith and culture. And so Chagall’s the guy. So just a little bit of background on him. Obviously this is not a whole episode about Chagall, but just like very briefly contextually. He was born in 1887 into a Lithuanian Jewish Hasidic family in Belarus, which at the time was part of the Russian empire. And so as part of the Russian empire, he was not allowed to attend regular schools because he was Jewish. His movement within his home city was restricted. So he went to school at the local Jewish school. And then when he was 13, his mom tried to enroll him in regular high school. And they said no, but she just walked right up and bribed them. And then he was accepted. Just to paint a little picture, not ideal on so many levels. And so obviously growing up in this environment, he had kind of two options as he was developing his artistic identity and learning the arts, was you could hide or otherwise deny your Jewish roots, or you could choose to very publicly express them and to embrace being Jewish and integrate them into your art. And so that is what he chose. This led to a lot of consequences for him, very sadly, in one of the most famous and prominent examples of this in 1933—by which time he was, you know, a pretty prominent artist. A number of his paintings were burnt by the Nazis outside the Manheim Art Gallery. And by 1937, all of his works were removed from German museums and some of them were shown at the Degenerate Art Exhibition.

Betty: Not surprised.

Quinn: Yes. So obviously a lot of terrible, terrible things. Chagall did escape from Europe after World War II started and he did end up living the rest of his life in the United States and continued creating art until he passed away in 1985 at the age of 97. By which time he was back in France.

Betty: Wow.

Quinn: Yeah. So he lived a very long life and lived through a lot of very major world events.

Betty: I didn’t realize he lived that long.

Quinn: Yeah, I was also surprised. I was like “97, damn.”

Betty: Good for him.

Quinn: But yeah, but he never stopped having his Jewish identity be a really important part of his work. He was very famous for the way he used color and just color was a very vital part of his paintings. And they were very like bright and animated. That's been described as almost like rhythmic. And he also, in terms of subject of what he chose to paint, he was extremely influenced by his hometown and the people and the places where he grew up around and depicted a lot of things from those times and places. He also depicted a lot of musicians and circus folk like acrobats and stuff like that, and was very drawn to those kinds of artistic and fluid elements of people.

Betty: Yeah, actually, I think one of the first works of Chagall that I learned about, which I think might've been the work that we had in this exhibition that, it’s probably from a long time ago, is this painting called Paris Through The Window. And it's a painting where he's looking out a window in Paris, but instead of just depicting Paris and he's got like dancers, but he's also looking east and it's like in the, in the painting it's as if he's looking back at his home village and like, he has this like, technique or motif, in his paintings where it's like, it's not, it's kind of transcending through time, which is, you know, quite interesting.

Quinn: Yeah. One of his contemporaries said that if you asked him to explain his paintings, he would reply “I don't understand them at all. They are not literature. They are only pictorial arrangements of images that obsess me.” Which I think is such a fascinating choice of like, he's saying like, I'm not particularly creative or like brilliant or anything. Like these are images that I've seen and that I'm obsessed with and I'm depicting them. These things that are in my brain, these things from my past, these idea of like musicians this culture that I'm immersed in, like I'm just putting it on the paper.

Betty: I think that's probably one of the reasons why he’s popular, I guess, because it's like, yeah, he's showing his life and the immersion of like his culture and how it influenced who he is in like a multiplicity of ways and like, not just the literal way. It's like he is combining these aspects of him and his mind and things that yeah, like different aspects of culture into, sometimes into one image. And I think that’s, like in a way that's a lot more fascinating than just like, you know, a literal painting of Paris from a window.

Quinn: Yeah, a really cool example of that is actually linked in the show notes. And that is his painting of the Fiddler On The Roof, which is in fact one of the inspirations for the award-winning musical. And so this is a painting of literally a man playing the fiddle on the roof. And I dunno—would you like to describe this painting for the audience?

Betty: Oh yeah, sure. Like you said, there's a fiddler and he's like, he's standing on a roof, but it looks like he is 10 times the size of the house that only one of his feet on the house and it almost looks like he's standing on top of the Earth. It looks like a globe that he's standing on. Again, he looks like a giant and he's got like a white coat on, but then it, parts of it is like a brown color. His face is green and he's wearing like a little brown top hat and then behind him are a bunch of other houses and it looks like to be a church or maybe a couple of churches. And then there are some people behind him. And then in the background it looks like there's a figure with a halo. I'm going to assume that's like God or something. I like, and it's in his style of, I want to say like patchy colors is kind of what I think of when I think of Chagall compositions.

Quinn: It’s this really interesting mix of representation and metaphor because, oh, it's like, it's representing this guy playing the violin. But he's not literally a giant with one foot on a roof, you know? And so, and this is this celebration of like, oh, it's the look at this kind of folksy Jewish town, but it's also about like this love of music and it's this combination of these different things to create an idea and an emotion about this small town with a Fiddler. And that's deeply based on his own Jewish upbringing without being like a literal representation of something of like an event that he saw, you know?

Betty: Yeah. I think this again, I'm like, because we're doing this in a series, I'm trying to draw parallels or I just think of things. Like it kind of in a way reminds me a bit of the Dali painting I brought up at the end of the last episode where it's the artist trying to show some sort of metaphoric interpretation of some, you know, religious story. Obviously the Dali one is a lot more, you know, like religious because it's Jesus on a cross. Whereas this one there's, there isn't like a Bible story in here, but still it's like that one is, is like it's obstructed and it, and it's not depicted in a usual way.

Quinn: With a lot of Chagall’s work, especially from, you know, like the second half of his life, it’s all these themes that you see from a lot of Jewish artists from that era and from continuing into today is the idea of memory. And because there were so, so many people who were murdered, that there was such a devastating loss of so many things. And one of those things was memory and the loss of stories. And so you can see in Chagall’s work this drive to capture these things, to capture these ideas and these places and these stories and present them in ways that are understood to be different interpretations of things, like some more literal than others. But nevertheless commemorating these things that aren't here anymore.

Betty: We could probably look this up, but did the Monuments Men save some Chagalls in Europe? I’m assuming they would have.

Quinn: That's a great question. I… when are we learned about the Monuments Men, I don't believe Chagall was specifically mentioned unless I'm not remembering just because it has been like a couple months since I've read that book now. But yeah, but his work definitely would have been a part of especially those bigger sort of treasure hunts in those salt mines and in the castle. Like his work was already like prolific enough to be targeted by the Nazis at some of these events. So it was definitely mixed in with some of that stuff, at least.

Betty: Well I'm very glad that a lot of them did survive because yeah, like his works are just really interesting in general, but the fact that it captures so much of Jewish history and memory and what life is like in European or in Russian or Belarusian villages, like these are the types of things that are definitely like worth preserving.

Quinn: Absolutely. The last thing I want to leave this off with a much we're not going to get into really talk about, but I do have to mention that actually not until he was almost 70, that he start like really seriously doing this, but he ended up working very seriously with stained glass. And he was a pretty prolific stained glass artist in the last couple of decades of his life. Including a stained glass memorial called Peace at the United Nations. And yeah, he just ended up doing a ton of a stained glass memorials and designs that can be seen all over the place. Which is… I think it's just, it's just great. You know, he had this a whole lifetime career as a painter and then just turned around and became this gorgeous glass artist.

Betty: I've actually, now that you mentioned it, I totally just it just clicked in my head. There's there's a room with Chagall windows at the Art Institute of Chicago and it's like one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Quinn: That is amazing. On that happy note is where I am going to leave this episode today. And I hope you all enjoyed a little bit of Jewish art history. 

Betty: Next episode we're probably going to go even more back in time. Cause I'll be talking about Hindu art, which is another really big topic. But I think it'll be, I think it'll be a lot of fun.

Quinn: Yeah. I'm so excited to hear about it. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Pictorial, you can find all our show notes at relay.fm/pictorial. Or you can find us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod, and you can find me on Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

Betty: And you can also find me on Twitter and Instagram @articulationsv. I am also on YouTube as ARTiculations and speaking of YouTube, we also have a YouTube channel, Pictorial Podcasts, where we upload video versions of these episodes, usually a few weeks after the audio versions have come out.

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!