Tag Archives: art

What Was Was Was (Gal Cohen)

Posted on July 29, 2020 by

[Gal Cohen, What Was Was Was (2020)] The shredding of memory into strips seems apropos to both the current moment and to Tisha b’Av

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(Anti-Monument) Lives & Deaths of Racist Images

Posted on June 11, 2020 by

. Idols and icons lead complex lives, they enact suffering and they suffer violence when screws turn. Historian and theorist of art and architecture and post-Holocaust memorialization, James Young writes here on memory and counter-memory, monuments and counter- or anti-monuments, … Continue reading →

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(Talmud & Art) Cats at Seder Behold I Bite the Mouse (Illuminated Haggadah)

Posted on April 14, 2020 by

Pesach is almost done with this year but I wanted to share with my Talmud, art, and animal friends this charming little post from the amazing blogsite here at the Bodleian. These medieval illuminated images from the Haggadah are the … Continue reading →

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(Art Puppets & Middle East History) Cabaret Crusades (Wael Shawky)

Posted on February 17, 2020 by

Puppets from Wael Shawky’s three-part video series Cabaret Crusades are here on view at the Met Breuer. I’m wondering about the relation between visual art and history (it could just as well be about religion and history) in a body … Continue reading →

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(Abstraction) Extreme Illusionism and Detailed Rendering (Vija Celmins)

Posted on February 16, 2020 by

Getting back to work about my impressions about some exhibitions that have since come and gone, this one being Vija Celmins: To Fix the Image in Memory. Vija Celmins  (pronounced VEE-ya SELL-mins) is one of those artists, women, whose career … Continue reading →

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(Diminutive) Ancient Judahite Art (Tel Motza Temple)

Posted on February 4, 2020 by

Not gods or god-like are these diminutive little figures from the Tel Motza temple site in the Judean Hills, in close proximity to Jerusalem. One can only speculate if similar figures were on hand at the Jerusalem temple site during … Continue reading →

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(Rome Pieces) On the Wall & De-Material (Richard Tuttle)

Posted on January 18, 2020 by

About these images, one could create a spiritual allegory about the appearance of the presence of a god in the world. The Rome Pieces by Ricard Tuttle are discrete little things. The humble mark made of graphite lines and cut … Continue reading →

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Visual Cues for Jewish Philosophy (Contemporary Art After the Realism of Revelation & Redemption of German Expressionism)

Posted on December 18, 2019 by

After “revelation and redemption” in the modern German Jewish thought of Buber and Rosenzweig came “authority and law.” Both traded upon the idea of overwhelming power, with strong commitments to the idea of “realization,” i.e. “realized presence,” But somewhere, “the  … Continue reading →

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(Posthuman Catalogue) Jewish Art & Aesthetics of Judaism

Posted on December 6, 2019 by

Stepping back at the long arc of Jewish art in tandem with the history of Jewish thought gives to view a kind of cataloge. Included are black inky letters their script and configuration, rosettes and arabesques and other ornamental figures, … Continue reading →

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OOF (Ed Ruscha) (New MoMA)

Posted on December 1, 2019 by

Ed Ruscha, OOF, 1962 (reworked 1963); oil on canvas “The single word, its guttural monosyllabic pronunciation, that’s what I was passionate about,” Ruscha has said of his early work. “Loud words, like slam, smash, honk.” The comic-book quality of these … Continue reading →

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