American Jewish History

Matthew Baigell's Jewish Identity in American Art: A Golden Age Since the 1970s is an intriguing, colorful exploration of Jewish American art with explicitly religious themes. Written accessibly and featuring almost one hundred color illustrations, the book introduces readers to broad developments over the last fifty years of Jewish art history through an introduction and two framing chapters. The heart of the book is its explorations of selected works by eleven different artists from the generation born between the 1930s and the 1960s, each featured in their own chapter.

Though the book does not have a pronounced overarching argument—as Baigell himself writes, his artists have such diverse styles and foci that "a happy anarchy reigns"—it does have prominent themes (6). In the book's introduction, he emphasizes two things that unite most of the selected artists: namely, an interest in biblical narratives and the impact of the feminist movement. Although other artists are mentioned, the bulk of the book is dedicated to an analysis of selected works by seven men and four women: Mark Podwal, Ruth Weisberg, Janet Shafner, Siona Benjamin, Carol Hamoy, Robert Kirschbaum, Tobi [End Page 570] Kahn, Richard McBee, David Wander, Archie Rand, and Joel Silverstein. Although the selected artists work in a variety of styles and media, the emphasis here is on visual art, especially sketches and paintings; there is little, for example, on sculpture or textile art, except in the surveys in the first two chapters, which briefly touch upon pioneering works like Helène Aylon's multimedia installation "The Liberation of G-D."

Jewish Identity in American Art is strongest when its author deploys close readings of the images at hand, often interspersed with artist statements and quotes from interviews. As Baigell argues, an interest in depictions of women and the influence of Jewish mysticism are two significant post-1970 trends that are on display in many of these works, including Podwal's Adam Kadmon (2000) and Shafner's Adam and Eve: The Sparks (1999). Ruth, Lilith, Esther, and the binding of Isaac are all particularly popular subjects throughout the book—or of particular interest to the author who selected which works to analyze.

One of the strongest chapters features the work of Siona Benjamin. Born in Mumbai in 1960, Benjamin came to the United States to attend graduate school. Her work combines both South Asian and pop art influences, with a particular focus on the theme of "home" and the inclusion of women, especially outsider women like Lilith, Asnat, and Hagar. The women in her midrashic paintings are blue-skinned like depictions of Krishna. They are often fierce like images of Durga, and sometimes, as in her image of Lilith, outspoken and brave like Wonder Woman. Pop influence is also evident in the work of Joel Silverstein (b. 1957), who incorporates visuals from DeMille's The Ten Commandments in his interpretations of the book of Exodus. He also associates Wonder Woman with Jerusalem and depicts himself as Superman—clad in a fedora that could be Hasidic or could be Clark Kent's disguise—in his House of El (2012). Baigell's readings bring out these nuances and more, although, as he admits, the goal of the text is breadth, leaving a rich, fallow field for future scholars to explore in future in-depth studies.

Baigell's conceptualization of Judaism—and who counts as a Jewish artist for the purposes of this book—is heavily influenced by work from scholars in the intellectual orbit of the Jewish Theological Seminary, particularly Jack Wertheimer, Neil Gillman, and Arnold Eisen. In both the introduction and conclusion, he refers to Judaism as "a performative religion" (8, 188). Although he acknowledges the fuzziness of Jewish identity, referencing many of the subjects' "sense of an internalized Jewish identity that they feel but cannot easily describe," it is then a bit confusing that the book's conclusion expends a good deal of its word count explaining...