Currently Browsing: Art 32 articles
Painting Nuremberg
Gloria Tessler on the English impressionist who volunteered to paint the Nuremberg Trial. She was one of the best-known artists of the English Impressionist movement, celebrated for her figurative work, ballet dancers and circus performers. Then, as one of the few official women war artists during the Second World War, Dame Laura Knight painted women […]
Althea McNish
To mark the Windrush anniversary, Gloria Tessler remembers her late friend, Althea McNish. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush which first docked in Tilbury on June 22, 1948. What should be a happy event, celebrating the diversity of culture in Britain, has been marred, of course by the trauma experienced by […]
“You killed my Jew”
Donald Weber reviews a new book about author and artist Bruno Schulz. In Bruno Schulz: An Artist, A Murder, and the Highjacking of History Benjamin Balint re-visits issues he pursued in Kafka’s Last Trial, awarded the Sami Rohr Prize for 2020 by the Jewish Book Council. In each case, Balint’s subject is “the political implications […]
Soviet Jewish Writing
Donald Weber reviews a new book about postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature and film. In How the Soviet Jew Was Made, Sasha Senderovich maps a fascinating landscape of Jewish literary expression in Eastern Europe between the Russian Revolution and the emergence of the Soviet Union. The ongoing horrific violence in Ukraine and – for perhaps […]
Jewish Maternal Journal
Laura Godfrey-Isaacs celebrates the powerful legacy of journaling by Jewish women and girls. When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? — […]
Golems and My Journey Back to Life
Ashley Fitzgerald discusses the legend of the Golem, his connection to it and how it has influenced his work. I was drawn to creating Golem-related art forms, alongside other relic-based work, following a near-death experience in 1993 as a result of Gillian-Barré Syndrome (GBS). Caused by a viral infection, the immune system initially responds by […]
A Lone Lee Man of Comics
Nathan Abrams reviews a new biography of Stan Lee. ‘This is a particular pleasure — or frustration, depending on one’s point of view — for Jewish critics, who have spent decades and spun a small cottage industry arguing about just what the new mythology is constructed by American Jewish artists owe to the old ideas […]
The Power of Holocaust Art
Caroline Slifkin reflects on her Holocaust art for schools project. I first got involved in creating a schools Holocaust arts project for Bolton’s Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) events in 2011. The completed art display toured The Town Hall, The Market Place and Bolton University, raising awareness in the wider community. Due to the success of […]
Art in the Shadow of Death
Caroline Slifkin describes her work teaching Holocaust Arts to Ashton Sixth Form College (Stamford Park Trust). I first started working with Ashton Sixth Form College (Stamford Park Trust) in 2006. It was one of the 10 schools and colleges for my Imperial War Museum London Fellowship in Holocaust Education, Holocaust Arts project, ’Art in the […]
The Auto-Destructive-Creative World of Gustav Metzger
Gloria Tessler looks back at the work of Gustav Metzger, the subject of a forthcoming retrospective. If you get down on your hands and knees and crawl on the ground beneath the yellow-star-coloured cover, you can touch an enlarged photograph of Jews forced to scrub the pavements of Vienna clean. The figures are larger than […]