Sketchbook: Jewish Order
Word from: Shlomo
This Sketch follows in the vein of my first post. I'd like to think that this drawing is working with jewish ideas as well, evoking imagery of closed jewish discourses, that are still able to leap between metaphors. (for example, its not standard to compare G-d to gravity, but its ok to switch between the metaphors king and father without a problem)
Tangent:
I was talking with an old yeshiva classmate, Avi Kessner, over the weekend, about my current drawings. He mentioned that during highschool he had tried to draw an image about judaism without using standard iconography. What he came up with was a drawing of a tree branch with smaller trees sprouting from it. Judaism as details. I thought that was really great-- a artistic concept that deals with Jewish orthodoxy as it really is lived.
5 Comments:
At 3:21 PM, Jake said…
Reminded me of De Chirico's "Jewish Angel" that's hanging in the Met - any intentional affinities?
http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/photo_ME0000067958.html
At 11:42 PM, Shlomo said…
none at all--no associative intentions or affinities. Never seen it, and I had to do a namecheck--this piece doesnt look like any de chirico's Ive seen either, more cubist than surreal I guess.
Its so interesting that this piece only really raises its questions when you see its contents, a visual abstraction, linked to such a title, a specific religous concept.
And the same really applies to my sketch as well (which I knew but...). Which makes me want to somehow collage my sketch with specifically jewish iconography, so that I can have my ---- and eat it too.
So what does this image say about the jewish angel specifically, or was this the way any angel or figure could be depicted by De Chirico?
At 11:11 AM, Jake said…
Never occurred to me. Are you saying De Chirico chose this angel to be a cubist concoction rather then a baby-face with wings specifically because a Jewish angel must necessarily be a concept rather than a precise visual?
At 9:47 PM, Shlomo said…
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At 10:09 PM, Shlomo said…
yes and no, he could've just been playing with cubism, or he could have really been making a statement about the "jewish angel". To find out an "objective" answer, one could study his output at the time, and see how many other pieces used this similar style, and if any of them were called "christian angel" or something similar.
The issue would have been avoided if De Chirico would have gone the extra postmodern mile of using two different styles in one piece to make a comparision between two different types of angels (check out this pic top see what I mean: http://www.sammlung-frieder-burda.de/content/kuenstlerverzeichnis/steinberg/bilder/403.shtml)
But there is an argument that any kind of iconoclastic art (which cubism is/was) is really jewish art. A blurb for Anthony Julius's "IDOLIZING PICTURES
Idolatry, Iconoclasm, and Jewish Art":
Anthony Julius derives a Jewish aesthetic from the Second Commandment. The prohibition of idolatry in fact contains a positive program. It is both an injunction against idol worshipping and a call to idol breaking...
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