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Conserving Adolph Gottlieb’s Torah Ark Curtain

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Created for the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, Adolph Gottlieb’s Torah Ark Curtain is decorated with symbols in a compartmentalized form, a scheme that the artist also used in his Pictograph paintings at the time. Gottlieb was inspired by forms and expressions associated with non-Western art as well as Jungian philosophy of the unconscious. In this curtain, he abstracts elements of Jewish religious belief such as the Tablets of the Law, the twelve tribes of Israel, the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant. He also includes stylizations of objects developed for synagogue use (Torah mantles and Torah shields) and emblems that have become synonymous with Judaism (the Lion of Judah and the Star of David). The curtain was designed by Gottlieb and sewn by the women of the congregation.

Abstract Expressionist works–including Gottlieb’s curtain, a mural by Robert Motherwell and a monumental relief sculpture by Herbert Ferber–will be included in the upcoming exhibition Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb, on view March 14 – August 1, 2010. Click to continue »

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Happy Hanukkah

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Joe Grand’s Galvanized Steel Candelabra is the hot menorah of the season, getting picked by The New York Times and National Public Radio in the last week. I love its cool combination of thrift and style, funk and elegance. Assembled from iron pipe fittings from Home Depot, the DIY attitude exudes the 21st century Hanukkah spirit of improvisation and renewal.

Listen to an excellent report on Reinventing Ritual by Margot Adler that just aired on NPR’s Morning Edition. And read about Jonathan Adler’s visit to The Jewish Museum shops in pursuit of Hanukkah chic.

And finally, a shout out to our friends at Hazon’s food blog The Jew and the Carrot, which always has great holiday recipes and stories. I find particularly informative this guide to latke frying oil. Best wishes for a fun filled celebration.

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Planning Man Ray

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Since the spring of 2007, I’ve been working with curator Mason Klein on the much anticipated exhibition Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention. At last, over two years later, the show is now on view at The Jewish Museum.

Our exhibition surveys Man Ray’s diverse career, stretching over 60 years, and includes examples of his painting, photography, drawing, collage, film, sculpture, and writing. Most people know Man Ray for his associations with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, or for his many collaborations with Marcel Duchamp. The challenge in organizing Alias Man Ray was to get at the artist’s own hidden identity, and highlight the way his conflicted desire to both conceal and distinguish himself informed a lifetime of artistic output.

When dealing with such a canonical artist, the unexpected can be hard to come by, but Alias Man Ray is full of surprises. It is largely unknown, for example, that Man Ray began life as Emmanuel Radnitzky, the son of Jewish Russian immigrants. A photograph of little Manny Radnitzky, posing in his bar mitzvah attire with an impertinent hand-on-hip, is on view in the exhibition. It is one of the few surviving pictures from the artist’s youth in Philadelphia and Brooklyn. Man Ray himself is seen and heard in a video interview on view in the galleries, his Brooklyn accent a revelation for many who assume the long-time Paris resident was French.

Scattered among his breath taking iconic images, such as Le violon d’Ingres, Noire et blanche and dozens of luminous portraits, are more surprises. One of my favorites, Hier, Demain, Aujourd’ hui (Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today), is a triptych of photographed nudes whose faces and pubic areas are collaged over by bright circles in a strange Baldessari-like gesture. The collage hung in the artist’s darkroom for many years, and according to his wife Juliet Man Ray, was an unfailing source of inspiration.

For me, after years of looking at reproductions of Man Ray’s work in books, the best surprise was to open the crates and finally see the work for myself. The colors of his paintings are richer, and the jewel-like qualities of the photographs are more luminescent than I expected. You can look at all the reproductions you want, but nothing beats the face to face encounter. So come and check out the show for yourself!

- Lauren Schell Dickens
Neubauer Family Foundation Curatorial Assistant

Join Lauren on a behind-the-scenes tour of the exhibition Monday, November 23rd at 12:15 pm. For a full list of staff gallery talks and special offers, click here to find out more about Man Ray Mondays.

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Hands-on

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Prayer shawls made from tyvek. Menorahs made from wire. The wonders of blessing and song. The Jewish Theological Seminary and The Jewish Museum have collaborated on a special day of hands-on Judaica-making, music, and conversation. A Day of Reinventing Ritual is this coming Sunday, November 15, from 9:30 am to 4pm. For more information and tickets, please visit the JTS website. Everyone is welcome, and children over the age of 7 are free.

Artists from Reinventing Ritual, including Rachel Kanter, Allan Wexler, Studio Armadillo, Tobi Kahn, and LoVid will lead hands-on workshops for the creation of new ritual objects. Scholar David Kraemer and Canter Sharon Brown-Levy will also lead workshops introducing the methods of blessings and chant. Vocalist Galeet Dardashti will perform excerpts from her ongoing reinterpretation of Jewish and Persian musical traditions. Anthropologist Vanessa Ochs will close the day offering insights into the dynamical influences of art and ritual today. The goal of the collaboration is to transmit the specialized and specific knowledge and skills of a diverse group of artists and scholars to the broader community, where the process of reinventing ritual truly lives and breathes.

I’m especially pleased that Studio Armadillo will be making the journey from Israel to lead a workshop on DIY kippa-making. Their sculpture in Reinventing Ritual, “Hevruta—Mituta” is a wonderful reinterpretation of the ritual of Jewish study. The artists compare a chess match to hevruta, pairs or small groups that debate the Torah and rabbinical responses to elicit deeper engagement with evidence and arguments. The thirty-two skullcaps, crocheted by girls during lessons in religious school, become playful emblems of women’s increasing access to traditional Orthodox education and ritual. A second example of this piece will be on view in a forthcoming exhibition of contemporary Israeli design in Judaica, opening at Beit Hatfutsot, Tel Aviv, in December. The artists combine 21st century 3D printing technology and ancient weaving traditions in a truly innovative work.

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Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

It is with great sadness that I read of the death of the great French anthropologist. A founder of structuralism, his writings and thought remain vital to this day. As we are reemphasizing the patterns that connect us over the differences that divide us, Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of social, linguistic, and material forms across cultures and times provides a useful set of tools and metaphors. His landmark study “The Savage Mind” (1962) was influential in my early thinking about how ritual and art work together to create meaning in the everyday. I never formulated these thoughts for the catalogue, so record them here as a small tribute to a great mind.

“The Science of the Concrete,” the brilliant first chapter of Lévi-Strauss’s aforementioned book, introduces the concepts of two different types of scientific knowledge. First, the bricoleur who creates new ideas of objects from the materials at hand, thereby renewing or enriching the stock of available constructions. (This is the science of the concrete, which Lévi-Strauss observes in “primitive” societies and other cultures based on myth and ritual.) Second, the engineer who questions the universe and strives to think beyond the given constraints, thereby opening up new possibilities through technology. In other words, the former is reinvention, the latter is invention.

The main purpose of “The Savage Mind” is to elevate the status of the bricoleur to the cultural equivalent of the engineer. Certainly, the term has been seized on as a valid process by contemporary artists with a DIY attitude in the last decade, notably Tom Sachs.

For Lévi-Strauss, the artist operates between the bricoleur and the engineer: “art lies half-way between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thought.” He focuses on a detail from François Clouet’s naturalistic portrait of Queen Elizabeth of Austria (1571) to investigate the “very profound aesthetic emotion” produced by a highly-detailed representation of a lace collar. The fascination of the lace collar, in its morphological verisimilitude seen through the artist’s unique perspective, fuses reinvention and invention.

Only on rereading these passages did I realize that coincidentally three artists in Reinventing Ritual looked at lace and represented its texture into new means: molded silicone, etched steel, and hand-worked silver. The latter, new Judaica by Lella Vignelli, was inspired precisely by Baroque costume similar to that described by Lévi-Strauss. There is a poignant aspect to the excess of labor and beauty in a lace collar, and the desire on the part of the artist—be it Clouet or Vignelli—to borrow its power to enchant a new work of art. The candlesticks by Vignelli are an unexpected tribute to the anthropologist who developed a highly complex but practical theory of the process of artistic reinvention.

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DIY

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Prayer is an essential part of the High Holidays. The artists LoVid through their diverse practice use language, song, music, video, and electronics to connect people. Their video garment Retzuot (ShinShinAgam), which is currently on view in Reinventing Ritual, brings these concepts of prayer and connection together into one beautiful and thought-provoking work. The artists have just posted video documentation of how to wrap and wear Retzuot, helping us to better understand how this piece functions as reinvented tefillin.

The following is LoVid’s statement about the work, as published in the exhibition catalogue:

Retzuot (ShinShinAgam) is inspired by the head
and arm pieces of tefillin. The straps of tefillin
reminded us of electronic conductive wires,
which we use in our media-based, audiovisual
work. In a similar way, tefillin straps conduct
and preserve information that is in the scrolls
and that has passed down through history.
In Retzuot (ShinShinAgam), the scrolls are represented
by circuit boards, which generate
continuous live video. The video image is a
minimal representation of the letter shin,
which in traditional tefillin appears on the
headpiece box.

This fall, LoVid will be leading two hands-on workshops about making Judaica with simple electronics. The first is for all ages during A Day of Reinventing Ritual at the Jewish Theological Seminary on November 15, and the second is a family workshop about creating electric menorahs at The Jewish Museum on December 13.

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Reinventing Ritual is now open!

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

We had an absolutely incredible turnout on Monday night, with a long line outside, which I hear has never before happened at a JM opening. People compared it to a Biennial, which is so gratifying because that was one of the unspoken ambitions for this show. The energy and enthusiasm was amazing and inspires us to continue to support and exhibit this vital area of contemporary art, design, and Jewish ritual. Props to the opening co-host Heeb magazine and publisher Josh Neuman. For pictures, visit our Facebook and Flickr pages.

The highlight of the event was the awarding of the first ever Henry J. Leir Prize to Allan Wexler, one of the true pioneers in the area of “reinventing ritual.” The $5,000 prize recognizes a work that embodies the finest of contemporary art and design, and best expresses the dynamic practice of religion today. Wexler’s Gardening Sukkah impressed the prize jury with its craftsmanship, “green” awareness, and ability to make us rethink what a sukkah can be.

The distinguished panel of judges included: Rabbi Darcie Crystal, Coordinator of Leadership Initiatives at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York; Holly Hotchner, Director of the Museum of Arts and Design; and Daniel Libeskind, architect and designer. Thanks to them for their time and energy.

The jury also recognized two honorable mentions: Hadassa Goldvicht’s video Writing Lesson #1, and Ami Drach and Dov Ganchrow’s design +/- Hotplate.

We’ll continue to blog about ongoing events and activities around the exhibition. And if you have not yet seen the show, please come and check it out!

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Installing Helène Aylon’s “All Rise”

Monday, August 31st, 2009

We’re a few days behind in posting images. Last Thursday, Helène Aylon came in to install her major work “All Rise.” The color and the scale of the piece perfectly fits that of its gallery, amazing since the artist had not inking of this presentation when she designed and produced it in 2007.

Click thumbnails to enlarge and redirect to our Flickr page

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Flat-pack

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Another major element of the exhibition design is the system of tables, bases, and panels that Incorporated designed to display the range of media: jewelry, ceramic plates, videos, silver implements, textiles, and so on.

The initial inspiration came from an exhibition I viewed at Foxy Productions in Chelsea, where a variety of small sculptures and objets d’art were displayed on a sawhorse table. Each item was under plexi cube, and the display itself came off as an installation for the objects in the show. To me, the presentation seemed uninflected and honest, modest and sophisticated. Departing from this one image, Incorporated developed a simple and elegant solution to the display of the diverse group of works in Reinventing Ritual within the hundred-year-old container of the museum’s galleries.

Raw plywood is cut and slotted so the pieces smoothly join. For tables and bases, the horizontal deck nests right into a sturdy base formed by the supportive sheets crisscrossing on the vertical axis. For panels that support wall-oriented works and flat-screen monitors, sheets of plywood are suspended by a variation on the same support system. I’m probably not describing these very well, so take a close look at the preview of some of the tables and panels in the gallery to better understand how they work. There is no hidden armature, no decoration or ornament. No illusionism or superglue. The cases are purely functional and communicate their structure inside and out. I think Mies would be pleased that American architects continue to heed his ideas.

Taking commercial materials, cutting them into geometric units, and crafting them into functional objects is the same approach used by the textile artist Galya Rosenfeld. Her prototypes for ark curtains, commissioned by the Minneapolis Institute of Art for a Judaica show in 2007, are made from small modules of fabric cut from gray polyester IKEA curtains. They are woven together in an innovative structure that subtly creates Stars of David in a repeating pattern, and can be seen in Reinventing Ritual.

Put another way, the casework for Reinventing Ritual is one part IKEA and one part Tobias Putrih, a simple flat-pack system both industrial and artsy. Another important aspect of the cases and panels is that they can be easily dismantled. The plywood boards are held together by gravity and torque; there are no glue or nails to affix them. After the exhibition closes in New York, all the cases and panels can be popped apart, stacked, and shipped to San Francisco, where they will be reused in the representation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

Call it retro-functionalism: the old modernist ideals of the rational building stripped of ornament, combined with the postmodernist values of environmentalism and sustainability. An eco-Bauhaus if you will, calling for smart industrial production. I like to think that this retro-functionalist approach to building and design is expressed in every aspect of the exhibition contents and design, especially the casework.

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All Rise

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

The following text was composed by Helène Aylon, whose latest installation will be featured in Reinventing Ritual. She is also participating in two group exhibitions this fall: A Complex Weave: Feminism and Identity at Rutgers University and Women in the Bible: Tricksters, Victors and (M)others at the Jewish Museum of Australia, in Melbourne.

Feminism reinvents all of reality by the participation of women bringing the issues into male dominated spheres. I have used a feminist lens to investigate the main issues of the decade from the time I began my career: in the 1970s, addressing the notion of change itself and the Body; in the 1980s, the Earth; and in the 1990s and 2000s, G-d. (G-d required two decades!)

The G-d Project: Nine Houses Without Women began in 1990 with The Liberation of G-d. [Exhibited in “Too Jewish?” at The Jewish Museum in 1996, and now in the museum’s permanent collection.—Ed.] The “House” is a Beit Midrash—a house of study where men congregate to learn together.

For the finale of the G-d Project, I wish to make an actual tikkun, rather than a metaphoric inquiry. I am petitioning that women judges be allowed to judge on a Beit Din. We now have women rabbis and women cantors; it is time for women to be allowed to judge. All Rise is a Beit Din, A House of Law, a courtroom.

The pink pillowcase flags of the All Rise Beit Din refer to the pillowcases I collected in the 1980s with women’s dreams and nightmares about the state of the world. The pink neon in the word G-d represents a feminine presence. The Tzitzit under the judicial seats refer to the fringes worn around the groins of religious men to protect them from the lure of women.

This courtroom can be utilized as a focal point for discussion. It is significant that The Jewish Museum originated The G-d Project with The Liberation of G-d, and now will be showing the finale, All Rise.

Helène Aylon

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