Torah Ark Curtain
Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903-1974)
Millburn, New Jersey, United States, 1950-51
Velvet: appliqué and embroidered with metallic thread
Upper section: 112 3/4 x 80 1/2 in. (286.4 x 204.5 cm)
Lower section: 121 3/4 x 81 1/2 in. (309.2 x 207 cm)
The Jewish Museum, New York
Gift of Congregation B'nai Israel, Millburn, New
Jersey, 1987-23a,b
Art © Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/
Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
How to get better religious art is very simple: just commission an artist. Then ask him to act as an artist, with imagination, with freedom, with vision, with daring.
—Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974)
Adolph Gottlieb’s design for Congregation B’nai Israel’s Torah curtain draws from his pictographic painting style. Beginning in 1941, Gottlieb experimented with dividing his canvases into compartments, influenced by Mondrian’s grid-based paintings as well as the patterns in Native American art he saw in Arizona in the late 1930s. Into these compartments, Gottlieb inserted his own iconography of symbols and images, developed from his interest in Egyptian hieroglyphics, medieval manuscript illumination, and African and Oceanic art. He viewed these images as part of a powerful, universal language, with meanings related to unconscious expressions he associated with non- Western art and Carl Jung’s writings about symbols and the “collective unconscious.”
For the Millburn commission, Gottlieb drew on his own Jewish background, easily absorbing Judaic imagery into his established iconography. The Torah curtain, or parochet, is referred to in the Bible as a partition that separated the holy Torah scrolls from the main hall of the Temple at Jerusalem. Over the surface of the curtain Gottlieb abstracted traditional Jewish symbols such as the Tablets of the Law (Ten Commandments), the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Ark of the Covenant. He also included stylizations of objects developed for synagogue use, such as Torah ornaments and coverings, and emblems that have become synonymous with Judaism, such as the Lion of Judah and the Star of David.
Following a traditional practice in which women of the congregation work together on the synagogue’s ritual textiles, the curtain was sewn by the women of Congregation B’nai Israel under the direction of Gottlieb’s wife, Esther. A dramatic twenty-foot-tall tapestry of rich red with bold symbols, the curtain stood out in the tan wood and blond brick sanctuary, fulfilling the architect’s intention to direct focus on the holiest place in the synagogue, the Torah scrolls inside the Ark.
Gottlieb continued to make works for synagogues, including another Ark curtain and twelve stained-glass windows for the Congregation Beth-El synagogue in Springfield, Massachusetts (also a Goodman commission), as well as the stained-glass façade of the Park Avenue Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Online Collection: view works by:
Herbert Ferber
Adolph Gottlieb
Robert Motherwell