Wednesday, November 2, 2016
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM (ET)
PALMTN Gannett Auditorium
Event Type
Lecture
Contact
518-580-5590
Department
Special Programs
Link
http://ems.skidmore.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?EventDetailId=14483
Is
There A Jewish Art?
Art critic Jed
Perl will deliver a free public lecture on November 2nd at 8:00 PM.
The Jewish tradition has been grappling with the power
of visual experience for thousands of years, from the Second Commandment’s
rejection of graven images to the work of El Lissitzky, Marc Chagall, Mark
Rothko, and Barnett Newman. What can we learn from this rich, many-faceted
evolution? Is there a Jewish art or a Jewish tradition in the arts?
Jed Perl will argue that there is a tradition – a tradition
grounded not in naturalistic experience but in the power of the visual arts to
order our experience of the world. In a lecture ranging from the descriptions
of the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus to the contemporary painter R.
B. Kitaj’s First Diasporist Manifesto, Perl will examine paintings and ritual
objects as well as the architecture of synagogues and the arrangement of the
dinner table for the Sabbath meal. We will see how major twentieth-century art
historians and critics have grappled with the relationship between ancient
traditions and modern avowals. The Jewish tradition in the visual arts, with
its rejection of naturalistic representation, foreshadows modernity’s vision of
the arts as a reshaping of reality – or an alternate reality.
This
presentation is part of the Jacob Perlow Event Series sponsored by the Office of
the Dean of Special Programs.