In Modern Jewish Art: Definitions, Problems, and Opportunities, Ori Z. Soltes considers both the emerging and evolving discussion on, and the expanding array of practitioners of ‘Jewish art’ in the past two hundred years. He notes the developing problem of how to define ‘Judaism’ in the 19th century—as a religion, a culture, a race, a nation, a people—and thus the complications for placing ‘Jewish art’ under the extended umbrella of ‘religion and the arts.’ The fluidity with which one must engage the subject is reflected in the broadening conceptual and visual vocabulary, the extended range of subject foci and media, and the increasingly rich analytical approaches to the subject that have surfaced particularly in the past fifty years. Well-known and little-known artists are included in a far-ranging discussion of painting, sculpture, photography, video, installations, ceremonial objects, and works that blur the boundaries between categories.

Is there a Jewish art? Is there a single "Jewish experience"? Matthew Baigell, the acknowledged American expert on Jewish art, offers the first book ever on the history of Jewish American art from the early settlements to the present.

Artist Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), whose Russian Jewish family settled in Manhattan in 1912, was devoted to painting people in their everyday urban lives. He came to be known especially for his representations of city workers and the down-and-out, and for his portraits of himself and his friends. Although Soyer never identified himself as a "Jewish artist," Samantha Baskind, in the first full-length critical study of the artist, argues that his work was greatly influenced by his ethnicity and by the Jewish American immigrant experience. Baskind examines the painter's art and life in the rich context of religious, cultural, political, and social conditions in the twentieth-century United States. By promoting an understanding of Soyer as a Jewish American artist, she addresses larger questions about the definition and study of modern Jewish art. Whereas previous scholars have defined Jewish art simply as art produced by people who were born Jewish, Baskind stresses the importance of an artist's cultural identity when defining ethnic art. As Baskind explains how Soyer negotiated his Jewish identity in changing ways over his lifetime, she offers new strategies for identifying and interpreting Jewish art in general. Her analysis of Soyer's work places the artist in a necessary context and provides a valuable new approach to the study of modern Jewish art.

Short-listed for the Art and Christian Enquiry/Mercers' International Book Award 2009: 'a book which makes an outstanding contribution to the dialogue between religious faith and the visual arts'. What does modern Jewish art look like? Where many scholars, critics, and curators have gone searching for the essence of Jewish art in Biblical illustrations and other traditional subjects, Rosen sets out to discover Jewishness in unlikely places. How, he asks, have modern Jewish painters explored their Jewish identity using an artistic past which is- by and large - non-Jewish? In this new book we encounter some of the great works of Western art history through Jewish eyes. We see Matthias Grunewald's Isenheim Altarpiece re-imagined by Marc Chagall (1887-1985), traces of Paolo Uccello and Piero della Francesca in Philip Guston (1913-1980), and images by Diego Velazquez and Paul Cezanne studiously reworked by R.B. Kitaj (1932-2007). This highly comparative study draws on theological, philosophical and literary sources from Franz Rosenzweig to Franz Kafka and Philip Roth. Rosen deepens our understanding not only of Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj but also of how art might serve as a key resource for rethinking such fundamental Jewish concepts as family, tradition, and homeland.

This book provides a social and cultural history of Jewish art in Nazi Germany, with a focus on the Jewish artists, art critics, and audiences in Nazi Bavaria. From the time of its conceptualization in the autumn of 1933 until its final curtain call in November 1938, the Jewish Cultural League in Bavaria sustained three departments: music, visual arts, and adult education. The Bavarian example steps outside the highly professional cultural milieu of Jewish Berlin, and instead looks at relatively unknown efforts of Bavarian Jewish artists as they used art to define what it now meant, to them, to be Jewish under Nazism. Insightful and engaging, this book is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars interested in social and cultural histories of Jews in Germany.

Can studying an artist’s migration provide the key to unlocking a “global” history of art? The artistic biography of Michail Grobman and his group, which was active in Israel in the 1970s, open up this vital new perspective and analytical mode.

Contemporary Jewish art is a growing field that includes traditional as well as new creative practices, yet criticism of it is almost exclusively reliant on the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven images. Arguing that this disregards the corpus of Jewish thought and a century of criticism and interpretation, Ben Schachter advocates instead a new approach focused on action and process. Departing from the traditional interpretation of the Second Commandment, Schachter addresses abstraction, conceptual art, performance art, and other styles that do not rely on imagery for meaning. He examines Jewish art through the concept of melachot—work-like “creative activities” as defined by the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides. Showing the similarity between art and melachot in the active processes of contemporary Jewish artists such as Ruth Weisberg, Allan Wexler, Archie Rand, and Nechama Golan, he explores the relationship between these artists’ methods and Judaism’s demanding attention to procedure. A compellingly written challenge to traditionalism, Image, Action, and Idea in Contemporary Jewish Art makes a well-argued case for artistic production, interpretation, and criticism that revels in the dual foundation of Judaism and art history.

Europe's Jewish minority culture was subjected to a barrage of public images proclaiming the dominance of the Christian majority. This book is the first to explore the Jewish response to this assault in the development of a visual culture through which Jews could affirmatively construct their identity as a people. It demonstrates how medieval Jews gave voice to messages of protest and dreams of subversion by actively appropriating and transforming the quintessential symbols of the dominant culture.