by Carol Zemel. Indiana University Press, May 2015. 216 p. ill. ISBN 9780253005984 (cl.), $45.00.
Reviewed November 2015
Anna-Sophia Zingarelli-Sweet, MLIS, University of Pittsburgh, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In five chapters deftly intertwining fine arts and popular visual culture, respected art historian Carol Zemel traces a compelling narrative about how artists living in Europe and the United States have turned a distinctively Jewish gaze on themselves and their fellow Jews – interrogating Jewish identity, constructing and shifting stereotypes, and mediating the anxieties of diaspora life. Inspired to shift her own scholarly focus by the historical depth of Jewish culture in Amsterdam, Zemel asks what the study of Jewish, as distinct from Israeli, art might look like in the intensely nationalistic discipline of art history, and what, if anything, such a study can tell us about what it means to be a diaspora Jew.
To this end, Zemel gives insightful and well-informed readings of a diverse group of artists working in several media, including Bruno Schulz, Roman Vishniac, Eleanor Antin, Ken Aptekar, and R. B. Kitaj, as well as icons of Jewish popular culture such as Molly Goldberg. Her visual analysis is incisive and she persuasively situates her subject within broader trends in Western culture and Jewish history. Conversant with current scholarship in multiple disciplines, Zemel also enhances her visual analysis with a strong knowledge of reception history and key museum exhibitions.
The chapters in this book are derived from some of the author's previously published work, but the structure of Looking Jewish results in a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. While individually interesting, together the chapters mirror the course of Ashkenazi Jewish migration, from the tensions between shtetl culture and bourgeois modernity in prewar Europe, through the collective trauma and grief of the Shoah, to the promise and neurosis of American vernacular culture and, ultimately, the pluralism and identity politics of the contemporary art world.
Zemel models a thoughtful, clear, and concise academic style without losing the reader in jargon, and she provides plenty of context and definitions to make the text accessible to readers unfamiliar with Jewish terms and concepts. The book is nicely produced and pleasant to read, with good black-and-white reproductions that illustrate the text well. Thorough endnotes, a detailed index, and an extremely rich bibliography further enhance the book's usability. This volume would be suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, art historians and museum staff, and scholars in a variety of disciplines. It would be an asset to most college and university libraries, schools teaching twentieth century art history and visual culture, and museums collecting twentieth century European and American art and/or Judaica. Highly recommended.
2015 November