Jewish Dimensions in Modern Visual Culture
Antisemitism, Assimilation, Affirmation

In modern western history, the cultural and social developments of modernism have long been associated with Jews. This book looks at the key aspects of visual culture in modern Jewish history. It speaks to this issue through the lens of modernist visual production including paintings, posters, sculpture, and architecture.

This is a fascinating look at key aspects of visual culture in modern Jewish history. In modern western history, the cultural and social developments of modernism have long been associated with Jews. Usually this has been a negative association: the perceived breakdown of traditional norms was blamed on Jewish influence in politics, society, and the arts. Throughout Europe, Jews were viewed as carriers of industrialized and cosmopolitan developments that threatened to undermine a cherished way of life. This anthology speaks to this issue through the lens of modernist visual production including paintings, posters, sculpture, and architecture. Essays by scholars from the U.S. and Israel confront the contradictory impulses that modernism's interaction with Jewish culture provoked. Discussing how religion, class, race, and political alignments were used to provide attacks on modern art, the scholars also comment on visual responses to anti-semitism and the mainstream success of artists in the U.S. and Israel since World War II.