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.

Posts by Ben