Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is one of the best known - and most misunderstood - artists of the twentieth century. His incisive portraits, erotically charged nudes, elegant drawings of caryatids, and primitivistic sculpture have been admired for decades. Modigliani's work, however, has typically been examined in the limited context of his so-called bohemian, anti-intellectual lifestyle. This book revises this approach toward Modigliani's art, presenting a revisionist examination of the unique historical, social, religious, and cultural significance of his oeuvre. Modigliani: Beyond the Myth looks at the artist and his art from a variety of important perspectives: his proud heritage as a Sephardic Jew, whose spirituality embraced non-Western, classical, and Christian iconography while retaining its own ethnic identity; his critical engagement and melding of tribal and ethnographic art with Judaism in his portraiture; the representation of the female nude in his works from a feminist cultural perspective; the remarkable reception of his work in Italy after his death, and the failure of traditional art history to account for or analyze these important aspects of his life and work.

Modigliani: Beyond the Myth

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Jewish Museum

Published on the hundredth anniversary of The Jewish Museum, this magnificent book explores the culture, history, and beliefs of the Jewish people by presenting an extraordinary selection of works from the Museum’s renowned collection This beautifully illustrated book explores the culture, history, and beliefs of the Jewish people by presenting an extraordinary selection of works from the collection of The Jewish Museum, New York. Ranging from antiquity to the present day, these artworks and ritual objects include a fourth-century glass vessel and ancient burial plaques; exquisite Torah decorations and marriage contracts; stunningly ornate Hanukkah lamps and spice containers; beautiful paintings and prints by such artists as Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Marc Chagall, and Ben Shahn; striking contemporary works by Leonard Baskin, Sol LeWitt, George Segal, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and many others; and selections of video and still images from television and film, ranging from documentaries and dramas to situation comedies. Two introductory essays discuss the history and significance of The Jewish Museum, followed by a superb range of artworks grouped thematically in categories such as memory and history; spirituality and faith; society, politics, and community; text and representation; and television and culture. Each work is accompanied by a short essay providing description and interpretation. Together the reproductions and lively text tell the fascinating story of how Jewish culture has evolved through the centuries and across continents.

Masterworks of The Jewish Museum

Berger, Maurice

Rosenbaum, Joan

From their debut in Berlin in the 1780s to their emergence in 1930s California, Jewish women’s salons served as welcoming havens where all classes and creeds could openly debate art, music, literature, and politics. This fascinating book is the first to explore the history of these salons where remarkable women of intellect resolved that neither gender nor religion would impede their ability to bring about social change. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun examine the lives of more than a dozen Jewish salonières, charting the evolution of the salon over time and among cultures, in cities including Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London, New York, and Milan. They show how each woman uniquely adapted the salon to suit her own interests while maintaining the salon’s key characteristics of basic informality and a diversity of guests. Other distinguished contributors to the volume discuss in detail the Berlin salons of the 1800s; the salon in terms of Jewish acculturation and its relation to gender and music; and the relations of Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, and Gertrude Stein to the literary salon. The book is enriched with a lavish array of illustrations, including documentary photographs, paintings, drawings, prints, and decorative arts.

Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation

History

Braun, Emily

Bilski, Emily D.

Americas

A magnificent array of Hanukkah menorahs and lamps that shed light on the Jewish traditions that produced them The ceremonial kindling of lights each night during the eight-day holiday of Hanukkah commemorates an ancient victory for religious freedom—the liberation and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE. As their diversity and beauty attest, Hanukkah lamps are singularly important as a form of ceremonial art and are among Judaism’s best-loved traditional objects. This superbly illustrated book showcases more than 100 Hanukkah lamps selected from the extensive collection of The Jewish Museum in New York. The featured lamps date from the Renaissance to our own time, and were created from a wide variety of materials in virtually every part of the world, including the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Susan L. Braunstein provides an engaging overview of the Hanukkah lamp and discusses its origins in Jewish tradition, its many innovative forms, its enduring ritual uses, and its social context. She also includes a short informative essay about each of the wonderfully varied lamps pictured in the book.

Luminous Art: Hanukkah Menorahs of The Jewish Museum

Braunstein, Susan L.

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Masterworks of the Jewish Museum

Maurice Berger

Joan Rosenbaum

The observance of Hanukkah as a time of freedom and miracles resonates strongly with Jews today as in centuries past, and the Hanukkah lamp is central to the celebratory ritual. The importance of the Hanukkah lamp is reflected in the collection of The Jewish Museum in New York: its 1,022 lamps represent the largest assemblage of Hanukkah lamps in the world. This publication presents the Museum’s unparalleled collection in its entirety. Remarkably expressive and varied, these lamps are a revelation for anyone interested in Jewish culture, history, and the beauty and diversity of these beloved traditional objects.

Five Centuries of Hanukkah Lamps from The Jewish Museum: A Catalogue Raisonné

Camille Pissarro (18301903) was a ceaseless innovator and organizer whose ideological concerns were as profound as his aesthetic interests. Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country examines how Pissarro's artistic theories and social convictions influenced his Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist work.
 Pissarro espoused an anti-bourgeois, anarchist ideology and was interested in the plight of the working classes. This book’s authors examine recurring motifs in Pissarro’s work as intellectual metaphors as well as his background as a Sephardic Jew who was involved in many of the political and class issues of the period. The text also looks at Pissarro as a painter who identified with laborers and agriculture, exploring connections between his subject matter and the dirty” nature of his painterly technique.
Featuring a wide selection of superb paintings from private collections, many rarely seen, this beautifully illustrated book reveals the genius of an artist keenly focused on his natural surroundings and the lives of common folk.

Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country

Shiff, Richard

Levitov, Karen

Individual Artists

When it first appeared in 1980, Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century was adored by Jewish audiences even as it aroused antagonism from critics. Why did Warhol create this series? How did he select the figures to be portrayed? How has the passage of time reshaped the meaning of these portraits?
This handsomely illustrated book examines the history of these silk-screen paintings and prints, delving into Warhol’s refashioning of portraiture, his deep interest in repetitive art forms, and his embrace of commercialism. Richard Meyer shows how Warhol’s unorthodox approach to portrait painting was a product of both his seriousness as an artist and his avowed interest in making money, and he explains how Warhol selected ten figuresfrom Bernhardt and Buber to Freud and Kafkawho would ensure the timelessness of his series. The volume, which also includes discussions of the celebrated subjects of Ten Portraits, images of related prints, and a timeline, offers new insights into a significant series by an iconic American artist.

Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered

Meyer, Richard

A revealing look at the visionary French furniture designer and architect, highlighting his virtuoso designs and versatile creativity The designer and architect Pierre Chareau (1883–1950) was a pivotal figure in modernism. His extraordinary Art Deco furniture is avidly collected and his visionary glass house, the Maison de Verre, is celebrated, but the breadth of his design genius has been little explored. Chareau linked architecture, fine arts, and style; designed furniture for avant-garde films and chic homes; collected artists such as Picasso and Mondrian; and was a radical innovator in the use of materials. Essays by leading scholars embrace the full scope of his invention, offering detailed analyses of individual projects, the interdisciplinary nature of his work, his Jewish background, his place in the avant-garde of Paris between the wars, and his more recent reception. Extensive illustrations present a rich sampling of Chareau’s furniture, architecture, interiors, fabrics, and wallpapers, as well as his own important art collection.

Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design

da Costa Meyer, Esther

In the early 20th century, Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone first visited the Paris studios of Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and began assembling one of the world's most important art collections. Their passion for Matisse's art, in particular, led them to acquire 500 of his works—one of the most extraordinary Matisse collections in the world. Supported by the Cone family textile business, the sisters made frequent trips to Europe to purchase art, and their close friendship with Gertrude and Leo Stein led to a wide circle of influential acquaintances. They eventually amassed a collection of 3,000 works, which were donated to The Baltimore Museum of Art after Etta Cone's death in 1949.
This publication gathers 47 artworks from the internationally renowned Cone Collection including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Renoir, van Gogh, Courbet, and other masters. Karen Levitov's essay recounts the story of the Cone sisters, their tastes, and their remarkable collection. Levitov also discusses what distinguished their connoisseurship from their contemporaries.

Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore

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