Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art

Name: Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art
Author: Samantha Baskind
ISBN: 9780807871706

by Samantha Baskind

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

Publication date: January 01, 2010

ISBN 9780807871706 | 280 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 9 color plates., 61 halftones, notes, bibl., index

280 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 9 color plates., 61 halftones, notes, bibl., index

Paperback $47.50

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Examining the relationship of art and ethnicity

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.

Samantha Baskind is assistant professor of art history at Cleveland State University.

“Baskind’s text is a welcome and much-needed addition to existent scholarship on Soyer and twentieth-century American art.” — CAA Reviews

“A handsomely produced and clearly written work.” — American Historical Review

“A highly commendable book that should be appreciated by anyone interested in American Jews, or the problems of expressing Jewish . . . identity in art.” — Studies in Contemporary Jewry

“Well-researched.” — Foreword Reviews

“It should help revive an interest in this far-from-minor artist.” — CHOICE

“This is a gracefully written, well-researched, and pathbreaking study of Raphael Soyer as both an artist and as a Jewish American artist. It will set a standard for similar studies in the future.” — Matthew Baigell, Professor of Art History Emeritus, Rutgers University, author of Artist and Identity in Twentieth-Century America

“Baskind’s study of Raphael Soyer is searching and sympathetic. Never taking the artist at his word, Baskind looks both at his paintings as well as at the diverse contexts in which he worked. She shows us an artist who is at once urban, humanistic, and figurative, but also Jewish in character and intent. A magnificent achievement.” — Wanda M. Corn, Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor in Art History, Stanford University, author of The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915–35

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