Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art - Hardcover

Baskind, Samantha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807828483 ISBN 13: 9780807828489

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Author

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

From the Inside Flap

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

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

Edition details

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807828483
• ISBN 13: 9780807828489
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280