Cross Pollination
How the figure of Jesus came to be employed in modern Jewish art
He thought it would be Good for the Jews. That’s what led Max Liebermann, assimilated German Jew and well-respected realist painter, to plot out a radical new take on a well-known passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke.
The scene, in which Joseph and Mary lose track of Jesus, only to find their precocious preadolescent debating with the elders in the Temple, had been depicted over the course of Western art history by everyone from Giotto to Fra Angelico to Rembrandt. Some, like the Italian Lodovico Mazzolino, signaled the Jewish setting through the interiors, showing a relief of Moses and Hebrew writing. Others, like Dürer, indulged in anti-Semitic caricature, treating each elder’s nose as a tour de force of grotesque.
Max Liebermann (1847–1935), Der zwölfjährige Jesus im Tempel, 1879
Copyright Hamburger Kunsthalle / bpk; photo: Elke Walford.
Liebermann, though, went for naturalism. He based the architecture in his 1879 painting The 12-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple on sketches he had made in synagogues in Amsterdam and Venice. He clothed the elders—a mix of Orthodox and assimilated German Jews—in contemporary Jewish garb. And the youthful Jesus was also, clearly, a Jewish boy—and a ragged urchin with bare feet, to boot.
At a time when the idea of the Jewish Jesus was just taking hold in intellectual circles, Liebermann’s image of the savior as a ragamuffin came as a shock. When the painting debuted in Munich’s Second Annual International Art Exhibition of 1879, the Catholic clergy complained. The prince regent himself demanded it be moved to a less prominent location. Months later, the charges of blasphemy, tinged with anti-Semitism, were still going strong, surfacing in a debate in Parliament.
Liebermann responded by repainting Jesus in an Italianate style suitable for German tastes, with Gentile features, golden tresses, and immaculate historical robes. That is the image we see today in the painting, which was eventually acquired by the Hamburger Kunsthalle—twice. The museum explains why in “The Jesus Scandal,” an inventive exhibition marking the 75th anniversary of the artist’s death that recounts the genesis, reception, repainting, and subsequent peregrinations of Liebermann’s artwork. It includes preparatory sketches, works on the theme by such other artists as Rembrandt and Menzel, and documentation of the scandal at the Munich exhibition.
The exhibition’s final section shows what happened next. A few years after the scandal, Liebermann traded the work to artist Fritz von Uhde. It was exhibited several times, changed hands, and was acquired by the Kunsthalle in 1911. There it resided until 1941, when, because it did not conform to National Socialist criteria, the museum traded it to a dealer for more politically correct art. Years later, museum staff tracked the picture down. And in 1989, they finally reacquired it.
That picture, along with paintings by the Galician-born artist Maurycy Gottlieb (see first slide below) and a sculpture by Russia’s Mark Antokolsky, are the earliest works in an audacious, fascinating subgenre: the Jewish Jesus. In the late 19th century, as Ziva Amishai-Maisels has amply documented, these depictions were intended as propaganda for the Jewish community, an effort to help combat anti-Semitism through art. By reminding Christians that Jesus was an upstanding, influential, and Jewish teacher, these artists hoped they could remind audiences that those who oppressed Jews were attacking their savior’s own kind.
During the Holocaust, Jesus again began to appear in Jewish art—not so often as a preacher this time, but on the cross, as a stand-in for all the victims. Marc Chagall, most famously and controversially, made a long series of tragic, visceral Jewish crucifixion scenes, including some that are still being discovered. Other Jewish artists, including Mané Katz, Louise Nevelson, Adoph Gottlieb, and the German-born Mexican immigrant Mathias Goeritz, also linked the crucifixion to what was happening in the camps. In the work of contemporary artists Helène Aylon and Adi Nes, Jewish Jesus is more ambiguous. No longer merely an innocent victim, he is pressed into a more critical reading of the Bible and Jewish history.
Last week, London’s Ben Uri Gallery took the Jewish appropriation of the crucifixion into new territory when it opened the show “Cross Purposes.” Subtitled “Shock and Contemplation in Images of the Crucifixion,” it is made up of 21 images by artists ranging from Eric Gill and Duncan Grant to Lee Miller and Tracey Emin. It also includes work by three Jews: Chagall, Michael Rothstein, and Emmanuel Levy.
Not everyone liked the idea of a Jewish museum doing a show on an image that’s caused so much violence toward Jews. “Cross Purposes” was received by some, Jews and well as Christians, with “various degrees of concern from puzzlement to outrage,” says David J. Glasser, the museum’s executive co-chair, who on opening night found himself on the street with Sir Norman Rosenthal, a well-known British curator, explaining the exhibition’s thesis to a perturbed crowd. “The concern and anger seem principally to be based on the presumption that we as a proud Jewish Museum of Art should not under any circumstances address the crucifixion in any manner at all.”
The intent, Glasser says, was to trace the evolution of crucifixion iconography from a sacred image to a “universal generic motif” used by artists of all faiths to express opinions on not only religious but also social and political issues. For Gilbert Spencer, for example, it was the labor movement; for Duncan Grant, gay rights. So, rather than Judaizing the crucifixion, the show is in a sense attempting to de-Christianize it.
The underlying impulse, though, seems to relate to Liebermann’s: that reclaiming the crucifixion could somehow be good for the Jews.
Robin Cembalest is executive editor of ARTnews.
Jesus in Jewish Art
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Maurycy Gottlieb, Jesus Before His Judges, ca. 1877. Gottlieb was one of the first Western figures to profess what today we’d call a hybrid identity—as both a Polish and a Jewish artist. He painted images of Jews from literature (Shylock), history (Portuguese converso Uriel d’Acosta), the Bible (himself as Ahasuerus), and daily life (Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur) before plunging into the charged subject matter of the life of Christ. In Jesus Before His Judges, illustrating the scene from Matthew, viewers can clearly see that the noble, gentle figure of Jesus is Jewish by his clothing and side curls. And they can also clearly see the Romans in the background at the right, a pointed reminder of who was responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. “How deeply I wish to eradicate all the prejudices against my people,” wrote Gottlieb, who went on to paint another scene in the life of Jesus, Christ Preaching at Capernaum, in 1878. His work, he dreamed, could help “uproot the hatred enveloping the oppressed and tormented nation and to bring peace between the Poles and the Jews, for the history of both people is a chronicle of grief and anguish.”
Collection of the Israel Museum.
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Reuven Rubin, Self Portrait. Jesus appears in several guises in work of this Romanian-born, Bezalel-trained artist, who emigrated to Palestine in 1923. In this 1921 self-portrait he riffs, à la Oskar Kokoschka and Paul Gauguin, on the suffering-martyr model, painting himself as Jesus showing his stigmata. In his painting Temptation in the Desert from the same year, as Israel Museum curator Amitai Mendelsohn noted in the catalog for the artist’s 2004 show, the artist’s statements indicate that he identified with the central figure of Jesus. In The Encounter (Jesus and the Jew), as Mendelsohn points out, the hands are similar to those in Rubin’s self-portrait—only this time, the wounded figure symbolizes survival in the new land, while the fading Diaspora Jew at his side indicates the decline of Jewish life in Europe. Rubin transformed Jesus into a Sabra.
Collection of the Israel Museum.
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Marc Chagall, Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio, 1945. Chagall, the prototypical shtetl-Jew-turned-modernist-master, was conflicted about putting his art in Christian settings—and vice versa. As Jonathan Wilson notes in his biography of the artist, at various times Chagall sought advice on such questions from France’s chief rabbi, Israeli president Chaim Weizmann, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Yet Chagall painted Jesus throughout his career, beginning as early as his famous Calvary (1912), in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. During the Holocaust, he was the most prominent Jewish artist to adapt Crucifixion iconography into a symbol of Jewish martyrdom, at times Judaizing Christ by replacing the crown of thorns with a headcloth and the loincloth with a fringed prayer garment. His White Crucifixion (1938), most famously, sets Christ on the cross amid scenes of mayhem and death as the patriarchs cover their eyes in horror. The bizarre Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio (1945), a previously unknown gouache recently acquired by London’s Ben Uri gallery and now the centerpiece of its exhibition Cross Purposes, almost approaches slapstick. It shows Christ, naked except for his tallit and phylacteries, glaring at a serpent-tailed figure, with the dress of a storm trooper and the gait of Groucho Marx, who approaches the ladder beneath the cross. The abject figures in the background are thought to have been inspired by photographs of Jewish victims in the camps. Chagall continued to paint Crucifixions for decades after the war, often juxtaposing Jewish and Christian imagery. In the Sacrifice of Isaac (ca. 1960–65), for example, the drama of Abraham and his son plays out in the foreground while Christ dangles in the distance.
Collection of London Jewish Museum of Art.
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Helène Aylon, The Last Supper Names / No Names, 2004. Helène Aylon is a Brooklyn-raised feminist, conceptual, performance, and installation artist perhaps best known for her biblical critique The Liberation of G-d. Invited to create a piece at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, she silk-screened the school’s conventional wood relief of the Last Supper onto large canvases—one titled Names, one titled No Names. On Names she inscribed the Hebrew names of the disciples, researched in collaboration with the minister. On No Names she inserted pink asterisks to denote the places of missing women. The school has shown the piece during Holy Week, inviting the artist to stage performances for the occasion. In one, she wrote a “Haggadah for Christians,” using it to spark a discussion about how the content of the service might have influenced the philosophy of Jesus.
Collection San Francisco Theological Seminary at San Anselmo.
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Helène Aylon, No Names, 2004. Helène Aylon is a Brooklyn-raised feminist, conceptual, performance, and installation artist perhaps best known for her biblical critique The Liberation of G-d. Invited to create a piece at the San Francisco Theological Seminary, she silk-screened the school’s conventional wood relief of the Last Supper onto large canvases—one titled Names, one titled No Names. On Names she inscribed the Hebrew names of the disciples, researched in collaboration with the minister. On No Names she inserted pink asterisks to denote the places of missing women. The school has shown the piece during Holy Week, inviting the artist to stage performances for the occasion. In one, she wrote a “Haggadah for Christians,” using it to spark a discussion about how the content of the service might have influenced the philosophy of Jesus.
Collection San Francisco Theological Seminary at San Anselmo.
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Adi Nes, Untitled, 1995. Israeli artist Adi Nes has staged photographs re-enacting Jewish and Christian biblical scenes in contemporary settings as a way to stress the “commonalities” of pain and suffering among religions and cultures. Among these are a number of post-Crucifixion scenes—and most famously, perhaps, his 1999 image of the Last Supper, in which Israeli soldiers stand in for Jesus and the apostles. His recent show at the Gliptoteka in Zagreb, Croatia, included this image of a long-haired young man he had originally cast as Absalom. But he left the picture out of his “Biblical Stories” series because he felt it looked more like Jesus. He called this show “Depositions,” he explained, because “I deflate the Jewish patriarchs and Christ from their holy heights to a more grounded reality which they experienced as flesh and blood human beings who sacrificed themselves for us. People know of the Deposition of Christ, and in my photograph, I further de-position Christ. That is, I re-position him or look at him from a new, different way and position than he has been looked at in the past.”
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
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Adi Nes, Untitled, 2000. Israeli artist Adi Nes has staged photographs re-enacting Jewish and Christian biblical scenes in contemporary settings as a way to stress the “commonalities” of pain and suffering among religions and cultures. Among these are a number of post-Crucifixion scenes—and most famously, perhaps, his 1999 image of the Last Supper, in which Israeli soldiers stand in for Jesus and the apostles. His recent show at the Gliptoteka in Zagreb, Croatia, included this image of a long-haired young man he had originally cast as Absalom. But he left the picture out of his “Biblical Stories” series because he felt it looked more like Jesus. He called this show “Depositions,” he explained, because “I deflate the Jewish patriarchs and Christ from their holy heights to a more grounded reality which they experienced as flesh and blood human beings who sacrificed themselves for us. People know of the Deposition of Christ, and in my photograph, I further de-position Christ. That is, I re-position him or look at him from a new, different way and position than he has been looked at in the past.”
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
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Adi Nes, The Last Supper, 1999. Israeli artist Adi Nes has staged photographs re-enacting Jewish and Christian biblical scenes in contemporary settings as a way to stress the “commonalities” of pain and suffering among religions and cultures. Among these are a number of post-Crucifixion scenes—and most famously, perhaps, his 1999 image of the Last Supper, in which Israeli soldiers stand in for Jesus and the apostles. His recent show at the Gliptoteka in Zagreb, Croatia, included this image of a long-haired young man he had originally cast as Absalom. But he left the picture out of his “Biblical Stories” series because he felt it looked more like Jesus. He called this show “Depositions,” he explained, because “I deflate the Jewish patriarchs and Christ from their holy heights to a more grounded reality which they experienced as flesh and blood human beings who sacrificed themselves for us. People know of the Deposition of Christ, and in my photograph, I further de-position Christ. That is, I re-position him or look at him from a new, different way and position than he has been looked at in the past.”
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
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Adi Nes, Untitled (Christ), 2009, C-print. Israeli artist Adi Nes has staged photographs re-enacting Jewish and Christian biblical scenes in contemporary settings as a way to stress the “commonalities” of pain and suffering among religions and cultures. Among these are a number of post-Crucifixion scenes—and most famously, perhaps, his 1999 image of the Last Supper, in which Israeli soldiers stand in for Jesus and the apostles. His recent show at the Gliptoteka in Zagreb, Croatia, included this image of a long-haired young man he had originally cast as Absalom. But he left the picture out of his “Biblical Stories” series because he felt it looked more like Jesus. He called this show “Depositions,” he explained, because “I deflate the Jewish patriarchs and Christ from their holy heights to a more grounded reality which they experienced as flesh and blood human beings who sacrificed themselves for us. People know of the Deposition of Christ, and in my photograph, I further de-position Christ. That is, I re-position him or look at him from a new, different way and position than he has been looked at in the past.”
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
great piece on a fascinating subject!
I was at the Private View of the Cross Purposes exhibition and I wouldn’t describe as “perturbed” the crowd listening to Sir Norman Rosenthal. He gave a fascinating speech for over ten minutes entirely off the cuff, and although it was very long the crowd listened in rapt attention throughout. I found myself wishing I had brought a little dictaphone to record it for posterity. We were on the street on a beautiful evening because there were far too many people to squeeze into the gallery. I didn’t personally hear a word of criticism about the exhibition from anyone attending, and I expect that all the complainers are people who have not and probably would not actually come and see it.
My main point in labeling Jesus and the disciples with their Hebrew names was the startling sight of Hebrew letters on a Christian symbol. And why not? As I write in the plaque, Jesus would have died in the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades or the Holocaust had he been born in those times, in those geographies, because Jesus was a Jew.
(Go to the 3rd and 4th slide of the slide show.)
My reason for inserting asterisks between the disciples in the second Last Supper piece, is to indicate that The Last Supper was the traditional Seder- but without the presence of female relatives.
Let us not forget the telephone company which gave us the subliminal gift of the tllephone pole many years ago.
Notice how Maurycy Gottlieb has tried once again to put distance between the Khazars [Pharisees] who claimed to be Jews, but who were in reality Babylonian Priests and their damnable Mishna and Talmud, which Jesus condemned as the basis of their teaching as the Commandments of G-D the traditions of men.
You folks forget that the Prophet Yeremiah recorded – 1:5 – that G-D had told him that he was “foreordained to be a prophet to the nations”, which if true, means that the historic Jewish claim of being the chosen people of G-d cannot be true. For if Yeremiah was indeed a prophet to the nations, then the chosen people would eventually involve the Goys, which is what the gospel is all about, in the first place..?