In recognition of the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum has refurbished its 20th-century art galleries with the creative output of Jewish artists. The exhibition, "Celebrating the Jewish Contribution to 20th-Century American Art," includes works harvested primarily from the museum's permanent collection brought together to give visitors an opportunity to revel in RISD's more venerable and prized artifacts.
Concentrating mainly on the period just after 1945, the collection is organized around the rise of Abstract Expressionism, a seminal movement in the history of modern art. Including Jewish luminaries such as the Latvian-born artist Mark Rothko, who relocated to New York during a time of political upheaval in Europe, the exhibit, which finishes its run on April 17, highlights the creative talents of new immigrants at a moment of artistic transition.
Nathaniel Stein GS, an intern in the Museum's department of painting and sculpture, served as guest curator for the display. Though several of his presentational sensibilities err on the side of being overly austere, with too many questions left unanswered by his minimalist object labels, Stein has prepared a sensible overview of the era's benchmark visual souvenirs.
Linking the collection's staggering breadth of paintings, sculptures and photographs, the exhibit bears testament to the outstanding contributions of America's Jewish artists. As Stein's introductory text points out, however, because many of the featured artists were struggling to establish themselves both as Americans and as creditable newcomers to the art scene, the majority of them shirked acknowledgement of their Jewish heritage as a formative influence.
As a result, although the Museum has focused its advertising for the exhibition around a unifying theme of heritage and ethnicity, the pieces are ultimately diverse and devoid of any obvious Judaic influences.
But this takes nothing away from the quality of the art therein. American artist Roy Lichtenstein's cartoonish "Pyramid II"- created when Lichtenstein was a sensation and before he became the reigning king of refrigerator magnet kitsch - demonstrates the skill of an innovator at the height of his power. The composition, a mammoth display of pop art reconceived in oils, is captivating in its form, bringing the ancient immensity of the Giza Pyramids into a contemporary age.
Perhaps the exhibition's main draw is a floor-to-ceiling canvas by Rothko, painted in 1954 and called, simply, "Untitled." The piece is exemplary of the Abstract Expressionist style and characteristic of Rothko's peerless intensity. A recent RISD purchase, the piece includes only three dominant colors - white, yellow, and orange - arranged in solid squares. It is breathtaking in effect.
There are also smaller treasures to be found in RISD's anthology. A trip around the gallery's myriad Aaron Siskind, Helen Frankenthaler and Jackson Pollock stunners reveals a glimpse of Nancy Spero's plaintive 1966 elegy, "Les Anges - La Bombe," in which the atomic bomb is remembered as a blood-red eruption of screaming heads. The feeling of loss is palpable, and within the dimensions of a small, almost unnoticeable gouache on paper sketch, Spero conjures emotions powerful enough to fill a wall-length mural.
But the real surprise of the exhibit lies in an adjacent room featuring the crop of 20th-century Jewish photographers. Stein expertly chose the selection of silver-gelatin prints to demonstrate the rich legacies of photographers Diane Arbus, Lisette Model and Garry Winogrand.
Model's "Running Feet, Fifth Avenue" elegantly invokes the chaos of 1940s New York, with its focus on the patent leather shoes of businessmen and women as they rush to meet a deadline.
In her comic portrait, "A Family One Evening in a Nudist Camp, Pennsylvania," Arbus sets up a latter-day rendition of Edouard Manet's "Petit Déjeuner sur l'Herbe"- two women and one man in a field, all shooting bovine grins at the camera.
For those interested in the more historical aspects of RISD's collection, a survey of Morris Engel's "Coney Island," Jules Aarons' "North End, Boston" or Arthur Fellig's "Untitled" should be considered. Hung together, both Aarons' and Fellig's pieces present a particular brand of 1950s-era urbanity in the Northeast, focusing on teenagers who look like actors at a casting call for "West Side Story."
Although one would expect a little more background explanation from the novice curator - the Museum lacks even a small pamphlet on the exhibition, and the object labels are conservative to the point of seeming oblique - Stein has done a vibrant job of amassing pieces that reveal the Jewish contribution to American art. With so many fine artists placed in such close proximity, one almost wishes this serendipity were more permanent.
