Chagall And The Artists Of The Russian Jewish Theater

Soviet Jewish theater in a world of moral compromise / Susan Tumarkin Goodman -- The political context of Jewish theater and culture in the Soviet Union / Zvi Gitelman -- Habima and "Biblical theater" / Vladislav Ivanov -- Yiddish constructivism : the art of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater / Jeffrey Veidlinger -- Art and theater / Benjamin Harshav -- Habima and Goset : an illustrated chronicle

Marc Chagall (1887-1985) traversed a long route from a boy in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, to a commissar of art in revolutionary Russia, to the position of a world-famous French artist. This book presents for the first time a comprehensive collection of Chagall's public statements on art and culture. The documents and interviews shed light on his rich, versatile, and enigmatic art from within his own mental world. The book raises the problems of a multi-cultural artist with several intersecting identities and the tensions between modernist form and cultural representation in twentieth-century art. It reveals the travails and achievements of his life as a Jew in the twentieth century and his perennial concerns with Jewish identity and destiny, Yiddish literature, and the state of Israel. This collection includes annotations and introductions of the Chagall texts by the renowned scholar Benjamin Harshav that elucidate the texts and convey the changing cultural contexts of Chagall's life. Also featured is the translation by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav of the first book about Chagall's work, the 1918 Russian The Art of Marc Chagall.

Eighty illustrations, 60 in color, document this most celebrated phase ofhagall's career, during which he was forced by the First World War to remainn Russia, where he remained through the Bolshevik Revolution. The periodncludes his famous murals for the State Yiddish Chamber Theatre in Moscow.ccompanying essays discuss such topics as Chaga

"Published on the occasion of the opening of a groundbreaking exhibition at The Jewish Museum, New York, this volume presents a splendid collection of sixty early paintings, drawings, and murals by Marc Chagall, dating from the artist's years in Russia up to 1910 and again from 1914 to 1922. The latter period, which followed Chagall's departure from Paris, and return to his native Vitebsk, was of particular importance in the development of his major themes and ideas."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

In 1920, Chagall - recently returned to his native Russia - painted a series of murals for the nascent State Jewish Theatre. Hidden during Stalin's rule, these have been restored and are now recognized as among his greatest achievements. This study includes illustrations and critical essays.

A vivid portrait of the Moscow Yiddish Theater and its innovations and contributions to the art of the theater in the modern age The Moscow Yiddish Theater (later called GOSET) was born in 1919 and almost immediately became one of the most remarkable avant-garde theaters in Europe. It flourished in the 1920s but under Bolshevik pressure soon lost much of the originality that had distinguished it. In 1948 Stalin's henchmen slaughtered GOSET's legendary actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, and the theater was liquidated. This book focuses not on how the theater was persecuted but on its ambitious beginnings as a revolutionary organization of passionate artistic exploration. The book brings to English readers for the first time selected writings that reflect the aesthetics and politics of the Yiddish revolutionary theater. The book also incorporates miraculously salvaged images of Marc Chagall's famous theater murals, as well as paintings of costumes and stage sets created by the best artists of the day. These illustrations, discovered only after the fall of the Soviet Union, have never been published before. With emphasis on the theater's early achievements and its centrality in Moscow's burgeoning theater world, the book makes a major contribution to the understanding of modern Jewish culture and the art of theater.

Every so often, the organizers of an art exhibition attempt to address head-on issues of interest in the world of contemporary politics. Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, 1890-1990 represents such an undertaking. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, countries and cultures under Soviet control suddenly opened up to the West. In the past few years, as information has begun to flow more freely, art historians have found themselves having to re-examine their subjects and concerns in the light of newly accessible information. Nowhere is this situation more apparent than in the study of Jewish artists in Russia. Until recently, books and catalogues written in the West have concentrated on work done by Russian Jewish artists in exile. Now, for the first time, an international group of scholars has been assembled to address the last hundred years of art produced by Jews living in Russia itself. Given the present state of research, Russian Jewish Artists in a Century of Change, 1890-1990 - which documents an exhibition organized by The Jewish Museum, New York - purposely proposes more questions than it answers. A lucid historical overview by historian Michael Stanislawski followed by seven thought-provoking essays by an international roster of art historians who address, in chronological sequence, the difficult, frequently uplifting history of Jewish art in Russia in the modern period.