October 10, 2008

Brandeis Hosts Exhibition of “Post-Jewish” Art

June 26, 2008 

by Daniel E. Levenson

 

Jewish artists have always found different ways to express not only Jewish ideas, but their own personal relationship to those ideas. In songs, poems, paintings and other art forms, each generation must wrestle anew with the rich and complex cultural and theological traditions of Judaism, and the one which was born in the 1960’s and 1970’s is no exception. This is clearly evident in “The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation,” an exhibit currently at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. The exhibit is on loan from the Spertus Museum in Chicago, where it was created by Senior Curator Staci Boris.

 

The pieces included in the exhibition run from the intriguing to the baffling, and encompass a wide range of ideas and materials. The first piece visitors will encounter is a large painting by Ludwig Schwartz which has an almost-pop sensibility about it, depicting on one side an over-sized puppy with pupil-less eyes looking out from behind thick black-rimmed glasses, while on the other side of the canvas a pink Jewish star seems superimposed (or perhaps spray painted) over an image of rough wooden planks that forms a background for both images. Another piece visitors will encounter on the first floor of the museum is “Ohne Lebensraum” by Johanna Bresnick, which incorporates a very life-like mannequin and a carpet which is a family heirloom of the artist’s, with a layer of dark, angular pieces of coal beneath it.

 

One of the most engaging pieces in the exhibit is a video installation done by Joel Tauber, a former yeshiva student and well-known west-coast artist, who chronicled his efforts to find a new way to connect with the divine through direct experiences in nature. Visitors can see this experience in seven short video segments which play in sequential order on a television.

 

Entitled “Seven Attempts to Make a Ritual,”  there is an interesting progression depicted in the clips, all of which were made in 2000 and 2001 as Mr. Tauber attempted to design and then perform a series of rituals that revolved around placing himself inside various kinds of holes in the earth. He progresses from holes that he digs himself with a shovel in various environments ranging from the desert to a coastal forest, to one created by machinery (an old mine shaft) to the final experience in which he places himself in a cave created by erosion on a hillside in Death Valley, California. Throughout it all, the seriousness with which Mr. Tauber approaches this project is obvious.

 

What is really interesting about this endeavor is that the artist is at once clearly trying to break free of the restraints of institutionalized religion, while at the same time he is carefully constructing his own guidelines and constraints that form the underlying structure of these new rituals he is creating.

Most of the ritual rules that he sets for himself focus on how the hole will be made (whether by himself with a shovel, by machinery, or by natural processes) as well as how long he will remain in the hole, what equipment or clothing he will allow himself to bring along and whether or not he will cover himself with dirt. The combination of stark, lonesome scenery and the sounds the viewer hears, ranging from the bite of Mr. Tauber’s shovel into rocky soil to his heartfelt and sometimes unintentionally humorous and rambling introspective monologue delivered as he sits in the mine shaft alone, make for a powerful and engaging presentation.

 

It is clear that the documentation aspect of this project is an important part of not only the final product, but of the process of creating it as well. There is a feeling one has while watching these video clips that Mr. Tauber intends to draw the viewer in and effectively make him or her part of the rituals he is creating. The artist’s focus appears to be on the idea of a solitary connection to the divine, he is, after all, going out in the desert or the woods alone (although on one or two occasions he has some help with filming, and he also notes that he had to have some help to get out of one of the holes) yet it could be argued that the viewers of this piece are also partaking in a ritual created by witnessing Mr. Tauber’s actions. Witnessing the rituals, in effect, becomes a ritual itself.

 

This piece has elements which may strike the viewer as obviously Jewish, while there are other aspects of it which would seem to run counter to Jewish thought. While he is going beyond the borders of what most people would recognize as the practices of organized religion, there are times when the images on the screen are highly evocative of the original forms of Jewish worship described in the Torah before the experience of Revelation. The images are reminiscent of the actions that the patriarchs took when they wanted to speak with God and sought to do so by going out into the natural world, leaving behind other people and the trappings of society. There was nothing between themselves and nature - no priests or temple, not even synagogue walls. In this sense, there is something very primal about Mr. Tauber’s exercise and something genuinely Jewish about it as well.

 

There are also, of course, some aspects of this piece which do not fit within Jewish tradition. From a theological perspective, there is something slightly disturbing about watching someone try to create a new spiritual ritual which in some aspects seems to mirror a process of death and burial.

 

Mr. Tabuer is clearly deeply engaged with the process documented in the videos and in his monologue in the mine shaft he talks about his experiences, as a child, with organized Judaism  and how he came to view those ritual experiences, which he experienced so deeply at the time, as somehow false or fraudulent. He goes on to say that part of the goal in starting this project of creating new rituals is to find a new way of to experience the same religious experiences he had as a child (or thought he had), but in a more authentic way. It is ironic, perhaps, that in his attempt to escape the bounds of organized Judaism he has in fact uncovered some of its earliest roots.

 

“The New Authentics: Artists of the Post-Jewish Generation” will be on display at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University until July 27, 2008.  

Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2008