18k Gold Crosses
In an age when faith and fashion are more frequently and openly combined, an 18k gold cross is worn not just to signify a person’s faith but also as a beautiful piece of modern but traditional jewelry. This fusion of Biblical symbol and contemporary aesthetics is worth delving into to see how personal beliefs are expressed in today’s fashion and digital culture.
Continue reading How 18k Gold Crosses Are Redefining Modern Beliefs
All Photos By Gail
Babel (2000), a tower of radios playing at once, addresses ideas of information overload and failed communication. Artist Cildo Meireles refers to Babel as “a tower of comprehension.” Comprising hundreds of radios, each tuned to a different station, the sculpture relates to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, a tower tall enough to reach the heavens.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Cildo Meireles, Tower of Babel
Photo By Gail Worley
Salome is an archetype of the femme fatale, the embodiment of a deadly femininity. The Biblical seductress who was responsible for the beheading of Saint John the Baptist was a frequent motif in the repertoires of male artists during the end of the 19th century. For New Salome (1893), Max Klinger reimagines her as a modern vixen in living color, with not one but two grotesquely severed male heads as her side.
Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: New Salome By Max Klinger
Photo By Gail
Robert Indiana (1928 – 2018) was closely associated with the hard-edged painting and Pop Art movements. Using the formal vocabulary of advertisements, his work often explores the power of words and numbers. In Purim: The Four Facets of Esther II (1967), he represents Stars of David and elements of the Biblical story of Esther, who was Queen of Persia in the fifth century BCE. Esther saved her fellow Jews from destruction, the feat to which Indiana refers in the fourth panel.
The Jewish Museum (where this photo was taken) commissioned this print in an edition of ninety for its annual Purim fundraising ball in 1967.
Did you know that here on earth there are three gates to hell: one in the desert, one in the ocean, and one in Jerusalem? I had no idea, and I’m betting that Israel’s tourism board wants to keep that nugget of information on the down low; because it would surely be bad for business if word got out.