Tag Archives: jewish museum

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Deborah Kass, OY / YO

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OY YO
Photos By Gail

Since the 1980s, Deborah Kass has riffed on modern artworks by famous white men to reflect her experience as a Jewish lesbian. Here, Kass remakes Robert Indiana’s LOVE (itself a coded homage to queer male desire) with the twinned words Oy (a Yiddish exclamation of alarm or bother) and Yo.

OY YO

The artist considers herself to be a “total, absolute, 100 percent provincial New Yorker.” This work uses the city’s culturally specific, yet universal lingo to communicate the collective pride and exasperation of living here. Originally conceived as a monumental sculpture, it was installed for limited time in Brooklyn Bridge Park. OY/YO (2017) became an instant New York icon and photo op for tourists and residents of al backgrounds, for whom the pluralist spirit of the double-sided interjection resonated deeply

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in Manhattan. Note that This Work is Currently On View In Front of The Brooklyn Museum (as of 10/1/18).

Deborah Kass OY YO

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Hannah Wilke, Venus Pareve

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Hannah Wilke Venus Pareve 
All Photos By Gail

Hannah Wilke (1940 – 1993) was a leading artist of the feminist art movement that began in the 1970s. Her primary subject was her own body, explored in sculptures, drawings, photographs, and performance as part of a larger investigation of femininity and sexuality.  Venus Pareve (1982 – 84) comprises twenty-five sculptural self-portraits, hand-modeled and then cast in plaster of Paris or edible kosher chocolate.
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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Chaim Soutine, Still Life with Rayfish

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Still Life with Ray Fish
Photos By Gail

In Still Life with Ray Fish (1924), Chaim Soutine animates the components of this still life with a dynamic composition and energetic brush strokes. The rayfish (a fish similar to skate and fit for human consumption) presides over a table with its mouth agape, as though caught in a cry. The exposed flesh and spilled tomatoes imply and unsettling violence.
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Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Skull Cap By Sol LeWitt

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Skull Cap By Sol Lewitt
Photos By Gail

A pioneer of Minimal and Conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007) is known for large-scale, geometric wall drawings, often using bold stripes of pure color to create rhythmic optical patterns. In 2001, he conceived the doors of a Torah ark for Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek in Chester, Connecticut, with the design of a six-pointed star within a circle.  The pattern was later repeated on this leather Skull Cap. The translation of LeWitt’s signature Minimalist style into a multicolored item of Judaica is at once cheerful and graphically striking.

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in NYC.

Skull Cap By Sol Lewitt

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Eva Hesse, Untitled Abstract Painting

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Untitled Abstract Painting
Photo By Gail

This Untitled Abstract Painting (circa 1963 or 64) is one of the last paintings made by Eva Hesse before she switched to sculpture. Its deconstructed symbols, figures, and shapes evoke natural forms and bodies without ever being directly identifiable. Delicate brushwork, soft colors and a light, witty touch lend this work a feminine quality that she intended as a rebuke to the masculinity of Minimalist Art. Hess was reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex at this time, and the text led her to question her own fragmented status as artist, woman and wife. Her work, though not overtly political, explores these issues in poetic, expressive abstractions.

Photographed in the Jewish Museum in NYC.