Joan Goodman Memorial Lecture
Norwich Synagogue, 3 Earlham Road, Norwich NR2 3RA
Wednesday 17th February, 2016
Dr. Aaron Rosen presents a talk for young people at 5:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Look at Chagall
I and the Village
Lecture at 7:15 p.m.
including Q & A + refreshments
From Chagall to Comics: 20th and 21st Century Jewish Art
A stunning number of the greatest modern artists have been Jews. In the early twentieth century, in a
shabby area of Paris, a group of upstart artists set up studios a stone’s throw from one another: Marc
Chagall, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, and Jacques Lipchitz. In Britain, too, Jews played an
important role in the avant-garde, from Simeon Solomon in the 19th century to David Bomberg and
Lucian Freud in the 20th century. D.H. Lawrence recognized the special role which Jews have played in
English art history when he wrote of Mark Gertler’s Merry-go-round (1916), “It is the best modern
picture I have seen…it would take a Jew to paint this picture!” Perhaps nowhere has Jewish art been
identified with contemporary art more strongly than in New York, where Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman,
Adolph Gottlieb, and Philip Guston became the pre-eminent Abstract Expressionists. Today, this trend
continues. We can look to the graphic novels Art Spiegelman, the elaborate photographs of Adi Nes, and
the video art of Sigalit Landau. Taking this wide-ranging material into account, I will ask how, if at all, we
can define the slippery category of ‘Jewish art.
Dr. Aaron Rosen is the Lecturer in Sacred Traditions & the Arts at King’s College London. He taught previously at
Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, after receiving his PhD from Cambridge. He has lectured at universities and museums
across the world, and served as a Visiting Professor at University College Utrecht. He has written widely
for scholarly and popular publications.
Dr. Rosen is the author of Imagining Jewish Art (Legenda, 2009) and Art and Religion in the 21st Century (Thames
& Hudson, 2015), named one of the best books of 2015 by The Times. Dr. Rosen also curates exhibitions, including
a series of exhibitions at the Jewish Museum in London (2015) and is writing his first children's book.
Dr. Rosen would be happy to sign books for anyone who brings a copy. Books can be ordered from Jarrold's,
Waterstone's, Amazon and other booksellers.