Legacies of Silence: The Visual Arts and Holocaust Memory - Tapa dura

Sinopsis

This book and the accompanying exhibition examine the contribution of artist-witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust to post-war culture, music, literature, theatre and the arts. A selection of the graphic works produced in internment, in ghettos, transit and concentration camps between 1939 and 1945 makes up the exhibition's core. The majority of these come from collections in Israel and Eastern Europe. These works are considered alongside artistic precursors and contemporary sources, principally from major collections in the European Community. The book and exhibition seek to re-establish the legitimacy of these works within the narratives of 20th-century art history and the expanding field of Holocaust studies. The post-war achievement of a number of artist-survivors is discussed. Surprisingly, for art produced in the absence of all contacts with the outside world, the art of intermment reveals an unusual awareness of visual and iconographic sources and provides a point of entry to a discussion of representational strategies and artistic intention. The discussion leads into a comparison of the drawings with personal testimonies and works of literature, combining original archival research with extensive use of secondary sources. Images of Conflict; The opening section considers the visual sources. Artist-witnesses, trained in Europe's academies and versed in earlier graphic traditions, drew from the widely disseminated works by Rembrandt, Goya, Kollwitz and Dix. Succinct comparison of German Expressionist and contemporary sources (Meidner, Beckmann, Grosz, Heartfiled, et al) and the art of National Socialism expose Nazi ideology and the adversarial role of dissident artists and intellectuals. Ghettos and Camps 1939-45; This section concentrates exclusively on the work of professional artists interned in ghettos, deportation and extermination camps from 1939 to 1945. The works reiterate some of the recurrent concerns of artists such as the destruction of families and communities, the loss and preservation of personal identity, life and death in the ghetto, deportation, victims and aggressors, the death camps, liberation, etc. Artists and Survivors; The final section considers the contribution of the generation of survivors, with particular reference to the work of Isaac Celniker, Zoran Music, Osias Hofstatter and the workbooks of Yehuda Bacon. Their conviction in the unique expressive possibilities of graphic media to translate their experience of suffering, unites these artists. The survivors emerged from their ordeals to face the incomprehension and indifference of the outside world; the exhibition explores issues of identity and difference as defined by the artists' experience in the immediate postwar years. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London, from 5 April to 27 August 2001.

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