Laura Hodes writes about the arts frequently for the Forward and other publications.
Laura Hodes
By Laura Hodes
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Culture Contemplating the Meaning of Jewish Art at JTS
It used to be thought that the Second Commandment’s prohibition on making images meant there could not be a Jewish visual art. In his 1966 essay “Is There a Jewish Art?” art critic Harold Rosenberg grappled with the very question posed by his title. He didn’t think there was, because he didn’t think there was…
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Culture Israel Museum Exhibit Focuses on the Act of Creation
At first glance, the work of contemporary Israeli painters Israel Hershberg and Joshua Borkovsky may seem quite different. But actually, the two artists — both of whom are the subjects of exhibitions at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum — complement each other remarkably well, for both exhibits concern the act of painting itself. “Fields of Vision: Landscapes…
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News Goldberg Versus the Wrecking Ball
Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital building, built in Chicago in 1975, stands at 333 E. Superior St. off Michigan Avenue. Its concrete curves refuse to conform to the shape of the immense, boxlike buildings that surround it. One can only see its egglike form — suggesting the petals of a flower, something organic and alive…
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Culture How Jewish Artists Helped Reinvent Chicago
In Chicago, The Spertus Museum has just opened “Jewish Modernists in Chicago,” the seventh chapter in its eight-part series, “Uncovered & Rediscovered: Stories of Jewish Chicago.” This new exhibit focuses on the artistic influence of a group of Jewish artists active in Chicago in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. The entire series is part of…
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Culture Shimon Attie Projects Past Into Present
Artist Shimon Attie is probably best known for “Sites Unseen,” his 1990s series of temporary installations in Europe, in which he projected photographic images of a lost Jewish past onto actual sites. For “Writing on the Wall,” (1991–1993), Attie, living in Berlin at the time, was haunted by the lack of any past signs of…
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Culture The Folly of Yearning for Broadway
Broadway Baby By Alan Shapiro Algonquin Books, 272 Pages, $13.95 In his debut novel, “Broadway Baby,” Alan Shapiro, the author of nine volumes of poetry, gives the much-maligned 1950s-era Jewish Mother a chance to tell her story. It seems in the 50 years since the appearance of Philip Roth’s comic and overbearing archetype, the male…
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The Schmooze Friday Film: The Unseen Shoah
Film still courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem On December 6 I attended a screening of “Shoah, the Unseen Interviews,” sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 epic is more than nine hours long and features interviews with 70 individuals from 220 hours of footage (no…
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Culture Lilka from Telekhany, Lilith From L.A.
“The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” is a promising yet confounding new drama from Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Lookingglass Theatre Company that touches on the Holocaust, on the loneliness of old age and, explicitly, on the magic of the theater. Inspired by the Jewish short stories in the work of the late radio broadcaster Johanna Cooper,…
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