Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Masterworks and Kitsch: Russian Jewish Artists Ill-Served in San Diego

Discerning lovers of Jewish art have until January 17, 2010 to see the exhibit “American Artists from the Russian Empire” which opened in October at the San Diego Museum of Art. They will need to be discerning, because although the exhibit features major works of interest by Ben Shahn, Louise Nevelson and Mark Rothko, greeting–card mediocrity is also displayed.

Ben Shahn Renascence, 1946. Courtesy Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, The University of Oklahoma (Click for larger view)

This peculiarly uneven show is organized by the Foundation for International Arts & Education, a political-business association which backs traveling exhibits of kitschy realist painters and a forthcoming historical show about the father of the current U.S. Ambassador to Russia. The exhibit’s ineptly garbled and often irrelevant catalogue (essays on Hollywood, music, etc.), produced by the State Russian Museum does not mention the word “pogrom” or indicate why artists, Jews and others, were forced to flee Mother Russia. Thus, an innocuous still life and landscape by Abraham Manievich are shown here, instead of his more pointed oil on canvas, “Destruction of the Ghetto, Kiev, 1919,” now in the Jewish Museum, from the storerooms of which many works are lent.

Another usually unseen canvas from the Jewish Museum, “Pig’s Feet and Vinegar, 1927” by Peter Blume, who painted a dreamlike New England scene, is bizarrely misread in the catalog, where pig’s feet are described as “forbidden fruit which is not available to a Jewish girl.”

Moses Soyer’s moving “The Lover of Books,” also from the Jewish Museum storerooms, should have been paired with another portrait of the artist’s father, a Hebrew scholar, from the same source by his brother Raphael. Missed opportunities also include poor choice of works by Mané-Katz, an artist of some power, who donated a museum’s worth of art to the city of Haifa.

Boris Margo’s hellish landscapes influenced by Bosch and Dalí are worth a visit, along with the sure values of Shahn, Nevelson and Rothko. Yet, since Imperialism and antisemitism are booming in Russia today, the very title is a chilling reminder of what can come from a “Russian Empire.”

Watch a harried Frenchman, Ghislain d’Humières, explain the exhibit ‘American Artists from the Russian Empire’ at one of its previous stops, the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.