First I notice each model’s eyebrows. They are fluffy and coiffed into perfect, thick, modern arches as if ripped from this month’s glossy fashion magazines. And then below, eyes with wide-open pupils stare intensely at nothing, as if I don’t exist. I feel my reality challenged. And even more so since the eyes themselves are…
The first things I noticed when standing in front of Nicole Eisenman’s “Seder,” a painting commissioned by the Jewish Museum in 2010 depicting a family Passover gathering, were the hands. Garishly pink and fleshy, they rise from the lower edge of the canvas. They’re cartoonish, really, like something out of the work of Philip Guston,…
Helena Rubinstein reads in her bed in the late 1930s. Copyright Getty Images My first introduction to Helena Rubinstein came in the form of a small, white tube with a red and fuchsia logo that was no bigger than my thumb. It was waterproof mascara, hidden away in my mother’s bathroom drawer. She never actually…
Helena Rubinstein by Paul César Helleu, image via wikicommons Beauty is power and Madame Helena Rubinstein knew just what she was dispensing. Like all enchantments, beauty stirs up passions, its secrets can emancipate or enslave. Like power, beauty can be corrupting or creative; in the hands of an alchemist like Madame, it might even be…
Left: Lee Krasner with Stop and Go, c. 1949 (detail). Photographer unknown. © 2014 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Right: Norman Lewis, n. d. Photographer unknown. From the Willard Gallery Archives. Collection of Kenkeleba House. Art © The Estate of Norman W. Lewis, Courtesy of Iandor Fine Arts, New Jersey…
Getty Images The United States government still really wants to arrest director Roman Polanski — and what better place to catch him than the Polish Jewish history museum? Polanski, who was arrested (but never sentenced) for sexually assaulting a 13-year old girl in 1977, was attending the grand opening of Museum of the History of…
Michael Harlan Turkell As a kid growing up on New York’s Upper East Side, I had appetizing envy. My West Side friends had Zabar’s, Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, and Barney Greengrass. Downtown, of course, there was Russ & Daughters. Sure, there were a few Jewish delis like P.J. Bernstein’s, and eventually fancier shops like Sable’s, but…
The Jewish Museum of Belgium will reopen fully to the public four months after four people were killed in a shooting attack there. The Brussels museum in a statement on its website said it will reopen on Sept. 14 as part of the European Day of Jewish Culture. The European Association for the Preservation and…
מישעל ווײַס, אַ רעפּובליקאַנערין, האָט געוווּנען די וואַלן אין יוניווערסיטי הײַטס — אַ טיף דעמאָקראַטישער פֿאָרשטאָט פֿון קליוולאַנד, אָהײַאָ
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