| This study analyzes the preoccupation with questions of Jewish art—of its existence, characteristics and forms of classification—in early twentieth-century Germany. It further poses its own set of questions: Why did Jewish art become a concern, for whom and for what purposes? What were advocated as important criteria? What meanings were attributed to Jewish art? How did ideas develop and disseminate? How did notions of Jewish art speak to questions of religion, race, nationalism and their intersection with art history?;Considering Jewish art as a discourse, as a dynamic process rather than a static definition, this dissertation grounds the making of Jewish art within broader fields of cultural production. Primarily through the context of art exhibitions, chapters situate notions of Jewish art within specific social and institutional networks, including the cultural Zionists, B'nai Brith fraternal lodges, Jewish art and cultural organizations, artists' studios and artists groups. This project provides an understanding of how different individuals and organizations used notions of Jewish art to define modern meanings of "Jewish" without limiting it to singular confessional, racial or national categories.;Specifically, this dissertation demonstrates the connections and parallels between the discourses of Jewish art and expressionism. An avant-garde art form and concept that emerged in the years just prior to World War 1, expressionism during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) represented the characteristic modern German art form. Analyzing the particularities of this discursive association, this dissertation contends that artists, writers and intellectuals employed expressionism as a bridge that connected a Jewish art to a modern German art and European cosmopolitanism. It further connected a Jewish art to a distinctive art marked by an integrated form and content, and to a notion of art based on the spiritual, rather than on race or the nation. |
