Yiddish Art Making and the Defiance of Monolithic Medium in the Post-Revolutionary Soviet Sphere

• In Event: Bodies in Translation

Abstract

The paper follows the visual works and writings of Jewish Ukrainian artist Issachar Ber Ryback (1897-1935) in order to articulate a model of art that synthesizes visuality, materiality, and textuality into a single work. From his early ethnographic expeditions in the Pale, through his Berlin period, to his two-months visit to the Jewish agricultural settlements in southern Ukraine, Ryback’s body of work spans drawing, illustration, lithograph, and theoretical writing, and brings to the fore the material cult of everyday Eastern European Jewish life. Ryback’s unique formulation of materiality and visual representation is telling of a broader paradigm of Jewish art making that could best be described as Yiddish art. I argue that through the synthesis of the media, Jewish artists in the post-revolutionary Soviet sphere managed to defy conventions of monolithic medium, push back against the Western European paradigm of Jewish aniconism, and challenge the hegemony of text as the Jewish medium of choice.

Author

• Noa Tsaushu, Columbia University