Jewish Artists in New York: The Holocaust Years

Exploring the influence of the local cultural scene as well as events taking place in Europe, Matthew Baigell reexamines the work of Jewish artists inspired to respond to the murders of their fellow Jews during World War II. Because there were only a few authentic instances of visual documentation of events until the war's later stages, artists both used traditional imagery and invented new kinds of imagery to record their responses to the catastrophe taking place. Unfortunately, New York City's Jewish intelligentsia seemed to offer little support, and art critics such as Clement Greenberg largely avoided the issue. Jewish artists were left to cope with the events of the war in isolation, without a collective visual memory to deal with the traumas presented by news reports. Artists featured include Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Barnett Newman, Abraham Rattner, Mark Rothko, and Max Weber.