Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America

Here Baskind (art history, Cleveland State Univ.; coauthor, Jewish Art) takes a scholarly look at five 20th-century American Jewish artists: painters Jack Levine, Larry Rivers, and R.B. Kitaj; sculptor George Segal; and photorealist artist Audrey Flack—all children of immigrants. The author's thesis is that for American Jews, "their native land, their homeland, was the Hebrew Bible," a text that served as "the only Jewish soil they knew." Baskind also cites the Bible as "portable identity in the diaspora," calling the content therein American Jews' connection to Jewish life. Although these artists, as well as some of their Jewish contemporaries in the art world, did not necessarily even think of themselves as Jewish—and certainly not as observant Jews—all seemed to find inspiration (even quite unconsciously) and depth of meaning in the stories of the Hebrew Bible. In fact, some of their most profound and compelling works drew from biblical sources.