2024-03-29T07:07:13Z
https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/scjr/oai
oai:ejournals.bc.edu:article/1515
2019-10-12T20:44:07Z
scjr:ARTS
Christ in the Works of Two Jewish Artists: When Art is Interreligious Dialogue
Hayman, Marina S.
S. Ansky
Chagall
Christ
Christ in Majesty (Epstein)
Consummatum Est (Epstein)
Dedicated to Christ (Chagall)
di tseylem frage
Ecce Homo (Epstein)
Jacob Epstein
Golgotha (Chagall)
interreligious dialogue
Jewish artists
Jewish-Christian dialogue
"Jewish Jesus"
Jewish Modernism
Llandaff Christ (Epstein)
Madonna and Child (Epstein
Convent of the Holy Child
London)
Nostra Aetate
Haskalah
shtetl
St. Michael and the Devil (Epstein)
The Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews
the Crucifix question
The Martyr (Chagall)
The Risen Christ (Epstein)
White Crucifixion
Yellow Crucifixion
Yiddish modernism
Chaim Zhitlovsky
Painter Marc Chagall and sculptor Jacob Epstein, both of whom were from orthodox Jewish backgrounds, each created a number of works of Christ. Although in Epstein's case, and only later in his career, some of these works were commissioned, both Chagall's and Epstein's works of Christ were self-driven. Chagall described himself as having been "haunted" by the face of Christ in his early years and his several crucifixion paintings were of a Jesus who was not the Christ of Christian dogma, but a "Jewish Jesus" who summed up the suffering of the Jewish people. Epstein similarly created a Christ that was beyond the conventions of the time, through his predilection for using primitive forms in his work. During his life-time, many of Epstein's Christs were met with resistance, but the more visionary critics understood the importance of his work in freeing the image of Christ from the matrix of convention and opening new possibilities of theological perception and understanding.
The work of both Chagall and Epstein, who were contemporaries, is examined in relation to Jewish modernism, a movement ongoing in their formative years and before, in which Jewish intellectuals, writers and artists were engaged in efforts to work-out the relationship of Judaism to Jesus and the surrounding Christian world. The atrocities of the Holocaust effectively ended this dialogue. The potential contributions of the thought and creative works of this pre-World War II interreligious interchange to contemporary Jewish-Christian dialogue are discussed.
Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College
2011-04-21
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
application/pdf
https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/scjr/article/view/1515
10.6017/scjr.v4i1.1515
Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations; Vol. 4 No. 1 (2009)
1930-3777
eng
https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/scjr/article/view/1515/1368
Copyright (c) 2015 Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations
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