Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation: Women in the Work of Ephraim Moses Lilien at the German Fin de Siècle

Description

Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925) was one of the most important Jewish artists of modern times. As a successful illustrator, photographer, painter and printer, he became the first major Zionist artist. Surprisingly there has been little in-depth scholarly research and analysis of Lilien’s work available in English, making this book an important contribution to historical and art-historical scholarship. Concentrating mainly on his illustrations for journals and books, Lynne Swarts acknowledges the importance of Lilien’s groundbreaking male iconography in Zionist art, but is the first to examine Lilien’s complex and nuanced depiction of women, which comprised a major dimension of his work. Lilien’s female images offer a compelling glimpse of an alternate, independent and often sexually liberated modern Jewish woman, a portrayal that often eluded the Zionist imagination. Using an interdisciplinary approach to integrate intellectual and cultural history with issues of gender, Jewish history and visual culture, Swarts also explores the important fin de siècle tensions between European and Oriental expressions of Jewish femininity. The work demonstrates that Lilien was not a minor figure in the European art scene, but a major figure whose work needs re-reading in light of his cosmopolitan and national artistic genius. Cover Contents List of Figures List of Plates Foreword Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Biographical Timeline: Ephraim Moses Lilien and His Family Introduction 1 ‘We Put All Our Hope in Him’: Ephraim Moses Lilien and His Oeuvre 2 ‘No Longer Art Speaking but Culture’: Lilien, Zionism, and Male Aesthetics 3 Boundaries and Borderlines: The ‘New Woman’ and the New Jewish Woman 4 The Dangerous ‘Other’: Lilien’s Jewish Femmes Fatales, Other Male Avant-garde Behaviour, and Else Lasker-Schüler’s Transgendered Vision 5 Biblical Illustrations, Biblical Heroines, and the Search for Meaning 6 Ost und West, Zionism, and the Construction of German Jewish Orientalism 7 The Exotic ‘Other’: Lilien’s Oriental Beauties and a Jewish Oriental Voice? Conclusions Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D A Note on Sources Bibliography Index