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In the years before, during, and after the First World War, hundreds of young Jews flocked to Paris, artistic capital of the world and center of modernist experimentation. Some arrived with prior training from art academies in Kraków, Vilna, and Vitebsk; others came armed only with hope and a few memorized phrases in French. They had little Jewish tradition in painting and sculpture to draw on, yet despite these obstacles, these young Jews produced the greatest efflorescence of art in the long history of the Jewish people.
The paintings of Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Emmanuel Mané-Katz, the sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff, and works by many other artists now grace the world's museums. As the École de Paris was the most cosmopolitan artistic movement the world had seen, the left-bank neighborhood of Montparnasse became a meeting place for diverse cultures.
How did the tolerant, bohemian atmosphere of Montparnasse encourage an international style of art in an era of bellicose nationalism, not to mention racism and antisemitism? How did immigrants not only absorb but profoundly influence a culture? This book examines how the clash of cultures produced genius.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Modernism and Diaspora: The School of Paris in an Age of Immigration
1. Is There Jewish Art?
2. From Montmartre to Montparnasse: New Social and Psychological Dimensions, 1900-1914
3. Masculinity and Patriotism: Cultural Responses to World War One, 1914-1920
4. Cosmopolitan Montparnasse in Les Années Folles, 1920-1930
5. Jews in Jazz Age Paris: The Symbiosis of Music and Art
6. Marketing Art: Jewish Critics and Art Dealers
7. Nationalism, Internationalism and Zionism in the 1930s
8. The End of Time: Artists in Exile, Hiding, and Deportation
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Richard D. Sonn is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, where he teaches French history, Jewish history, and modern European social, cultural and intellectual history. He is the author of three previous books, including Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France (1989), and Sex, Violence and the Avant-Garde: Anarchism in Interwar France (2010).
Summary
In the years before, during, and after the First World War, hundreds of young Jews flocked to Paris, artistic capital of the world and center of modernist experimentation. Some arrived with prior training from art academies in Kraków, Vilna, and Vitebsk; others came armed only with hope and a few memorized phrases in French. They had little Jewish tradition in painting and sculpture to draw on, yet despite these obstacles, these young Jews produced the greatest efflorescence of art in the long history of the Jewish people.
The paintings of Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, and Emmanuel Mané-Katz, the sculptures of Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff, and works by many other artists now grace the world’s museums. As the École de Paris was the most cosmopolitan artistic movement the world had seen, the left-bank neighborhood of Montparnasse became a meeting place for diverse cultures.
How did the tolerant, bohemian atmosphere of Montparnasse encourage an international style of art in an era of bellicose nationalism, not to mention racism and antisemitism? How did immigrants not only absorb but profoundly influence a culture? This book examines how the clash of cultures produced genius.
Foreword
This book details how, in the early 20th century, hundreds of young Jewish people flocked to the left-bank Paris artists’ colony of Montparnasse, where they made significant contributions to modern art.
