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The passage of time and the reality of an aging survivor population have made it increasingly urgent to document and give expression to testimony, experience, and memory of the Holocaust. At the same time, artists have straggled to find a language to describe and retell a legacy often considered "unimaginable." Contrary to those who insist that the Holocaust defies representation, Image and Remembrance demonstrates that artistic representations are central to the practice of remembrance and commemoration. Including essays on representations of the Holocaust in film, architecture, painting, photography, memorials, and monuments, this thought-provoking volume considers ways in which visual artists have given form to the experience of the Holocaust and addresses the role that imagination plays in shaping historical memory. Among works discussed are Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin, Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, Morris Louis's series of paintings Charred Journal, photographer Shimon Attie's Writing on the Wall, and Mikael Levin's series Untitled. Image and Remembrance provides a thoughtful site for personal reflection and commemoration as well as a context for reconsidering the processes of art making and the cultural significance of artistic images.
List of contents
Introduction Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz
PART ONE: COMMEMORATION AND SITES OF MOURNING
1. Shoah as Cinema Florence Jacobowitz
2. Second-Sight: Shimon Attie's Recollection Berel Lang
3. Rituals of Mourning and Mimesis: Arie A. Galles's Fourteen Stations Andrea Liss
4. Trauma Daniel Libeskind
5. Memory, Counter-memory, and the End of the Monument James Young
PART TWO: PERSONAL RESPONSES AND FAMILIAL LEGACIES
6. Material Memory: Holocaust Testimony in Post-Holocaust Art Marianne Hirsch and Susan Rubin Suleiman
7. Caught by Images: Visual Imprints in Holocaust Testimonies Ernst Van Alphen
8. Gays and the Holocaust: Two Documentaries Robin Wood
9. War Stories: Witnessing in Retrospect Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer
PART THREE: MEMENTO MORI: ATROCITY AND AESTHETICS
10. The Iconic and the Allusive: The Case for Beauty in Post-Holocaust Art Janet Wolff
11. Burnt Books and Absent Meaning: Morris Louis' Charred Journal: Firewritten Series and the Holocaust Mark Godfrey
12. Emblems of Atrocity: Holocaust Liberation Photographs Carol Zemel
13. The Uses and Abuses of Photography in Holocaust-Related Art Monica Bohm-Duchen
PART FOUR: NATIONAL EXPRESSIONS OF REMEMBRANCE
14. The Jewish Museum, Vienna: A Holographic Paradigm for History and the Holocaust Reesa Greenberg
15. Memory Block: Rachel Whiteread's Holocaust Memorial in Vienna Rebecca Comay
16. Turning the Places of Holocaust History into Places of Holocaust Memory: Holocaust Memorials in Budapest, Hungary 1945-1995 Tim Cole
17. Berlin Elegies: Absence, Postmemory, and Art after Auschwitz Leslie Morris
18. Invisible Topographies: Looking for the Mémorial de la Déportation in Paris Shelley Hornstein
Contributors
Index
About the author
Shelley Hornstein is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, York University, Toronto. She is co-editor of Capital Culture: A Reader on Modernist Legacies, State Institutions, and the Value(s) of Art.
Florence Jacobowitz teaches film studies at York University and is a founding editor and regular contributor to CinéAction magazine.
Summary
The passage of time and the reality of an aging survivor population have made it increasingly urgent to document and give expression to testimony, experience, and memory of the Holocaust. This title demonstrates that artistic representations are central to the practice of remembrance and commemoration.
