Polish-Jewish Discourse in Art History: Standpoints, Objectives, Methodologies

Owing to the long-lasting and extensive Jewish presence in Poland there was considerable interest in the Jewish art of that country, initially on the Polish side. The partition of Poland, which lasted from the late eighteenth century to 1918, at times engendered a romantic perception of similarity between the Polish and Jewish losses of sovereignty and that was an encouraging factor in that regard. Initially a matter of antiquarian and romantic discourse, this interest emerged among Polish scholars in Galicia when it was under Habsburg rule, first in Cracow and then in L'viv (Lwów in Polish and Lemberg in German), where courses in Art History were offered in 1877 and 1892, respectively. These two ambitious academic centers were surrounded by vibrant Jewish communities with numerous monuments of ritual architecture and art. Polish scholars' concern with Jewish art was charged with the Polish national agenda, which was inspired by a desire to place Polish art in a broader European and universal historical context and establish its connections with the art of the country's neighbors as well as its minorities. The rise of Jewish nationalism and Polish Jewry's search for a cultural identity also began in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

In the present article I attempt to clarify the methodologies employed by Polish art historians to define Jewish art, to trace the involvement of Jewish scholars in the discourse, and to track its flow in interwar Poland, where it was vanishing. My study centers on a discussion of the Jewish ritual architecture and art that were rooted in the culture of a traditional group, or, at least, seen as such by the researchers of the period, in contrast to the painting and sculpture created by the rapidly evolving artistic elite. The architecture and decoration of wooden synagogues were of special interest, as they were seen as the works of "folk" artists, either Jewish or Christian.

Stanisław Kostka Potocki (1755–1821), a nobleman, politician, collector, and patron of the arts, was one of the earliest Polish thinkers to touch on the art of the Jews. From 1797 to 1815 he creatively rewrote the celebrated treatise Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums by the German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann, titling his work On the Art of the Ancients or the Polish Winckelmann.¹ However, unlike Winckelmann, Potocki was very much interested in the art and architecture of the Jerusalem Temple. He related the menorah, known from its biblical descriptions and its depiction on the Arch of Titus, to similar objects used by Polish Jews of his time. With his interest in both the historical and contemporary art of the Jews, Potocki concluded that the profound resemblance between the two "proves the immutability of this people, in established settlements and changing fate,"² and stated: "It is possible to say about Jewish art that it depends on the same rule as that of other Oriental peoples: an immobility frozen at the point on which it once stood."³ He did not see any input by Jewish artists in modern art, accusing the Jews of seeking immediate profit, which allegedly did not allow for artistic perfection.⁴ Thus, the earliest Polish encounter with Jewish art includes, alongside a keen interest, a good measure of Orientalism and a value judgment concerning the Jewish people.

The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855) pointed out the same connection between ancient and recent Jewish art, although he came to a different conclusion. He wrote about the model for a Jewish inn, which purportedly also served for the wooden synagogues of Poland:

Tyrian carpenters' pattern, it is now well known, Which the Jews had adopted and took for their own: A style of architecture they through the world carried, Abroad quite unknown; we from the Jews it inherit.⁵

Mickiewicz expressed an antiquarian, romanticized, and messianic view of Jewish architecture as a product of the divine art of construction, taught by Hiram of Tyre to the Jews during his work on Solomon's Temple. According to the poet, these skills were brought to Poland...