Contemporary Jewish Art and Action

Allan Wexler, an architect by training, makes whimsical constructions that play with our understanding of buildings and household objects. In his spaces, tables and chairs slide into custom cabinets shaped precisely like each piece of furniture and coffee cups are connected to one another with clear tubes so that when one is lifted, the coffee level rises in the others and the liquid spills. In each work, everything seems ordinary until, for example, someone drinks from a cup or sits in a chair; in other words, all is well until someone does something.

On occasion, Wexler directs his whimsy toward ritual objects. In 2005 he created Spice Box for Havdalah, a far cry from the traditional tower-shaped box for the ceremony at the conclusion of the Sabbath. Wexler's spice box is made from a dust mask, plastic tubing, and store-bought bottles of aromatic spices. The bottles are connected to the mask via the tubes, allowing the wearer to inhale the aroma from the bottles. Theoretically, different bottles can be attached to the contraption to make a custom blend or to replace rancid spices. Spice Box for Havdalah is based on a traditional ritual object, like many other artistic excursions into Jewish ritual. However, instead of adding meaning through surface decoration or form, Wexler's contraption invites speculation concerning what it would be like to strap the "box" to one's face and to concentrate on breathing and smelling. Of course, the artist's choice of materials does add meaning to the work–the surgical qualities of the mask and hoses–but rather than focusing on the symbolism of materials and composition, the present paper considers action as a prism through which Spice Box and other works can be examined. More broadly, I focus on some of the ways in which contemporary Jewish art explores action similar to, but distinct from, the ways in which contemporary art has done over the last fifty years, for example, in minimalism, performance, and process art.

First, I offer a brief, focused historical outline of action in art and then describe how contemporary artists use it in some examples of Jewish art. In the first part of the paper I review a number of ideas presented by Harold Rosenberg, Allan Kaprow, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Next, I turn my attention to some contemporary Jewish art that incorporates action as a carrier of meaning. These works, like Wexler's Spice Box, can be interpreted in a variety of ways, as informed by ritual objects and ritual itself or through Jewish law. Ultimately, I show that the prism of ritual and ritual objects is part of a larger window through which contemporary Jewish art can be explored–the window of actions described in Jewish texts. This essay is speculative in nature and is intended to encourage others to see Jewish artworks not only as explorations of biblical narrative or spirituality, but also as creations that are informed by halakhah and rabbinic discourse.

Action in Art

In his well-known essay, "American Action Painters," Harold Rosenberg perceived action as emblematic of abstract expressionism. He described how the canvas became a place for action. In 1952 Rosenberg wrote, "At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act–rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."¹ As Rosenberg saw it, paint splatters recorded the physical movements of the artist, and the canvas was no longer a window into which the viewer gazed, but an "arena" in which the artist acted. The more the marks expressed or demonstrated the actions of the artist's body, the better.

Later, artists generalized Rosenberg's interpretation of action. Allan Kaprow, a performance artist, created the idea of the "Happening," a term he coined to refer to a performance that occurs once and does not necessarily need an audience.² In photographs of a performance titled Yard 1961, Kaprow is seen throwing...