Overview

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.

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9781501374869

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Reviews

Once you see what Swarts shows here, you'll see an entirely new early Zionist culture. You'll wonder why you never thought to ask the questions this book so deftly and convincingly answers. * Maya Balakirsky Katz, Bar-Ilan University Department of Jewish Art, Israel and editor Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture * Gender, Orientalism and the Jewish Nation: At the German Fin de Siecle widens our understanding of how artists at this period, in particular Ephraim Moses Lilien, used extensively portrayals of women to further the national goal of Zionism. By looking astutely at these images and seeing them within the social and historical context, Lynne M. Swarts has made a major contribution to the way gender and orientalism figured prominently in the building of a national idea. Her work, elegantly produced, deserves special recognition as she breaks new ground in thinking about the interrelationship between visual culture and historical phenomena. * Richard I. Cohen, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, author of Jewish Icons. Art and Society in Modern Europe *

Author Information

Lynne M. Swarts is Honorary Research Associate, Department of History, University of Sydney, Australia.

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