The
Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A
Companion to MENDELE)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Contents of
Vol. 09.006 [Sequential No. 158]
Date:
1) In this
issue of TMR (ed.)
2) Some Comments on David Mazower's article on Henryk Berlewi (Seth L. Wolitz)
3) A Small Berlewi Gallery (Seth L. Wolitz)
4) Quotations from Mechano-faktura (Henryk Berlewi)
5) Coming issue: Menke
6) Coming book reviews
1)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: In this issue of TMR
In this issue
of TMR, Seth L. Wolitz -- a scholar of Yiddish literature and a longtime
student of Henryk Berlewi -- takes the floor to respond to David Mazower's
article on Henryk Berlewi in the last TMR (vol. 9,
no. 5). Freely assisted by the world wide web, Professor Wolitz adds to his
lively and challenging comments a small gallery of the artist's work, including
some of his best known and truly remarkable abstractions. We need to thank both
Mazower and Wolitz for working towards reestablishing the connection between
modernist Yiddish literature and Eastern European Jewish graphic art.
2)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Seth L. Wolitz
Subject: Some Comments on David Mazower's article on Henryk Berlewi
Some
Comments on David Mazower's article on Henryk Berlewi
by
Seth L. Wolitz
I very much
appreciated David Mazower's communication (in TMR vol.
9, no. 5) on Henryk Berlewi, whose accomplishment I uncovered over thirty years
ago and on whom I have through the years published a number of essays. I would
insist on his importance not only as an illustrator and artist of Yiddish
poetry-covers but as an artist central to the entire avant-garde abstract art
movement in
"Between
Folk and Freedom: The Failure of the
Yiddish Modernist Movement in
"The
Jewish National Art Renaissance in
"Modernism in der Yidisher Literatur." Yidishe Kultur, No. 2
(March-April 1980), pp. 36-45. Reprinted
(without permission) in Folks-Sztyme,
"The
Khalyastre (1918-1925): A Modernist
Movement in
Berlewi's
masterpiece in terms of Yiddish culture is the
No. 3 (1923) cover of Albatros which he created for Uri-Tsvi
Grinberg when they were both in
Fig. 1
Berlewi was well known by 1920 as a brilliant young
plastic artist very much involved (like other young Eastern European Jewish
artists such as El Lissitzky and Tchaikov, etc) in seeking to define or
construct a distinct Jewish art or at least a Style beside Jewish themes or
images. Chagall's art was the starting
point of this thinking, albeit Chagall never liked to theorize Jewish art or
believed in it as something that could be sui generis. Still he encouraged in
his days at Vitebsk the pursuit of such a possibility. El Lissitzky was his
prized student who did remarkable work in attempting to create a Jewish style
[see Sikhes Kholin, Khad Gad Ya , two of his early but remarkable efforts] but
by 1919 El Lissitzky had given up on finding a Jewish Style and overwhelmed by
Malevich's Supremicist art and cosmic vision passed into complete abstraction
with his Prouns.
El Lissitzky arrived
in 1921 in Warsaw on the way to set up a Soviet exhibition of art in Berlin and
overwhelmed Berlewi by his abstract constructivist art and conceptions. Berlewi abandoned further efforts at finding
a Jewish style, having passed in two
years through neo-Romanticism,
expressionism and formism to now become a constructivist. Unlike El
Lissitzky who on commission did a Yiddish cover now and then until 1924 (and
contrary to Soviet critics never did abandon Jewish interests but found it wise
to be discreet!), Berlewi passed easily from Yiddish cultural circles to Polish
ones and in Berlin met all the major new artists who make up what we call today
the first abstractionists, Van Doesburg,
Moholy Nagy, and all the German Dadaists. As El Lissitzky pursued his star with
such brilliant works and new page designs, Berlewi in fact did the same and was
recognized by Herwarth Walden, the leading avant-garde art dealer and gallery
owner who published in his Der Sturm Berlewi's masterful Manifesto: Mechano-Faktura.
Fig. 2
Composition in Red, Black and
White (1924)
This work was
the most important expression of the new intention of producing art on
mechanical principles and removing the presence of the artist's hand. Berlewi
insists on the reality and acceptance of two-dimensionality in art and not the
artifice of creating a third dimension. Art was now in service to mankind, not
seeking to create beauty but to serve the needs of mankind. He accompanied this
manifesto with twelve designs of pure abstraction made of crisscrossing lines
and series of dots which today are recognized as the precursor of op art and
concrete art.
Berlewi
returned to Poland where he continued his experiments in constructivism and
formed an advertising agency as his name and fame grew. His one-man show
caused a sensation in Warsaw in 1924
when he held it in a automobile showroom with the cars all around. Here was
modernism fusing art and the pragmatic, the machine age in all its abstract
glory. At the same time he was a leading member of the Polish abstract artist's
constructivist group, BLOK, in which he wrote in Polish and took part in their
activities. At the same time he was active with the Yiddish Khalyastre
and did those splendid covers of Perets Markish's verse collection, Di Kupe
and Radyo, etc. as well as a cover for a
Hebrew volume, Legion.
Berlewi played
such a major role in constructivism and
functioned so comfortably with the Polish abstract artists, such as
Strzeminski, Kobro and Stazewski that he is always treated as Polish and his
Jewish side is downplayed as with El Lissitzky as "his early period."
No Polish publication ever leaves his name out as central to Polish abstract
art of the inter-war years. The Warsaw Jewish world took pride in his
accomplishment and he continued to write theoretical articles and critical ones
which were published in Ringen and other Yiddish journals and he never
stopped publishing in Yiddish even when he moved to Paris.
He moved in
Paris in 1928 for one good reason: he needed to keep body and soul together. He
was following what other Polish and Jewish artists were doing. Neither the
Polish abstract artists nor Berlewi could really sell much of their abstract
art. They made a little money with advertising but not enough. Poles did not
buy abstract art and as Chagall complains bitterly in almost every letter he
writes, Jews don't buy art. (It seems unreal given the vast Jewish collections
of today!) But neither Jews in Poland or anywhere else bought Abstract
art. So Berlewi moved to Paris and discovered
the bitter truth there that the French had no interest in pure abstraction
either. So he turned back to portrait painting.
Where was he
during the War? He seems to have escaped with his Mother to Southern France.
Who hid him and why remain a mystery. After World War 2 he returned to Paris
and eked out a living still doing portraits. Suddenly in 1958, the French
artist and critic Michel Seuphor tracked him down for a retrospect exhibit of
the first abstract artists of post-World War 1 and Berlewi returned to his
mechano-faktura abstractions. He reproduced some of his early abstract art and
continued to create new abstractions. One-man shows were given to him in Paris,
Berlin Warsaw, London and New York. The Germans and the English recognized in
his constructivist works the master of modern typographic design. He has been
written up by Neue Graphik and Typographica for his essential
contribution to page design and typography . In Europe his art is collected,
especially his abstractions.
The recent
auction of his figurative drawings to which David Mazower alluded does not do
credit to the importance of Berlewi. His figurative art is inferior to his real
accomplishment which is abstraction and typography. I have been collecting material on him for 20
years but so much has been destroyed. I
am writing a monograph now on Berlewi which will reveal that this artist was
one of Jewry's greatest artists of the 20th century. Only Chagall and El
Lissitzky are his possible superiors if such silly conceptions still hold sway.
He managed to live the life of an artist who was comfortable both as a Jew and
a universal man.
Alas the Poles
and Western art historians who do esteem
him greatly trundle him off into their world and obfuscate his Jewish concerns
and interests and accomplishments. On the other hand, the Yiddish establishment
has not forgotten him, but is too weak to make any efforts on his behalf. As to
the general Jewish world, Israel, and the Diaspora, he is totally forgotten or
considered like all the Jewish-born artists who do not paint Rabbis or water
carriers as another Akher, a delinquent who left us for Goyish territories and
fame. Berlewi deserves to be recognized
for what the secular Yiddish culture sought to accomplish in Eastern
Europe: create Jewish men and women, artists, etc. who were comfortable with
being both Jews and part of the modern world. It has been unfortunately the
Jewish scholars of Yiddish and Hebrew cultures in our own time who have let
slip by so many Jewish artists -- witness Philip Roth not listed among the key
Jewish writers in a recent listing! -- because they did not conform to more
parochial thinking of too many obscurantist or ideological Jewish academics.
We must thank
David Mazower for having taken notice of Berlewi and having recognized his
figurative art efforts. I hope these further few words invite TMR readers to
seek out the really great artistic accomplishment of Berlewi in his
abstractions. If one should wish to see some of them and the famous automobile
show, the best work in English that places him in his rightful place in
Eastern- European avant-garde art, see:
S.A. Mansbach: Modern Art in Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the
Balkans ca. 1890-1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pages
124-127.
3)-----------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Seth L. Wolitz
Subject: A Small Berlewi Gallery
A
Small Berlewi Gallery
|
fig 3 |
fig 4 |
Two
compositions from the series Twelve Mechano-Faktura Elements 1924
|
Fig 5 Portrait 1938 |
Fig 6 Plutos chocolate advertisement 1926 |
|
Fig. 7 Plutos advertisement applying mechano- |
|
Fig 8 Berlewi's cover for Perets Markish's Di kupe
( ["The
design is spectacular and purely expressionistic … abstract triangles rising
… form like fire the Hebrew letters of Di Kupe in fierce triangular
forms…" – SLW] |
4)--------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:
From: Seth L. Wolitz
Subject: Quotations from Mechano-faktura (Henryk Berlewi)
A selection of
quotes from Mechano-faktura, one of the first purely theoretical
manifestoes regarding abstract plastic art and esthetics by a Jewish artist.
From Mechano-faktura ( Der Sturm, Berlin, September,1924)
By texture is
meant: 1. The surface of the painted
canvas itself. 2. The intensity of and
density of the color, which depends on the physical character of the paint, the
so-called patina. In short, everything that makes up the material side of
painting.
Only after the
great upheaval in the fine arts (expressionism, cubism, futurism) have the
tremendous possibilities inherent in texture become apparent.
Painting,
thanks to texture, has come closer to its original function. However, in the
process, it has lost one of its specific characteristics, two-dimensionality.
If flatness is
considered intrinsic to painting, any three-dimensional (perspectival)
illusionism, as well as any actual plasticity, must be regarded as
inappropriate and as a violation of the true nature of painting.
If suitable
equivalents are found for materials like glass, sand, wood, we will be able to
achieve textual effects that are identical with the immediate effect of the
texture of the original material.
By consistently
pursuing and developing this principle of material equivalents, I created a new
and autonomous texture, which is independent of materials, and at the same
time, compatible with the two-dimensional nature of painting.
The aims of art
today can be defined as follows: a complete break with any imitation of
objects, autonomy of form; order; schematization; geometrization; precision (
to permit easy classification of the impressions received from the work). The
old technique of painting is not up to this task. It is even less use in the
creation of a new schematic textural system. In order to attain this end,
mechanical technology derived from industrial methods (which are free of the
whims of the individual and are founded on the exact mechanical function of the
machine) must be employed. Modern painting, modern art, must therefore, be
based upon the principles of machine production. An entirely new creative
system will be established with the help of the mechanization of texture and
the means of pictorial expression.... Through mechanization of the means of
painting, there will be a greater creative freedom and the possibilities of
invention will be increased.
(translated
by Katerine J. Michaelsen)
5)--------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1 May 2005
From: ed.
Subject: Coming
issue: Menke
A coming issue
of TMR will be devoted to a compendious volume of Menke Katz's Yiddish
verse translated into English by the celebrated translator-team Barbara and
Benjamin Harshav. Menke. The Complete Yiddish Poems. Edited
by Dovid Katz and Harry Smith.
Maps by Giedre Beconyte. Published
by The Smith: New York 2005, 914 pp.
For ordering information: artsend@sover.net.
6)--------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1 May 2005
From: ed.
Subject: Coming Book Reviews
Dovid Katz's Lithuanian
Jewish Culture (Vilna: Baltos Lankos, 2004, 398 pp), will yet be reviewed
in TMR, as will be Nancy Sinkoff's Out of the Shtetl (
Also scheduled
for review is John Myhill's Language
in Jewish Society: Towards a New Understanding. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2004
------------------------------------------------------------------
End of The Mendele Review Vol. 09.06
Editor,
Leonard Prager
Subscribers to Mendele
(see below) automatically receive The Mendele Review and Yiddish Theater Forum.
Send "to
subscribe" or change-of-status messages to: listproc@lists.yale.edu
1. For a temporary stop: set mendele mail
postpone
2. To resume delivery: set mendele
mail ack
3. To subscribe: sub mendele
first_name last_name
4. To unsubscribe kholile: unsub
mendele
****Getting
back issues****
The
Mendele Review archives can be reached at:
http://yiddish.haifa.ac.il/tmr/tmr.htm
***