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The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture

same time, it becomes very clear how very specific this engagement is—dependent always on biographical, cultural, social and art-historical factors as well as (in some cases, but by no means always) an explicit awareness of both Jewish history and the history of representation as it relates to the Jewish experience. The initial refusal of the book to be seduced by any idea of “Jewish art” or “Jewish experience” in general is more than vindicated by the subtlety of the analyses that follows, with their awareness of the contingencies of art practice. Even Rosen’s “three modes of influence” (106)— family, tradition and home—seem to me not to be necessary; they do not add much to the excellent discussion of the artists’ work (and, in addition, it is not clear that they are distinct concepts, all of them simply registering the artists’ attempts to relate to the tradition of art history). The case studies stand on their own, in other words, vindicating Rosenberg’s 1966 objection to the idea of a generic “Jewish art”. Indeed the very category may collude with anti-Semitism, in its willingness to hypostasize a group; as Zygmunt Bauman has shown, philo-Semitism runs the same risk as antiSemitism in this regard. As with many interesting and provocative studies, this book suggests related issues it would be fascinating to pursue. The author’s background in theological studies, and his occasional references to his interest in “how works of art might speak. . . in theological terms” (1), incline the reader to want more on the specifically theological aspects of the paintings and their influences. The recurring topic of the (supposed) Jewish ban on images, addressed by writers like Anthony Julius (often as an explanation for the involvement of Jewish artists—Rothko, Newman, Gottlieb—in abstraction) is complicated by Rosen in his discussion of Guston’s turn from abstraction back to figuration; Kitaj too worked against the grain, as a figurative artist in an art world that privileged abstraction. This theme deserves a book of its own. Finally—the book is published in a series primarily devoted to studies in comparative literature, which probably explains the limited range of illustrations (all of which, too, are black and white). But it is a pity that more paintings could not be reproduced, to do justice to the complex and interesting analysis presented in the text.