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Man of the Hour

By Benjamin Ivry

Once underestimated in favor of his more acclaimed artist friends, like Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890) is now finally the man of the hour, honored with two major exhibits: Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention, which runs from November 15 to March 14, 2010, at New York’s Jewish Museum, and Man Ray, African Art and the Modernist Lens, from October 10 to January 10, 2010, at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. These exhibits, displaying a rich variety of Ray’s photos, sculptures, paintings, and drawings, provide an occasion for reassessing the inspirations of Man Ray from early canvases, which, like works by his predecessors Picasso and Braque, were strongly influenced by the powerful abstraction of African sculpture, as well as by the less obvious, but equally essential, influence of his own self-camouflaged Jewish origins. Together, these two exhibits help place Ray in context both as a visually obsessed and inspired creator of his times and as a 20th-century American Jewish expatriate in France.Read More

Ignaz Friedman: Great Jewish Pianist

By Benjamin Ivry

The Polish Jewish pianist Ignaz Friedman may not be a household name, but his majestic artistry, honored by a brilliantly researched new biography, “Ignaz Friedman: Romantic Master Pianist” makes him of urgent interest to anyone who loves piano music.Read More

A Modern Esther Returns

By Benjamin Ivry

After a year spent dark while renovating what is now the David H. Koch Theater, the New York City Opera has chosen to revive one of the most powerful American Jewish operas for its first full production of the season. On November 7, Hugo Weisgall’s “Esther,” which premiered in 1993 to nearly universal acclaim, will once again address questions of Jewish identity and assimilation.Read More

S. An-sky: More Than Just 'The Dybbuk'

By Benjamin Ivry

For frenziedly creative polymaths, the French may have Jean Cocteau, but the Jews have Belarus-born Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, who wrote poems, fiction, ethnography and plays under the pen name S. An-sky (another frequent transliteration is An-ski or Ansky, but recent scholarship seems to favor An-sky).Read More

Loving and Loathing

By Benjamin Ivry

A longtime secret treasure of American film criticism, Manny Farber is finally in the limelight, a year after his death of bone cancer at age 91. Farber is being honored with the publication of “Farber On Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber,” an 824-page tome from the Library of America, collecting many long-overlooked reviews originally written for The Nation, The New Leader, Artforum and others. One previous such collection, “Negative Space: Manny Farber On The Movies” (Da Capo Press, 1998) is only 424 pages long, but unlike most movie critics, Farber’s writings benefit from being read in bulk. September’s Telluride Film Festival included a panel discussion, “The Celebration of Manny Farber,” as well as special screenings of the critic’s favorite films.Read More


 

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