The Holocaust and the Visual Arts: Perplexity, Meanings

doi:10.1017/9781108990172.024

22 - The Holocaust and the Visual Arts: Perplexity, Meanings

from Part IV - Culture and Fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2025

Glenn Sujo

Edited by

Laura Jockusch and

Devin O. Pendas

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Laura Jockusch: Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Massachusetts
Devin O. Pendas: Affiliation:
Boston College

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Summary

The question concerning the adequacy of mimetic representation raised by the Holocaust, of how to best convey the vast suffering, the enormity of extermination, the tragedy of loss, has profoundly shaped the history of the visual arts since 1945. Focusing mainly on painting and sculpture, this chapter argues that Holocaust art largely rejected the turn to abstraction otherwise so characteristic of postwar modernism, in favor of an ongoing engagement with figurative representation. For many artists, this was a way to retain the human dimension of the Holocaust. The shared an underlying ethical and aesthetic commitment to the human figure with its myriad complexities and configurations. At the same time, they sought to avoid falling into the trap of kitsch and sentimentality. This created ineluctable aesthetic dilemmas – to combine beauty and terror – that led to a series of heterogeneous responses, not a “school of art,” but a struggle with aesthetics in the face of catastrophe.

Keywords

Holocaust Memory Art Painting Sculpture Representation Pablo Picasso Theodor Adorno Boris Taslitzky Léon Delarbre Isaac Celnikier

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of the Holocaust , pp. 510 - 538

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108990172.024 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2025

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