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1 results

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

  • from Part IV - Culture and Fields
  • Edited by Laura Jockusch, Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Devin O. Pendas, Boston College
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Holocaust
    Published online:
    16 May 2025
    Print publication:
    12 June 2025, pp 510-538

  • 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.