Mirroring Evil

by Kleeblatt, Norman L.

• ISBN13: 9780813529608
• ISBN10: 0813529603
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art features works by thirteen internationally recognized artists who use imagery from the Nazi era to explore the nature of evil. Their works are a radical departure from previous art about the Holocaust, which centered on tragic images of victims. Instead, these artists dare to invite the viewer into the world of the perpetrators. The viewer, therefore, faces an unsettling moral dilemma: How is one to react to these menacing and indicting images, drawn from a history that can never be forgotten? The artists represented in Mirroring Evil impel us to examine what these images of Nazism might mean in our lives today.

Essays in the catalogue explore themes of moral ambiguity in makers and viewers of art, institutional responsibility in exhibiting controversial artworks, and the complicated issues of representing or even imagining the perpetrators. Entries about the individual artworks discuss in greater depth the artistic, ethical, and historical complexity of the images that the artists dare to engage.

Author Biography

Norman L. Kleeblatt is the Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts at The Jewish Museum in New York.

Table of Contents

Director's Preface	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Foreword: Looking into the Mirrors of Evil	p. xv
The Nazi Occupation of the White Cube: Transgressive Images/Moral Ambiguity/Contemporary Art	p. 3
Acts of Impersonation: Barbaric Spaces as Theater	p. 17
Childhood, Art, and Evil	p. 39
"Avant-Garde and Kitsch" Revisited: On the Ethics of Representation	p. 53
Playing the Holocaust	p. 65
Playing It Safe?: The Display of Transgressive Art in the Museum	p. 85
Distanced Mirrors Reflections on the Works of Art
Keeping One's Hands Clean: Six Commissioned Portraits of a Perpetrator: Christine Borland's L'Homme Double, 1997	p. 99
Male Fantasies of Hitler: Confusing Gender and Identity Roee Rosen's Live and Die as Eva Braun, 1995	p. 101
Transforming Images into Symbols: Mischa Kuball's Hitler's Cabinet, 1990	p. 105
The Conflation of Good and Evil: Piotr Uklanski's The Nazis, 1998	p. 108
A Feminist Rejoinder to Uklanski's The Nazis: Elke Krystufek's Economical Love series, 1998	p. 111
Impersonating the Victim: Consorting with History Alan Schechner's Barcode to Concentration Camp Morph, 1994, and It's the Real Thing--Self-Portrait at Buchenwald, 1993	p. 114
Impossible Bedfellows: Adolf Hitler and Marcel Duchamp: Rudolf Herz's Zugzwang, 1995	p. 117
The Villain Speaks the Victim's Language: Boaz Arad's Safam, 2000, and Marcel Marcel, 2000	p. 121
Fascinating Fascism: Then or Now? Maciej Toporowicz's Eternity #14, 1991	p. 123
Mirrors of Innocence and Violence: Alain Sechas's Enfants Gates, 1997	p. 126
Toying with Terror: Zbigniew Libera's LEGO Concentration Camp Set, 1996	p. 129
Fashioning Terror: Tom Sachs's Giftgas Giftset, 1998, and Prada Deathcamp, 1998	p. 132
Staging Depravity: Mat Collishaw's Burnt Almonds (Gustav and Helga), 2000	p. 134
Artist Biographies	p. 137
Contributors	p. 155
Bibliography	p. 157
Credits	p. 164
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.