For more information, contact Toni Searle, 216-368-4443 or amf2@po.cwru.edu.

Posted 10-19-00

Symposium to discuss religious arts

CLEVELAND -- "Treading Sacred Ground: Parallels in Jewish and Christian Art and Architecture" will bring together distinguished art historians and the public for a symposium October 26-27 at Case Western Reserve University to examine the cultural and societal influences on religion that have shaped the design of the churches and synagogues and the arts of the faiths.

"Treading Sacred Ground" -- sponsored by CWRU's Department of Art History and Art, with the support of the Baker-Nord Center for Humanities, the Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies, and Susan and Ronald Heller --complements the exhibit "Jewish Ritual Art in Cleveland" on display through November 4 at Cleveland State University.

Throughout the past two millennia, Christians and Jews have borrowed architectural styles and forms from each other in designing their places of worships and the art of their ritual practices, says Stanton Thomas of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Thomas has coordinated symposium activities, as well as taught two CWRU art history classes last year on topics related to the symposium's theme.

Gathering background information, Thomas' interest in ecclesiastical architecture took him to Jewish and Christian centers in Europe and Israel where he viewed and studied the remaining structures, especially the synagogues that have survived world wars and destruction through pogroms to annihilate Jewish worship sites and religion.

Larry Silver, the Farquhar Professor of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will speak at the opening reception and dinner, starting at 5 p.m. Thursday, October 26.

During his talk, "New Jerusalem: Rembrandt, Christians, and Jews," Silver will discuss the religious subjects of Rembrandt's work. He will also explore the painter's connections to Menasseh ben Israel and the Jewish Community from 1655-60 -- a productive period for Rembrandt, but one fraught with personal financial troubles and bankruptcy. He also will show how the artist joined with Dutch and English thinkers of his day in a movement to hasten the advent of the Messiah by the notion of converging Jewish and Christian heritages.

The following day's speakers will trace the parallels of the art and architecture as the Christian faith began to evolve into the religion known today:

• "Synagogues and Churches: Style and Form -- Similarities and Divergences since the Middle Ages," a talk by Carol Krinsky, professor of fine arts at New York University, will focus on when and why changes have occurred since the 12th century. She will examine how at times church and synagogue architecture was similar in styles but differed in form.
• In the session "A Shared Heritage: Biblical Legends in Christian and Jewish Art," Joseph Gutmann, professor emeritus from Wayne State University, will review the relationship between the Jewish and Christian legends. In particular, he will consider the appearance in Christian art of figures unrelated to biblical narratives, which have been dismissed as exceptions or examples of an artist's fancy.
• Shelley Perlove, professor of art history at the University of Michigan at Dearborn, will offer a new interpretation of Jacob van Ruisdael's painting, The Jewish Cemetery. She will explore the symbolism in the painting's objects -- the dead trees, lush foliage, crumbling ruins, overturned tomb slabs, a rainbow, a brightening sky, and the landscape.
• Both religions have set aside separate spaces within the worship site for men and women. In Joan Branham's presentation, "Bleeding on Sacred Ground: Resonance and Divergence in Jewish and Christian Sacrifice, Architecture, and Gender," the associate professor of art history at Providence College will talk about the "gendering" of the sacred spaces.
• Carol Zemel, art history professor from the State University of New York at Buffalo, will demonstrate how images from the concentration camps in the last months of World War II have shaped a modern view of atrocity and genocide in her presentation, "Icons of Atrocity: Holocaust Photography as Sacred Form."

Registration is $35 by October 20. For registration information, call 216-368-3015 or visit http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/arth/arth.html.

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