Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art

New York and New Brunswick, NJ: Jewish Museum; Rutgers University Press, 2002. xviii, 164 pages, [16] pages of plates, illustrations (some colour); 28 cm. Catalogue of an exhibition opening at the Jewish Museum in New York in March, 2002. BRAND NEW. A fine copy. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. This controversial and important exhibition was picketed by Ultra-Orthodox Jews in New York. "Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art features the work 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." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Foreword: Looking into the Mirrors of Evil, by James E. Young; The Nazi Occupation of The White Cube: Transgressive Images/Moral Ambiguity/Contemporary Art, by Norman L. Kleebatt; Acts of Impersonation: Barbaric Spaces as Theater, by Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi; Childhood, Art, and Evil, by Ellen Handler Spitz; "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" Revisited: On the Ethics of Representation, by Lisa Saltzman; Playing the Holocaust, by Ernst van Alphen; Playing it Safe? The Display of Transgressive Art in the Museum, by Reesa Greenberg; Keeping One's Hands Clean: Six Commissioned Portraits of a Perpetrator: Christine Borland's L'Homme Double, 1997; Male Fantasies of Hitler: Confusing Gender and Identity: Roee Rosen's Live and Die as Eva Braun, 1995; Transforming Images into Symbols: Mischa Kuball's Hitler's Cabinet, 1990; The Conflation of Good and Evil: Piotr Uklanski's The Nazis, 1998; A Feminist Rejoinder to Uklanski's The Nazis: Elke Krystufek's Economical Love Series, 1998; 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; Impossible Bedfellows: Adolf Hitler and Marcel Duchamp: Rudolf Herz's Zugzwang, 1995; The Villain Speaks the Victim's Language: Boaz Arad's Safam, 2000, and Marcel Marcel, 2000; Fascinating Fascism: Then or Now? Maciej Toporowicz's Eternity #14, 1991; Mirrors of Innocence and Violence: Alain S chas's Enfants G t s, 1997; Toying with Terror: Zbigniew Libera's LEGO Concentration Camp Set, 1996; Fashioning Terror: Tom Sachs's Giftgas Giftset, 1998, and Prada Deathcamp, 1998; Staging Depravity, Mat Collishaw's Burnt Almonds (Gustav and Helga), 2000.. 1st. Paperback. NEW. 4to. Collectible.