TOO JEWISH?
CHALLENGING
TRADITIONAL
IDENTITIES
Part 5 of 8

Re-Presenting Popular Culture

Re-Presenting Popular Culture features artists who elevate Jewish ethnic imagery to the "exalted status" of mainstream popular culture. Through Conceptual and appropriated Pop Art strategies, the artists expose the marketing of American consumer culture and its wholesale purchase by ethnic Americans. They then reverse the pattern by shedding the accoutrements of assimilation, envisioning, for example, a Jewish America where matzah replaces Wonder bread and ritual objects become chic designer commodities. Kenneth Goldsmith's work explores Jewish counterculture heroes of the 1960s such as Abbie Hoffman and Bob Dylan, seeking to identify with the obvious ethnic aspects of their highly public personas. Cary Leibowitz's and Rhonda Lieberman's unorthodox Chanel Hanukkah (1991), a conceptual assemblage inspired by Hanukkah lamps and designer accessories, using fake Chanel handbags and lipsticks, parodies the stereotype of the Jewish American Princess. Nurit Newman's Complex Princess (1995), with its unusual combination of matzah meal and decorative glitter, comments on the amazing role shift from the sacrificing "Jewish mother," to the "Jewish princess," identified by her insatiable materialistic drive. In Shecky (1992), Neil Goldberg has created a small-scale, somewhat ambivalent, homage to Jewish Borscht Belt comedians. Goldberg's comedians are plastered on real matzah.


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