George Segal

References:

Leo Bersani, “George Segal: the Holocaust, 1984″ (Art Forum, Feb, 1999): http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_37/ai_54050181

Joan Rosenbaum, “George Segal and the Jewish Experience”, in: Americam Art, vol. 15, no. 1 (2001)

Melissa Gould

Still Life: Anne Frank Memorial Pencils (1988)

Floor Plan (1991)

“Notes From Underground,” by  Alvin Curran.  You can hear an excerpt here: http://www.alvincurran.com/NotesFromUndergroundhiMP3excerpt.mp3

From Adler to Zybler (1992)

“FROM ADLER TO ZYLBER (literally, “from eagle to silver”), “an alphabetic cosmology of the dead,” is an invented lexicon of obituary pictograms based on German-Jewish names taken from an Auschwitz transport list.

The original document inspiring this project is the 1000-name transport list of Convoy #42 (6 November 1942; France to Auschwitz), which I accidentally found in Memorial to the Jews Deported from France 1942-1944 by Serge Klarsfeld. My grandfather was among 1,000 Jews from all over Europe on this particular train, many of whom had sought refuge in what had been unoccupied France.

FROM ADLER TO ZYLBER is a symbolic continuation of Convoy #42’s journey.

From this transport list I originally selected 100 German-Jewish names with meanings referring to elements in the natural world. Each name is represented by a visual interpretation in the form of a pictogram–pairing the name, written in Gothic script, with a number and a different associative image. The images were taken from pre-War sources of European popular culture–lexicons, school- and text-books, fairy-tales, children’s books and other printed ephemera, then collaged together and sometimes slightly altered by drawing. This mixture of elements is contained by a black border (reminiscent of a death notice) and a thin outer edge of white. Each pictogram, photocopied onto white paper, measures 36″ by 36″ square. I now present this project as a 36-pictogram installation scaled down from the original 100 (36 is a multiple of 18; in the Hebrew alphabet the number 18 is equivalent to the word chai, meaning life).

The title FROM ADLER TO ZYLBER refers not only to the first and last names chosen from the transport list of Convoy #42 but also describes the system by which the pictograms are arranged within a given space. They mimic the order of nature–Adler (eagle) is hung high above, Zylber (silver) nearest the ground, and so on.

FROM ADLER TO ZYLBER is an ongoing project having many variants. The open-ended FROM ADLER TO ZYLBER cycle is a clue-filled rebus seeking to tell a story without words “illustrating” the tragic fate of the European Jews. I consider the pictograms as gravestones for people who had no funerals.”

Schadenfreude: an Installation (1995)

“SCHADENFREUDE 

explored anti-Semitism by way of a “Nazi wallpaper showroom.” (Schadenfreude is a German word meaning the delight one gets from someone else’s misfortune.) Using illustrations taken from one 1935 German Brockhaus dictionary I created six wallpaper patterns through combining and slightly altering the illustrations by drawing on them. While the designs may seem innocuous at first glance, their more tragic and ironic implications (as seen from the historical perspective of more than 60 years) are revealed with longer viewing. The motifs were first enlarged as photocopies, and then produced as silkscreened wallpaper which I ultimately arranged into a 1600-square-foot three-room installation at the Imperial War Museum, London, (1995).” >/p>

All text and images from artists web page. Online at:

http://www.megophone.com/projects.html

 

Art Spiegelman, “Maus”

 

Art Spiegelman, Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale. My Father Bleeds History, New York: Pantheon, 1986.

Art Spiegelman, Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale. And Here My Troubles Began, New York: Pantheon, 1991.

 

References:

James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988.

Jean Amery, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1980.

Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.

Saul Friedlander, (ed.) Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution”, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.

Saul Friedlander, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, New York: Harper, 1984.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2278/is_n3_v20/ai_18298424/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

Auschwitz

 

“This destruction of the ability to measure destruction results in Auschwitz’s fundamental ambiguity as a historical site and event, as well as a symbol: forever caught in the ambiguity of its signifying force, Auschwitz can never be more than a symbol of what can no longer be symbolized. For we have lost the measure to decide of what Auschwitz is a symbol. In this sense, too, Auschwitz, and the Holocaust for which it synecdochically stands, cannot be represented. For the metaphorical principles of language have ceased to function.”

Ernst van Alphen, “Caught by Images. Visual Imprints in Holocaust Testimonies”, in: S. Hornstein and F.Jacobowitz (ed.) Image and Remembrance. Representation and the Holocaust, Indiana University Press 2003.