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Questioning perceptions of Jewish identity in the work of Ary Stillman

This chapter takes issue with the scholarship by Donald Kuspitt, Thomas B Hess and Mark Godfrey on abstract expressionism that focuses on painting as a cipher for Jewish identity. Instead, through a close reading of the art work and empirical research of the artists letters, Garfield takes up Michael Leja’s emphasis on the Modern Man discourse and Brian Cheyette’s scholarship in English studies on the bifurcation of the figure of the Jew to think through the work, positing that while Stillman was a traditionally orthodox Jew, his painting aimed to be Modern internationalist abstraction. Garfield’s argument builds on the research into other abstract painters of the same period who have been caught between readings of post colonial identity and the Modern intention of the time (Stillman is also subject to Othering as a Jew), particularly her writings on the Indian artist Avinash Chandra (‘Avinash Chandra: A Reappraisal’, catalogue essay for Chandra exhibition at Osbourne Samuel Fine Art, 2006) and the Pakistani artist Anwar Shemza who both worked as abstract artists in the UK in the post war era (Rachel Garfield, ‘Anwar Jalal Shemza, Take 2: The British Landscape’, Green Cardamom, Sept 2010 and the symposium at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, ‘When the Sixties Didn’t Swing’, November 2010), as well as her PhD on Jewish art. The catalogue essay on Chandra contributed to the research for the current ‘Migrations’ exhibition at the Tate Britain. Chandra was the first Indian artist to be bought by the Tate in 1965 but this is the first time it has been put on display. This chapter is part of a long standing enquiry into Identity politics and post-colonialism, painting, abstraction and Modernity.