Visible/invisible Herzl. The meaning of portrait and the quest for aniconism

ABSTRACT

At the end of the nineteenth century Theodore Herzl presented ideas that would embrace the visual arts in order to promote the new Zionist movement. Art was to play an important role in forming Zionist awareness, with Herzl's image expressing the ideas, as well as personifying Zionism and the Jews. However, a part of the Jewish religious community could not come to terms with the fact that Western European art had found its way into Jewish culture, therefore all debates on all visual aspects of Zionism were based on aniconism. This is why, some images of Herzl try to avoid direct visualization of the face, the most notable examples being profile pictures, silhouette images, micrographics, presenting him from behind or in dim light. All these modes of incomplete representation found their justification in traditional Jewish texts relating to the visual arts.

KEYWORDS:

• Zionism
• Theodor Herzl
• Jewish art
• aniconism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Artur Kamczycki is a lecturer at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Gniezno), Poland (Collegium Europeaum Gnesnense, Department of Culture of European Judaism). In 2009 he defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Theodor Herzl and Zionist Iconography to 1933 at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. He has published papers about Herzl's iconography in Studia Judaica; Artium Quaestiones; Journal of Modern Jewish Studies; Studia Orientalia.

Notes

1. See, for example, Stand (1905); Thon (1914); de Haas (1927); Weisgal (1929); Fraenkel (1946); Cohen (1959); Beller (1991); Falk (1993); Kornberg (1993); Schoeps (1995) Zionist ‘idea of return' (see, for example, Avineri (1981); Hertzberg (1997); Reinharz and Shapira (1995); Berkowitz (1993, 1997, 2004); Stanislawski (2001); Haumann (1997) and Tomaszewski and Żbikowski (2001, 447–460).

2. Those concepts usually focus on the issue of non-representability of God, yet all artistic forms, which by default are something which does not pertain to the essence of God, leave a margin for interpretation, a fact addressed in the history of Jewish culture on many occasions, also by rabbinic authorities.

3. Literature of the subject often fails to distinguish between the versions, while some authors see it as one illustration.

4. The profile was therefore willingly employed in caricature as a ‘broken' outline, with its comical features and disproportions.

5. It should also be noted that in medieval Arabic manuscripts a profile indicated a distinguished protagonist, while less important figures are shown in three-quarter view, which is also associated with linguistic aspect of denoting third-person singular.

6. In general, as Gadamer observes, a portrait, being a special case of ontological values assigned to a given visualization, constitutes a reference to a figure which was found outside the portrait as such (index) and is historically associated with the essence (idea) of mimesis, or resemblance. A profile is therefore a transformation of “you” of the image referencing “it” in the image, to “it” image referencing “him/her” figure (from the image). Consequently, the idea of veneration is called into question. A profile likeness is perceived as a “half-figure” and thereby circumvents the idea of representation, the idea of making a likeness, as a representation where only one eye (seen from the side) rather than a pair of eyes is shown (Gadamer 1986, 161).

7. The term “resemblance”—as Sh. West reports—is a “copy” or “duplicate” of external physical features of the portrayed person, but it is not their permanent and fixed feature (West 2004, 12, 21, 44). In contemporary Hebrew, a portrait is denoted with the words dejokan or dimajon [sic], both deriving from domé, meaning similar. In turn, andarta or andartat hazeh stand for bust (see Klugman 1993, 114–115).

8. The commentary pertains to depictions in profile view.

9. This act of commemoration dates back to the beginnings of the eighteenth century and derives from the theatre of shadows, which had enjoyed popularity among Jews since the thirteenth century, as well as from the planar nature of cut-out Hebrew letters. In Jewish tradition, letters possess sacred properties, so cutting them out and pasting is a form of worship in the nature of prayer. Consequently, just as the letters, silhouettes cut out from paper, acquired a devotional, commemorative aspect. Such artefacts connoted certain values: the flatness of a two-dimensional object and the utilitarian and mundane quality of the material—as opposed to sculptures in stone, which denote permanence and susceptibility to becoming objects of idolatry. Moreover, such portraits would only show the head or bust, but never the whole figure (Shadur and Shadur 2002, 21, 183–184).

10. ‘We read the text in order to be able to ‘read’ the images” (Ferber 1977, 20–21).

11. Freedberg, still situates this artistic formula on the boundary of representability and is inclined to recognize the artefact as a “fully-fledged” image rather than an attempt to “bypass” it—emphasizing the inevitable, psychological thirst of the masses for visual expression (1989, 56, 58).

12. Three forms of expression are important in the creation of the world: Numbers, Letters and Words (Waite 1970, 62; Ferber 1977, 21; Prokopowicz 1994, V–X).

13. Nevertheless, a scribe is not an independent creator but God's ‘agent'. Also, Sergio Quinzio observes that the contemporary Hebrew thing (davar) meant word (mila) in biblical Hebrew (being identical here) (Quinzio 2005, 25–26).

14. In his publications, the author does not discuss Zionism or images of Herzl.

15. The event is described in The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, vol. II 670 and in: Theodor Herzl. Briefe und Tagebücher, vol. III 590.

16. The photograph may be found in the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem. Thus far, it has not been analysed in any of the publications known to me.

17. In turn, the Babylonian Talmud recounts a debate of scholars discussing why the human was created as the last, that is, in the end, and the answer is: so that the Saducees (heretics in the eyes of the Talmud) could not claim that God had a companion while He was creating the world. In other words, so that the human being could not claim contribution in the creation of the world, TB Sam. 38a (see Kochan 1997, 138).

18. See interpretations of the phrase in Idel (2006, 322–323).

19. Human substantiality is in the spirit, or non-materiality.

20. Although the human being (its structure) is immanently bound to the matter and form of this world, the latter are not a reference to materiality or physicality as such. Hence, as Fine observes, this cosmological phenomenon (the spirit of the universe, or by default the spiritual structure of the universe) may be experienced by the human being through physical processes (in conjunction with matter and form). In fact, this is what the human has been fated to do or be afflicted with. (Fine 130–131). See also (Idel 2006, 196–198).

21. On the back one finds the following inscription: in 50 years, a or the Jewish state will have come into existence—Herzl and a handwritten address (in Hebrew): “Herzl's room, Stern's House, 83 Mamilla Street, Jerusalem.”

22. Kochan writes that the contemporary mass production of visual objects (showing face, for instance)—juxtaposed with the significance of a work of art contributes to the trivialization of the latter, which in turn is identical with the discussed “act of deprecation,” partial disassembly or insult (Kochan 1997, 127, n. 62).

23. It should be remarked that in European culture of the early twentieth century, especially in the German-speaking cultural circle (in philosophy, anthropology, psychology, literature and art) there functioned a dominant notion presuming the existence of general, “typical” visual features which could be ascribed to nations as well as specific social groups—as gestaltism.