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NEXTBOOK FEATURE
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Lekhu ve-nelekhah (Come Ye and Let Us Walk): The Jewish Students of Kazimir Malevich
Anna Wexler Katsnelson, doctoral student in art history and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
My dissertation is on Malevich. This is a side interest, because I saw an exhibition organized by the State Russian Museum, In Malevich's Circle, and was amazed by the list of all these Jewish names. Not to say that the Russian avant-garde didn't have Jewish participants, but this is a happy geographical coincidence.
During the 1920s, Malevich was a teacher at the art school founded by Marc Chagall in the town of Vitebsk, which had a disproportionately Jewish population. Most of his students were naturally Jewish. He basically inherits the students from Chagall. Malevich swoops in and takes over, this looming figure of a messiah-type artist who gives them an internationalist view. There's a good amount of mysticism in his art and writing, and this Oedipal relationship with a very strong teacher who subsumes the identity of his students to such a degree that there's nothing Jewish left except their names.
Lev Yudin—he's the focus of my talk—exemplifies the tragedy of Soviet Jewry. He comes from a very assimilated family. He enters the school as a young boy. For a while he is completely subsumed by Malevich's teaching and has a hard time finding his own voice. He follows Malevich to Petrograd, and moves into the field of children's book illustration, which was an avenue for artists under Socialist Realism. He enlisted and he died somewhere on the front during World War II.
Can I tell you that there's anything Jewish in his work? Not that I can find. But there is lots of archival material that I wasn't able to get my hands on. Lev Yudin's diary wasn't published, it's in the State Russian Museum. I haven't got all of it. Once I do I hope to find something more.
More from the AJS Conference:
American Jews and Marriage Counseling, 1920-1945
"Based on a True Story": Popular Imaginings among American Jews of Gender
in Ultra-Orthodox Society
Bi'ur Hametz and the Ancient Semitic Magic
Confronting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Jewish Studies Classroom"
Gefilte Fish and Beautiful Shoes: Soviet Jews Describe the Ideal Jewish Woman
Jewish Identity at Work
Money in Jewish Eyes: Object of Desire or Derision?
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and their Daughters
The "Normal" Mysticism of Jewish Meal Rituals
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The Rise of the Ladino Theater in the Ottoman Empire
About the Conference
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