You Shall Not Make an Image. Commandments, Everyday Life and Change
Jewish visual art, created in the presence of the one God, did not always correspond to Western art concepts and developed under strong religious influence, particularly the Second Commandment and its varying and developing interpretations. Synagogue interiors, ritual and everyday objects, and books were often decorated avoiding figural compositions, employing animalistic and floral motifs or ornaments that carried meaningful references to various scriptures, prayers, and worldviews. Art was undoubtedly influenced by traditions of neighbouring nations, adjacent to the Jewish diaspora’s living location. The modernisation that gained momentum throughout Europe in the late 18th–19th century, the Haskalah ideas, and other historical events inevitably began to change the Jewish perception of art. New intellectual shifts enabled Jews to create visual art more freely and actively, expand artistic techniques, and introduce more diverse subjects of works. Jewish sculpture, painting, and graphic art flourished. Here, visions and forms of the modernising world unfolded harmonising and often intertwining the elements of Jewish folklore, as the search for identity became more pronounced.
The starting point for the 2025 exhibition marking the centenary of YIVO Institute’s establishment in Vilnius is the Second Commandment and its different interpretations in Jewish tradition and Christian civilisation. Art reveals the relationships between nations – to remain separate, to exoticise, to curiously ‘peek through the keyhole,’ to seek similarity, and having achieved similarity, to relentlessly search for new ways of expressing one’s own identity. Thus, this exhibition presents the heritage of traditional Jewish art or the interconnections of coexisting cultures reflected in the artistic space and also unites for a common purpose which is to preserve, study, disseminate, and perpetuate knowledge about Litvak culture and history, i.e. one of the main objectives set by YIVO a century ago.
