Jewish national art at Bezalel copied European Christian iconography

Evidence

If the emulation of oriental techniques and oriental-like designs was acceptable in decorative handicraft for the sake of creating an “Eretz Yisrael” style, a different approach was adopted for the depiction of images. As mentioned earlier, the creation of a Jewish national art in Palestine was a primary goal in the founding of Bezalel, and for its artists and teachers the subject matter was as much as important as the style. The prominence of biblical themes in representational art indicates that this was considered one of the keys to achieving this goal. But the actual models for Bezalel biblical art, in iconography and in style, were in fact drawn from European Christian art since the Renaissance and nineteenth-century orientalist art. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 605

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the paradox of nationalist movements borrowing the very colonial/Christian visual language they define themselves against — parallels the hybrid identity themes in Naqvi’s Home Boy.