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"Art, Image, and Warhol Connections" at the Jewish Museum NY

48 Jews (Installation at the Jewish Museum), 2' x 2' Each, Oil on Canvas, 2007 "Bob Dylan ", 2' x 2', Oil on Canvas, 2007 Elvis Presley, 2008

	48 Jews (2007)		Anne Frank (2007)		The Great Americans (2008)		Collages (2008)
	This group of paintings examines the representation of Jews in the Diaspora. The images are gathered from contemporary media sources and selected for their iconic quality. The uniform size, composition, and subject of the paintings in 48 Jews suggest a canon, Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980) or Gerhard Richter's 48 Portraits. 48 Jews, however, continually repaints, adds, and discards individuals, preventing closure or completeness. The individuality of each subject is affirmed with stylistic inconsistency, challenging their status as members of a coherent group and engaging the debate over the facts and myths of Jewish identity.		New Series of Anne Franks. Taking one painting out of the Jews and extending it. This re-interprets all the jews by exploding the notion of representation within an individual painting. Continually painting a single subject further develops the ever changing aspect of identity.		This series examines the connection between the American heroic and celebrity. These 39 portrait paintings explore a notion of the abject in celebrity. They point to our cultural obsession with beauty and how what is hot often coincides with an alien grotesqueness. Like ’48 Jews’, the uniform size and subject of the paintings in The Great Americans suggest a canon, Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (1974-1979) This series began from a Discovery Channel documentary which asked America to vote for the greatest American. America voted and in the top ten Oprah Winfrey ranked higher than Jonas Salk. The Great Americans explores the perverse nature of championing a talk show host above the inventor of the polio vaccine.		New Collages and works on Paper

Abshalom Jac Lahav painter and artist. Portraits of famous jews. Portraits of anne frank. Recent body of work a series of jewish portraits. This grouping I present 35 famous Jews painted with oil on canvas, each painting measuring 2’ x 2’.  All portraits are displayed together in an evenly spaced rectangular grid. The portraits include Anne Frank, Alan Greenspan, Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka, Elvis and Vidal Sassoon (Elvis had four generations of maternal Jewish decent.) Then a series of anne franks. Anne frank is interesting as icon and painting subject. Anne Frank was an artist herself and paintings of anne frank make sense. These paintings of anne frank decompose the image and reduce anne frank to a painterly expression. Portraits of anne frank typically have alot of meaning, these paintings of anne frank have questionable meaning and insight into the identity of anne frank. The other recent series 48 Jews, an exploration into jewish identity and jewish painting through contemporary painting. Jewish painting by Abshalom Jac Lahav, or Jew paintings Jac Lahav, or just Lahav, mainly jac lahav, jewish painter, painter of jews, warhol like, and andy warhol related paintings. These paintings are jewish gerhard richter related. figurative surrealist, neo-surrealism, new surrealism, figurative expressionism, art, fine art, abstract, artist of the unconscious, these are all aspects of the artists work. Studying art and the unconscious. Art and the collective unconscious. Jac Lahav is a jewish art working in NY. He grew up in israel. And has found himself painting jews of the diaspora and painting portraits of anne frank. Zionistas, Zionists, Abshalom Jac Lahav Israeli artist and painting israeli heritage. 48 Jews is building off gerhard richter 48 portraits and playing off warhol portraits. The work only loosely relates to the warhol series of jewish geniuses, and competes with these paintings of jewish geniuses. Paintings include: painting of eli Wiesel, painting of allan greenspan, allen greenspan, painting of jeffrey sachs, a painting of paula abdul, painting of shel silverstein, painting of alan dershowitz, a few paintings of elvis, which replicate the feeling of the anne frank portraits. Painting of Bizzy Bone, painting of Betty Fridan, Painting of Uri Geller, painting of proust, painting of marcel proust, paintings of ruth bader ginsburg, painting of cindy sherman, painting of nancy spero, painting of allen ginsburg, painting of bob dylan, three paintings of barry manilow. The berry manilow paintings are pretty funny. A painting of anne frank with the clash, some portraits of kate moss and the olsen twins, who are not jewish but are pretty interesting. Paintings of sigmund freud, sigmund freud is one of the most famous jewish scientists of the past century. A painting of clement greenberg, painting of monica lewinsky, painting of hannah arendt, painting of martin buber, painting of robert rubin, painting of slash (slash is jewish) painting of noam chomsky, painting of leon trotsky, painting of marcel marceau, the famous mime, painting of primo levy, painting of frida kahlo (who was not jewish. Frida Kahlo's father was in fact not jewish!) Painting of Houdini, painting of Marc Chagall, painting of Karl Marx, painting of lisa bonet (lisa bonet was jewish too, remember her from the cosby show?) Painting of franz kafka, who was also in the warhol series of famous jewish (warhols jewish geniuses.) A painting of carl sagan, painting of gertrude stein (who was also in the Andy Warhol's Jewish Geniuses series) a portrait of neils bohr (the periodic table, and a painting of eva hesse, a famous jewish sculptor.These paintings look at what it means to be Jewish through pop icons, historical figures, Jewish culture and visual culture.  The paintings are about identity, however this identity is highly questionable. Does the Jewishness of these people unite them as a group? Is their Jewishness relevent to their accomplishments and their iconic status? Is it possible to even recognize them as Jewish? Furthermore, when the figures themselves are barely recognizable, do they function as portraits?
The work continues a tradition and history of portrait painting, while questioning the nature of the historical portrait. Most notably the work echoes a series of portraits by Gerhard Richter that present a line-up of famous white western men in his typical dead-pan, gray-scaled, blurry photo-realist style. The aesthetic of the Richter portraits is austere, uniform, and dehumanized. My portraits play off this particularly German intellectual identity, making a cultural 180 degree turn to celebrate painting, color, and the humanity of mark making. These portraits also question the notion of painting identity by pairing two notorious characters at the center of the debate. In the middle of the grid we find Marc Chagall, famous for a quintessential Jewish style, across from Frida Kahlo, renowned for her Hispanic/feminist style with her Jewish roots as a mere footnote.
Jewish identity has always been difficult to define. Is Judaisim a race, an ethnicity, a tradition, a religion? These paintings embody the questions of Jewish identity, and go further to question identity itself. richter jew paintings, warhol famous jews contemporary artist abshalom lahav remakes or works with richter 48 portraits and creats 48 portraits of famouse jews. Famouse pop jewish figures, famouse pop jewish portraits, 48 portraits of pop jewish figures. Abshalom great Israeli painting, Israel and Art living in New York City. Abshalom Jac Lahav welcomes you to Actiondocument