Ten Portraits of Jews of the 20th Century (Golda Meir)

Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century depicts luminaries of modern Jewish culture: Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis, Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, George Gershwin, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Golda Meir, and Gertrude Stein. Warhol referred to these great thinkers, politicians, performers, and writers as his “Jewish geniuses.” He depicts them in his signature pop-art fashion, splashed with neon colors, overlapped with geometric shapes, and outlined, as if drawn with crayon.

The idea for the series came from art dealer Ronald Feldman, who together with Susan Morgenstein, director of the art gallery of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, came up with the list of names. The series was warmly received by Jewish audiences, despite negative reviews from art critics who considered them exploitative. Hilton Kramer of The New York Times wrote, “The way it exploits its Jewish subjects without showing the slightest grasp of their significance is offensive — or would be, anyway, if the artist had not already treated so many non-Jewish subjects in the same tawdry manner.”

With a bit of hindsight it is easier to appreciate these prints as classic examples of Warhol’s preoccupation with fame and his blurring of boundaries between high art and mass culture and commerce.