Oldal 506 [506]
When Ytzig Met Shtrul: On Schmoozing and Jewish Conspiracy in Romanian Árt
image, forcing it to express an alternate content. Ihe unheard dialogue demands
an exposure; it is here where the composition, by means of real or only seeming
facial expressions, gestures, ambient elements, lights, and colors, directs to a fair
level of perception. The full clarity of the message remains elusive, the visual pan¬
tomime being able only to suggest the general interest of the speakers. Ihe message
becomes explicit only with the use of captions, especially in the case of the press
cartoons, and with the text assuming a function of relay to the image.
Grouping, with its inherent dialogue, verbalized or simply inferential, was par¬
adoxically the effect of a social exclusion or differentiation. The Jews were not the
only ethnic groups represented on a regular basis in the official art; the Gypsies and
the Turks (especially in the interwar period) were subject to collective representa¬
tions, too. However, the last ones were organized in group portraits and only rarely
in interactive compositions. Their dialogue was either absent or settled between the
group and the viewer. Did not they talk to their own kind? Of course they did, but
their dialogue was insufficiently intriguing and socially irrelevant, as they lived in
distant communities.
But the Jews never seem to simply pose in groups; even when they are actually
doing it, they regularly simulate a chance encounter or an organized meeting, set¬
ting upon a discussion. Their behavioral characteristics completed a general and
natural profile, a desirable step in the artist’s documentation, but might have also
solidified a social prejudice, no matter the artist’s intentions. The artistic motif of
the Jewish group was a formal encasement for stereotypical projections.
The inner connection, a perfectly normal conduct for any community, was
an identifying and discriminatory marker for the Jews. The behind-closed-doors
“Zionist meetings,” literary clubs, and synagogue gatherings were complemented
by the more visible postliturgical chatting, the Jew-to-Jew brokerage, the ad hoc
street gatherings between merchants. All these, and many other formal and in¬
formal gatherings, consolidated, in the Romanian conscience, an ill-intentioned
solidarity and allowed for the perception of the Jewish get-together as dangerous.
For the anti-Semite artist and viewer, the Jewish socializing was a crime. Ad¬
mittedly, the European conscience outlined a stereotype of the Jewish conspirator,
filling out the criminal portrait of the cunning, money-thirsty Jew. In arts, the
Jewish evilness could be outlined individually, by means of physiognomic bearings
and personal gestures. However, taking a more strict interest in his conspirative
nature meant more than unveiling an individual, but rather a human interaction.
This was the way for the secret plot to be uncovered. The Jewish group could also
be understood as a multiplication of a singular personality, offering different in¬
stances of a singular Other. Thus, the artist was given the permission to discover
the most reclusive intimacy and to translate an abstract soliloquy into a lucid dia¬
logue.
The Jewish compositional group answered to a faultfinding mythology. All
their grand criminal deeds, either magical-ritual, such as the deicide or the infan¬
503