Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory

“Caught by History is a finely balanced, scholarly narrative of van Alphen’s encounters with Holocaust literature, testimony, and art. It brings to our attention little-known artists, and tackles convincingly the bothersome issue of the validity of art in the face of catastrophe, and particularly this catastrophe.” —Geoffrey Hartman, Yale University.

In the face of strong moral and aesthetic pressure to deal with the Holocaust in strictly historical and documentary modes, this book discusses why and how reenactment of the Holocaust in art and imaginative literature can be successful in simultaneously presenting, analyzing, and working through this apocalyptic moment in human history.

Library Journal

Van Alphen, director of communication and education at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, takes three artistsCharlotte Salomon, Christian Boltanski, and Armandoand uses their works to describe the nature of artistic production after Auschwitz. He sees tragedies of narrative technique and historic imagination as cultural artifacts in dealing with human catastrophe and representation, mimesis, and reenactment as three significant methods of describing the indescribable. Salomon is carefully described as an artist of resistance, while French artist Boltanski is presented as an exemplar of archival art. The Dutch writer Armando uses the war as a metaphoric statement, as an index to reality. The last chapter is van Alphen's experience, both uncanny and sublime, of living in the house of a Holocaust victim. A difficult subject, well reasoned and thought out; recommended for academic libraries.Gene Shaw, NYPL