science

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century rather than just read about it. In short: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is a 1980 series of silkscreen prints by American artist Andy Warhol. It features ten portraits of influential Jewish figures drawn from a broad range of disciplines, including politics, theatre, psychology, literature, music, and science.

Key takeaways

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is a 1980 series of silkscreen prints by American artist Andy Warhol. It features ten portraits of influential Jewish figures drawn from a broad range of disciplines, including politics, theatre, psychology, literature, music, and science. Among those depicted are Golda Meir, Sarah Bernhardt, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, and the Marx Brothers. Following their initial exhibition, the paintings toured synagogues and Jewish cultural institutions throughout the United States.

Background Pop artist Andy Warhol began working on the series in 1979, which was commissioned by art dealer Ronald Feldman. The subjects of the portraits were subsequently chosen by Feldman after consultation with the director of the art school of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, Ruth Levine, and with the Center's gallery director, Susan Morgenstein. Feldman had originally been asked by an Israeli art dealer for a series of portraits of Golda Meir. Warhol nicknamed the series "Jewish geniuses." Feldman researched and secured rights to the source photographs used in the series, including images of Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, and Albert Einstein. Photographer Trude Fleischmann provided Warhol with a signed portrait of Einstein free of charge.

Description The series consists of ten silkscreened canvases, each measuring 40 by 40 inches (100 cm × 100 cm). Five sets of the painted canvas series were produced. Warhol also created the images as a portfolio of 40 by 32 inch (102 × 81 cm) screenprints on Lenox Museum Board, issued in editions of 200.

Subjects The subjects depicted in the series are:

Actress Sarah Bernhardt United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis Philosopher Martin Buber Physicist Albert Einstein Psychologist and writer Sigmund Freud Stage and screen comedians the Marx Brothers Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir Composer and songwriter George Gershwin Novelist Franz Kafka Novelist and critic Gertrude Stein

Exhibitions

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century was first shown at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, Maryland in March 1980. In September 1980, a set was displayed at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. That month, another set was mounted at the Linda Farris Gallery in Seattle, Washington. From September to November 1980, the series was included in a Warhol exhibit at the Portland Center for Visual Arts in Portland, Oregon. The series was also exhibited at the Jewish Museum of New York from September 1980 to January 1981. In November 1980, the series was included in a celebration of Jews titled Variations on a Jewish Themes at the Hartford Jewish Community Center in Harford, Connecticut. The series was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London between January and June 2006, and returned to New York's Jewish Museum in 2008 in an exhibition called Warhol's Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered. The series was exhibited at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, England, in 2011. From November 2024, to February 2025, a rare complete set of Warhol's preparatory collages for the series was exhibited in New York City at Lévy Gorvy Dayan in the exhibition Andy Warhol: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.

Collections A set of screenprints was donated to New York's Jewish Museum by Lorraine and Martin Beitler in 2006. Two complete sets of the series are located in Des Moines, Iowa. One is held by the Des Moines Art Center, while the other is displayed at Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

Critical reception The exhibition had a distinctly varied and even quite harsh critical reception. The Philadelphia Inquirer called the series "Jewploitation" and a critic for The Village Voice wrote that the show was "hypocritical, cynical and exploitative."The New York Times review by Hilton Kramer stated that "the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil" and that "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". Carrie Rickey reviewed the show more positively for Artforum, writing that "the paintings are staggering" and adding they had an "unexpected mix of cultural anthropology, portraiture, celebration of celebrity, and study of intelligentsia—all at the same time." Roger Hurlburt of the Fort Lauderdale News praised Warhol's approach: "Warhol's highly graphic technique masterfully singles out those traits that emphasize a universal aspect for each personality. … The image may be immediately recognizable, but Warhol forces us to evaluate the work while he remains distant." Bernard Hanson of the Hartford Courant stated that the portraits were "handsome." He added that the show was "quite an experience. Warhol combines the photographic image, the elegantly simplified outline and the magic interplay of planes of color to produce a vision which is part document and part fantasy."

Subsequent assessments In 2006, the National Portrait Gallery wrote that "Warhol's insistence that the subjects be deceased invests the series with an inescapable character of mortality. The faces of the dead appear as if behind a veneer of modernity. The tension sustained between photograph and abstraction focuses the issue of their celebrity. Probing the faultlines between the person and their manufactured, surface image, Warhol presents these individuals' fame as a complex metamorphosis". In 2008, Ken Johnson of The New York Times wrote that "What is remarkable about the paintings now, however, is how uninteresting they are. What once made them controversial – the hint of a jokey, unconscious anti-Semitism – has evaporated, leaving little more than bland, posterlike representations. The paintings do have a certain visual panache; you could even call some of them jazzy. … The issue for Warhol is not what his subjects did and not Jewishness in general. His real subject was fame. He was interested in famous people simply because they were famous".

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century

In research: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1980 paintings, 20th-century portraits, 20th-century prints, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century in simple terms?

Why does Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.