Andy Warhol is widely recognised as one of the most significant artists of the late twentieth century, and Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is, arguably, among his most important paintings. However, twenty six years after it was created and first exhibited, numerous questions remain about the artist's intentions and the work's meaning.

A pantheon of great thinkers, politicians, performers, musicians and writers, Warhol's great sequence of portraits of 'Jewish geniuses' was originally shown at The Jewish Museum, New York in 1980. Arching across the century, the breadth of achievement represented by these figures is formidable. Indeed, the selection seems calculated to touch every aspect of human experience. The line-up comprised: Sarah Bernhardt, the celebrated French stage actress; Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States; Martin Buber the renowned philosopher, story-teller and pedagogue; Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century; Sigmund Freud the hugely influential founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology; the Marx Brothers, celebrated comedians of vaudeville, stage and cinema; Golda Meir, one of the founders of the State of Israel; George Gershwin, the distinguished American composer; Franz Kafka, the major German writer, and Gertrude Stein, the important American novelist.

Even so, the critical response to the show was decidedly mixed and, at times, intensely hostile. The New York Times was unsparing: 'the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil'. In sharp contrast, Art Forum argued: 'the paintings are staggering', and it noted 'an unexpected mix of cultural anthropology, portraiture, celebration of celebrity, and study of intelligentsia ¬ all at the same time'.

The paintings are a remarkable achievement and in many ways represent a peak in Warhol's oeuvre. Magisterial in conception, they advance a new subtlety and sophistication in technical terms. One of their most compelling aspects is the way surface and image are held in a satisfying and fascinating dialogue, generating new depths of meaning and implication. This is due in no small part to Warhol's combination of abstract elements with archival photographs which strike the viewer with the force of familiarity.

The disjunction between sitter and surface is a visual device that unites the portraits, but the series has a conceptual unity also. 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. As individuals they belong in the past, while their image persists in the present. 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. The real has been transformed into a glorious, poignant, other-worldly abstraction.

Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century is available as a set or individually

Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924

Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 in Prague, Austria-Hungary - June 3, 1924 in Vienna, Austria) was one of the major German language writers of the 20th century most of whose work was published posthumously. His unique body of writing continues to challenge critics, and attempts to classify his work are generally inadequate.

Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, into a middle class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, in the Bohemian Kingdom – a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His father was the dry goods (Galanteriewaren) merchant Hermann Kafka (1852-1931) and his mother was Julie Kafka, nee Löwy (1856-1934). Although his native language was German, he also learned Czech as a child, since his father came into Prague from south Bohemian Czech-speaking Jewish community ("kafka" means "jackdaw" in Czech) and he wanted his son to be fluent in both languages. He also had some knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert and he had a sentimental affinity for Napoleon. He had two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, neither of whom lived two full years and died before Kafka was six, and three sisters, Elli, Valli and Ottla. From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the elementary school (Deutsche Knabenschule) at Masná St. (Fleischmarkt) in Prague and then the high school at Staroměstské náměstí (located in Kinsky Palace) where he finished his Matura exam in 1901. He went on to study law in the University of Prague, and obtained his law degree in 1906, then worked for a worker's accident insurance agency. He began writing on the side. In 1917 he began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla, with whom he had much in common.

The asceticism and self-depreciation with which Kafka is associated is well-documented in the letters of his and of his friends and family; however, it does need to be put into context. Chronic sickness—whether it was psychosomatic is a matter for debate—plagued him; aside from tuberculosis, he suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments. He attempted to counteract this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk (the latter possibly the causal factor of his tuberculosis). Most likely today he would have been diagnosed as clinically depressed, but because of this his self-critical attitudes are severely exaggerated. While at school, he took an active role in organizing literary and social events, he did much to promote and organize performances for Yiddish theatre, despite the

misgivings of even his closest friends such as Max Brod, who usually supported him in everything else, and quite contrary to his fear of being perceived as both physically and mentally repulsive, impressed others with his boyish, neat, and austere good looks, his quiet and cool demeanor, and his intelligence and odd sense of humour. Kafka's relationship with his domineering father is an important theme in his writing. In the early 1920s he had an influential love affair with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. In 1923 he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. His tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to a sanatorium near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924, apparently from starvation (Kafka's condition made it too painful on his throat to eat, and since intravenous therapy had not been developed, there was no way to feed him). His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried June 11, 1924 in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Zizkov. Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime, a small part of his work, and consequently his writing attracted little attention until after his death. Prior to his death, he instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy all of his manuscripts. His lover Dora Dymant faithfully destroyed the manuscripts that she had, but Brod did not follow Kafka's instructions and oversaw the publication of most of his work, which soon began to attract attention and critical regard. All his published works, except several Czech letters to Milena Jesenska, were written in German.

There have been many critics who have tried to make sense of Kafka’s works by interpreting them through certain schools of literary criticism – as modernist, magical realist, and so on. The apparent hopelessness and the absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of existentialism. Others have tried to locate Marxist influence in his satirization of bureaucracy in pieces such as In the Penal Colony, The Trial, and The Castle. Still others have interpreted his works through the lens of Judaism (because he was Jewish and had an interest in Jewish culture, though he only cultivated it late in life)—Borges made a few perceptive remarks in this regard; through Freudianism (because of his familial struggles); or as allegories of a metaphysical quest for God (Thomas Mann was a proponent of this theory). Themes of alienation and persecution are repeatedly emphasized, and this emphasis—notably in the work of Marthe Robert—partly inspired the counter-criticism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who argued that there was much more to Kafka than the stereotype of a lonely figure writing out of anguish, and that his work was more deliberate, subversive and yet “joyful” than it appears to be.