Toward a post-Holocaust theology in art: the search for the absent and present God

Since the end of World War II, a good deal of art has been produced that has attempted to conceptualize and provide some understanding about the Holocaust. The results have been mixed. Many artists have relied on some of the symbols associated with the event to provide the impulse for artistic creativity. However, these symbols, whether stars of David, barbed wire, or camp and ghetto scenes, often have become clichés. Some provide the viewer only with nostalgia, melancholia, and at best false mourning. Others have relied on the photographic record, which has often created a pattern of repetitious images of questionable authenticity, quite different from what was achieved by earlier forms of academic art dealing with Christian, mythological, or classical subjects.