The Brighton Beach Bible

By Joel Silverstein

Artist and Author Joel Silverstein has published an autobiographical painted

narrative based on the Exodus story of the Hebrew Bible. Offering 64 stunning full-page images

this startling work is both an artist's catalog raisonné and comic book-style sequential

art. Silverstein depicts Brighton Beach and Coney Island, the famed

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jewish Art Salon
• Release date: Oct 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869000361

Book preview

To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, Joel Silverstein has become unstuck in time—and in art and in high culture and in pop culture and in scripture and in history and in his own memories. His Brighton Beach Bible is an intensive tour through the artist’s psyche as expressed via a series of from-the-heart paintings, a hallucinatory roller coaster ride through Silverstein’s own lived and imagined experience. Ori Z. Soltes’ insightful text illuminates the many cultural touchstones that inform the paintings, but the art alone will dazzle your eyes and ignite your emotions.

—Danny Fingeroth, longtime writer, editor at Marvel Comics; author, A Marvelous Life, The Amazing Story of Stan Lee

Joel Silverstein’s teeming visual tapestry weaves the personal into the mythic, mixing liturgy, legend and lore into sequential narratives that encompass Exodus, Jewish history, Silverstein’s family history, and the history of art. The painted and collaged images evoke a series of unforgettable postcards not just from the titular beach, but from the biblical and cultural landscapes of Jewish memory. Houdini, hawk gods, Maimonides and the Maharal mix it up with body builders and sci-fi grotesqueries in Silverstein’s brilliant, tragicomic, and vividly rendered journey through the American, and American Jewish, experience.

—Eli Valley, author of Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel and the forthcoming Museum of Degenerates: Portraits of the American Grotesque

Joel Silverstein’s paintings are a revelation. Fittingly for a ‘Bible,’ there are brilliant visual exegeses aplenty in these works. But there are also personal disclosures that are raw, humorous, and sometimes haunting. The real genius here is how these two forms of revelation mutually illuminate one another, rendering scripture more personal and autobiography more spiritual. This body of work is a powerful addition to an expanding canon of contemporary Jewish visual art.

—Aaron Rosen, PhD, Executive Director of the Clemente Course in the Humanities, author, Art & Religion in the 21st Century

I was totally blown away by Silverstein’s images and the kinds of knowledge he pours into them. The works here illustrated are the result of the momentous meeting of Silverstein’s brilliant, wildly active imagination, combining virtually everything he has seen, read, and experienced in his lifetime, with the ancient but always contemporary Jewish texts he knows so well. He has created both a very modern and a very profound series of works that help define what an artist professing Jewish identity in the visual arts can achieve today.

—Matthew Baigell, Professor Emeritus, Art History, Rutgers University; author, Jewish Identity in American Art. A Golden Age Since the 1970s

Joel Silverstein’s paintings for The Brighton Beach Bible are singular and extraordinary. From the stunning Nile Colossi to Crossing the Red Sea, these contemporary Biblical images deserve a wide and appreciative audience.

—Mark Podwal, artist, author, filmmaker, and physician

We were all at Mount Sinai is a tenet of Jewish tradition. In The Brighton Beach Bible the prophets might appear in comic hero T-shirts while artist Joel Silverstein’s family stands witness to God’s Revelations. Then is now. Now is then. We were all there. Ori Z. Soltes’ extensive and profoundly informative essay guides us on the journey (part Bible, part art history) through Silverstein’s expressive and thought-provoking images. The Brighton Beach Bible made me see this epic, yet ongoing, story of Jewish struggle and liberation in a fresh way.

—Mike Cockrill, artist, author, The White Papers

In The Brighton Beach Bible, effervescent colors, biblical themes of mythic proportion, the entire canon of Art History, whimsical pop culture, and Joel Silverstein’s intensely polychrome inner life are thoughtfully whisked together in delightful and disarming ways. Beautifully explicated by Ori Soltes, this volume is a joy.

—Steven Fine, Churgin Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva University, Director of the Yeshiva University Center for Israel Studies

Silverstein’s Brighton Beach Bible is tour-de-force of fluid visual creativity and encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish sacred texts, comic book classics, Hollywood stills and art historical references, all utilized to unpack the Torah narratives and reflect on his family and personal life. A truly courageous and audacious narrative work of contemporary Jewish Art that only gets better in light of the biblical citations and Ori Soltes’ essay.

—Richard McBee, artist, writer on Jewish art, director of exhibitions for the Jewish Art Salon (a role he shares with Joel Silverstein)

This extraordinarily original art book represents a wild personal ride through Biblical narratives, offered up as a kind of visionary and experiential diary. The individual images reflect his wide knowledge of art