Artist's Corner: Kremena Dimitrova - Blogpost 5

Follow Kremena's journey into the 50 Jewish Objects in this fifth blogpost.

Even in the 13C, Isaac ben Joseph understood and appreciated the potential of the visual to cater for and attract different audiences. Although, it wasn’t a popular practice, and many Rabbis were against it, because according to them the visual distracted from the text and thus from the message, Isaac decided to include illuminations and illustrations in his manuscript. Not only that, but his manuscript was also a shorter version of a much larger manuscript, the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol of Moses of Coucy. 

Less text and the use of visuals – it is not surprising that the Sefer Mitzvot Qatan (Semaq) received wide popularity around the world and was recognised by many famous scholars. My creative response to the manuscript privileges the visual and uses even more visuals and even less text, thus corresponding to the visual culture of our visual 21C.  

Here is a rough plan sketch of how I envisage one of my comic strip pillars will look like inspired by and incorporating various elements (hybrids, characters, patterns) found in the manuscript.