Visible/invisible Herzl. The meaning of portrait and the quest for aniconism

At the end of the nineteenth century Theodore Herzl presented ideas that would embrace the visual arts in order to promote the new Zionist movement. Art was to play an important role in forming Zionist awareness, with Herzl's image expressing the ideas, as well as personifying Zionism and the Jews. However, a part of the Jewish religious community could not come to terms with the fact that Western European art had found its way into Jewish culture, therefore all debates on all visual aspects of Zionism were based on aniconism. This is why, some images of Herzl try to avoid direct visualization of the face, the most notable examples being profile pictures, silhouette images, micrographics, presenting him from behind or in dim light. All these modes of incomplete representation found their justification in traditional Jewish texts relating to the visual arts.