Print
PDF FormatOver the past twenty years, Israel’s artists have also exhibited a predilection for “installations” and “projects” which cross artistic media, in search of ever-more striking ways of depicting the crisis of the Jew who is settled in Israel, and therefore removed from his natural environment. In 1974, Pinchas Cohen-Gan mounted his Dead Sea Project in which freshwater fish were sent out onto the Dead Sea in a semi-permeable boat filled with fresh water. As the water gradually turned brackish, the fish died; in his published notes, taken while working on the project, Cohen-Gan compared the fish to the Jews of various nationalities relocating to Israel. A similar use of fish, plants, and other acutely mislocated and suffering objects to represent the situation of the Israeli Jew can be found in one work after another, including Avital Geva’s Greenhouse Project (1985), in which the artist and prominent art critic inhabited a greenhouse in order to sympathize with the artificially transplanted shoots, and Benny Efrat’s Eclipse of Achievements (1992), in which live plants and fish were brought to live in claustrophobic drums, which allowed in air and light only through apertures in the lid. Uri Katzenstein’s Installation for “Postscripts”31 (1992)likewise features a large motor scooter—yet another symbol of rootlessness and mobility—which has somehow been marooned in the fork of a tree. By sympathizing with the suffering of transplanted and nonviable entities, the Israeli artist indentifies himself as just such an entity, a perennial nomad trapped in an artificially constructed homeland.
Nor does this parade of wandering stop at abstracted expressions of misplacement or rootlessness; only sixty years after celebrating the arrival of the Jew on his land, Israeli artists have become chroniclers of his departure. Thus Pinchas Cohen-Gan’s Green Card series of 1978 is devoted entirely to reproducing questionnaires, maps and other paraphernalia related to the test administered to prospective United States residents.Similar themes are explored by Ido Bar-El’s numerous compositions featuring suitcases (1988-1990), and Benny Efrat’s Quest for Air, Spring 2037 (1989), which features a suitcase open on top of a bed, the entire assembly enclosed in a metal cage. The artist Joshua Borokovsky has produced an impressive body of work dedicated to the depiction of great ships at full sail and enormous expanses of ocean with the representation of land driven to the periphery. In such works as his Triptych (1989-1990), Borokovsky combines both images, heightening the sensation of participating in a great journey. And Moshe Ninio’s Sea States series (1978-1984) offers an array of views from the rear of a ship that has left shore—all that is left is the wake of the boat on a flat gray background. In one of them, the caption “In case of unexpected disaster” appears, recalling Nasser’s promise to drive the Jews into the sea. In another, the word “Exit,” in English and in Hebrew, is superimposed on one corner of the image.32 The ship is ready to set sail, says Ninio, and all one has to do is get on board.
And what of the national past? What of the Israeli artist’s identity as a Jew who has come home to his land? A string of homely English letters in Jennifer Bar-Lev’s The Gypsy Carnival spells out her answer: “I am just passing through on my way to someplace else.”
Boris Schatz hoped to build an artistic community in Israel that would provide the Jewish nation, newly returned to its land, with a “sanctuary in the wilderness.” Yet only a few generations after the initiation of this great dream, Israeli art offers the soul of the Jewish nation no place of rest and no sanctuary. Indeed, precisely the opposite is the case: Israeli art has itself been consumed by the wilderness. The decades-long campaign waged by Israel’s artists against every aspect of the Jewish national home has by now left nothing standing of what the early Zionist artists sought to create. Far from coming to rest, the Jewish artists of Israel have vomited out the land of their fathers from their hearts; even where their bodies and works have yet to emigrate physically, they have departed from the land in spirit.
Perhaps this constant rehearsal of departure is a harbinger of good, and the depths of national self-abasement which flow from Israel’s studios are only preparing the ground for a reaction, a revolution in the culture of the Jewish state yet to come. But if not, if the show is, as we are told, indeed over, then all that will be left for future observers is to sweep the stage, turn off the lights and write one final retrospective, whose conclusion is clear: Here was born, here developed, here atrophied and died a noble movement in art.
Avraham Levitt is a Graduate Fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
Notes
1. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 11.
2. Boris Schatz, Betzalel: History, Essence and Future (Jerusalem: Snunit, 1910), p. 8. [Hebrew]
3. Attributed to Schatz in Binyamin Tamuz, History of Israeli Art (Giv’atayim: Massada, 1980), p. 14. [Hebrew]
4. Note especially illustrations from Morris Rosenfeld, Lieder des Ghetto (Berlin: B. Herz, 1902); the illustrated Bible (Braunschweig: G. Westermann, 1908); and the bookplate prepared by Lilien for Boris Schatz (collection of the Israel Museum). Lilien had also frequently photographed Herzl before his death; his photograph depicting Herzl standing at a balcony has become one of the most famous images of the Zionist movement.
5. Raban designed the cover of the World Zionist Organization’s Golden Book (1913), the doors to Bikur Cholim Hospital in Jerusalem (1920s), and advertisements for Jaffa Oranges in the 1930s.
6. Nachum Gutman, Two Stones Which Make One, cited in Tamuz, History, p. 46.
7. Cf. especially Gideon Stachel, The Jewish Immigration from Germany to Israel 1933-39, Hebrew University doctoral dissertation, Jerusalem, 1995, passim.
8. Stachel, Jewish Immigration, p. 155. The figure cited is 70 percent.
9. Cited in Tamuz, History, p. 103.
10. Buber, a friend of Krakauer’s and himself a refugee from Germany, described these works as depicting not national achievement, but individual loneliness and alienation: “The solitude within Krakauer met with the solitude of this landscape.... Only as the artist of the solitude and isolation that is in Jerusalem’s landscape, did Krakauer become all that he was.” Martin Buber, “The Anguish of Solitude: The Art of Leopold Krakauer,” Ariel: A Review of Arts and Letters in Israel 9 (Winter 1965), p. 5.
11. Notable among these are Jacob and Esau of 1950 and 1965, Hagar (1951), two entitled Hagar and Ishmael (1957), and especially Abraham Banishes Hagar and Ishmael (1965-66).
12. Indeed, Lehmann spoke German in his classes and workshops. “He knew that one of the distinguishing marks of belonging to a culture is the language, but he never became fluent in Hebrew.... In the lessons he gave there was always an ‘interpreter.’” Annie Goldenberg, Man is Nothing but the Shape of His Native Landscape, exhibition catalogue (Tefen: Open Museum, 1994), p. 145. See also Igael Tumarkin, “My Teacher and Master, Rudi Lehmann” in Tziyur Ufisul 4 (Summer 1973), p. 27: “He said to me, ‘...Ja.’ I attempted to speak several sentences in German, and he said, ‘Gut... at least you speak German.’”
13. Yitzchak Dantziger, interview conducted by Ben-Ami Sharfstein, “Conversations with the Artist,” in Mordechai Omer, ed., Makom (Tel Aviv: United Kibbutz, 1982).
14. See especially, Negev Sheep (1951-64), the series of Sheep-folds executed through the 1960s, and the Shepherd King (1964-66).
15. Tumarkin, “My Teacher,” p. 27.
16. See especially Shemi’s Memorial at Ben Gurion Airport (1972), Tumarkin’s Arad Panorama (1962-68), and Tamuz’s Pilots’ Memorial (1949).
17. Lehmann did not return to Germany in his lifetime, and often refused offers to exhibit there.
18. Tumarkin’s father did not serve in the SS as is commonly and mistakenly believed, although Tumarkin’s uncle did.
19. Rafi Lavie, quoted in Ruth Debel, “What Does it Mean to Be an Israeli Artist,” Art News 77:5 (May 1978), p. 55.
20. When asked for his opinions on the cultural symbols employed in his works, and on “leaders in general,” Lavie replied, “They’re all schmucks!” Cited in Sara Breitberg-Semel, The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art, exhibition catalogue (Tel Aviv: The Tel Aviv Museum, 1986).
21. According to the artist Oded Feingersh, in private conversation with the author, November 18, 1996.
22. The novel in its original form was also turned into an extremely popular play. In 1967 a movie was produced based on the play, directed by Joseph Millo and starring a youthful Asi Dayan. A scene was added to the film in which the hero’s son serves heroically in the Six Day War.
23. Yosl Bergner, cited in Shlomo Shvah, Pioneers and Flowers, exhibition catalogue (New York: Aberbach Fine Art, 1980).
24. Compare Bergner’s elaboration on The Idealists: “The pioneers are actors taking part in a play... the audience, watching, sees the new scenery, but not one of them dares tell the actors that they are acting in the wrong play.” Bergner, cited in Shvah, Pioneers. A similar point is hammered home with especial poignancy in Bergner’s Destination X (1974), which depicts an endless procession of the same empty chairs stretched across a desert landscape recalling Sinai. The chairs cannot know that their weary march leads nowhere.
25. Yigal Zalmona, “Micha Ullman: Root and Metamorphosis,” in Micha Ullman: 1980-1988, exhibition catalogue (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1988), p. 10. Ullman is best known for his digging of holes. The digging of holes and the subsequent removal or displacement of earth redefines nature while at the same time emptying it of its content. By emptying spaces of their content Ullman leaves them open to be reconsidered, to be refilled with new meanings and significance. In 1972 Ullman switched the dirt from holes which he had dug in Kibbutz Metzer and a neighboring Arab village (Messer) “as an act of political and existential unity.” The dirt and the documented reactions of the inhabitants of the respective villages were displayed at a later exhibition. Zalmona, “Micha Ullman,” p. 6.
26. The Presence of the Absent: The Empty Chair in Israeli Art, The Genia Schreiber University Gallery, May-August 1991, exhibition catalogue (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1991).
27. Sarit Shapira, “Waymarks: Local Moves,” in Routes of Wandering: Nomadism, Journeys and Transitions in Contemporary Israeli Art, exhibition catalogue (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1991), pp. 235, 241.
28. Edmond Jabיs in an interview with the artist Bracha Ettinger-Lichtenberg, “This is the Desert. Nothing Strikes Root Here.” Routes of Wandering, p. 246.
29. Igael Tumarkin, “Identity,” Tumarkin 1981-1982, Neve Tzedek Theatrical Center, 1982 exhibition catalogue (Tel Aviv: Arieli Press, 1982). Translation is Tumarkin’s and can be found in Tumarkin Sculptures 1957-1992 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum, 1992).
30. Numbers 20:4-5.
31. “Postscripts: ‘End’—Representations in Contemporary Israeli Art,” another fascinating exercise in nihilism and despair in modern Israeli art, was a 1992 exhibition at the Genia Schreiber University Gallery of Tel Aviv University.
32. Shapira, “Waymarks,” pp. 203-204.
