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The
Holy Land
Laid Bare
by Lilianne Milgrom
January, 2012
Our roving
feature writer Lilianne Milgrom recently returned from the Promised
Land, where she uncovered unexpected treasures in her search for the
Great Nude. After visiting galleries and museums, and meeting with a
number of prominent artists she reports back on Israel's unique and
surprisingly sophisticated art scene. |
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| I arrived in Israel just days after world-renowned artist Spencer Tunick
completed one of his massive nude installations at the Dead Sea. The
much-publicized, bona fide art scandal which led up to the event was a
reflection of the broad spectrum of Israeli society. In this case,
Tunick's controversial work pitted the insular religious elements of
Israeli society against its more liberal secular constituents; one
Member of Parliament went so far as to liken the artist's work to the
biblical legend of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Tunick's work is
understandably controversial. His flash installations are all about the
nude - but here is where Tunick departs from most other artists who
explore this time-honored theme. The former uses human bodies –thousands
of them- as his raw material, exploiting the glorious and subtle shades
of human flesh to color his photographic extravaganzas. When so many
nude bodies converge, they become an abstracted part of the landscape,
playing off against the grandiose backdrops carefully chosen by the
artist. Seeing a mass of bodies in public places "reconfigures one's
views of nudity and privacy" explains Tunick. It certainly jars the
senses!
The Naked Sea Project
was the brainchild of environmentalists Ari Gottesmann and Ari
Fruchter. The duo hoped that by staging a Tunick installation at the
Dead Sea they could draw worldwide attention to the sea's alarming rate
of evaporation, and simultaneously promote the endangered body of water
as a candidate for a spot on the New 7 Wonders of the World list.
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September 18, 2011, following two years of relentless fundraising, not
to mention overcoming political, organizational and religious obstacles,
1200 naked Israeli volunteers gathered at by the shores of the Dead Sea
to make the dream a reality. Unfortunately, the Dead Sea did not win a
place among the New 7 Wonders of the World. However, Tunick produced
some pretty spectacular results. |
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| Spencer Tunick, "Dead Sea Project" |
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| Spencer Tunick, "Dead Sea Project" |
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| Spencer Tunick, "Dead Sea Project" |
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| The Dead Sea also features as the inspirational backdrop for a series of works created by one of my favorite Israeli artists, Sigalit Landau.
Landau's videos and installations explore Israel's fractured political
and social landscape, and she returns again and again to the theme of
displacement. In her Watermelon series Landau became fascinated with the
foreign fruit's ability to grow in the desert, like strangers in a
barren land, blossoming despite the odds. An apt metaphor for the
country itself.
In Dead Sea, Landau's
naked body floats hauntingly inside a coil of 250 watermelons as it
slowly unravels. "I am alone" says Landau, "and the hundreds of melons
are trapping me in a coil raft. But who is pulling my raft and unwinding
the coil? Erasing the image and clearing the screen? Where do "I"
go...?" The artist's use of her own naked body lends a heightened sense
of vulnerability to the work.
Curators describe Landau's work
as having political meaning without being overtly political. That seems
to be the rule rather than the exception when it comes to Israeli art.
The country's fractious existence and constant state of siege make its
politics and its art inseparable. |
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| Sigalit Landau, "Watermelon Series" |
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It
takes about two hours to drive from the Dead Sea to Tel Aviv, the "city
that never sleeps". Cosmopolitan Tel Aviv is bursting with galleries,
alternative art spaces, and the magnificent new addition to The Tel Aviv
Museum which rivals any museum in the world. One of the shows I caught at the museum was Roundabout: Face to Face,
an international group exhibition with an emphasis on artistic dialogue
across cultures. I discovered that this dialogue was often expressed
through the naked form, which is not surprising considering its
universality. Two young photographers illustrated this very point.
Left: New addition to the Tel Aviv museum |
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| Photographer Yuval Yairi names Van Gogh and Van Eyck as two of his favorite artists. Their influence is palpable in Yairi's ephemeral photographs from his Savoy series.
His staged scenes suggest narratives emerging from sublimated memories
and conversations with ghosts of artists past. The supine nudes ground
the evocative and distorted Italianate compositions, and their classic
pose straddles present and past. |
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| Yuval Yairi, "Late Checkout" |
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The female nude is also the focus of New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana's large photographic work from her Pelt series.
Reihana insists that while her models may be naked, the work is not
about nudity in the sexual sense, but rather a means to 'strip away
cultural references'.
She alludes to her own
mixed Maori-British heritage by referencing Maori symbolism while
choosing a Caucasian model. "I was keen to develop a language of
mythology with no eroticism – to confound the usual visual pleasure
associated when viewing the female body – no easy feat!"
Her feathered creatures
nonetheless exude a confident, otherworldly strength, and undeniable
sexual undertones – somewhere between a female Centaur and a Las Vegas
dancer.
Right: Video interview of artist Lisa Reihana
Below: Photos by Lisa Reihana |
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| Lisa Reihana, "Sabino" |
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Lisa Reihana, "Camarillo" |
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| Lisa Reihana, "Pilosus" |
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Lisa Reihana, "Aquila" |
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| Israel's
contemporary art scene has for years been dominated by avant-garde and
new media work. This is not surprising considering that the traditions
of classical Western art, and painting in particular, were never part of
Israel's artistic heritage.
The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948,
which in art-historical terms coincided with the rise of Modernism in
Western art. Modernist thinking – a broad rejection of tradition – was
adopted by the nascent country, whose idealistic pioneers emigrated from
war torn Europe and were eager to look to the future, not the past.
However, one artist can be held
almost singlehandedly responsible for the resurgence of the art of
painting in Israel. Over the past twenty years, the name Israel Hershberg
has been virtually synonymous with the return of, and emphasis on
painting founded upon solid life drawing and the teachings and
methodologies of master artists throughout the ages. |
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VIDEO: Israel Hershberg: From Afar |
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| Hershberg
(who emigrated to Israel from the US in 1984) builds upon painting's
rich history and pays homage to those artists whose masterpieces have
been imprinted on our collective psyche, while still remaining very much
a painter of his time. He names Edwin Dickinson, Lennart Anderson, Balthus, Morandi and Antonio López Garcia
amongst his own personal influences. Hershberg's exquisitely executed
and intellectually realized paintings have deservedly garnered him
widespread national and international acclaim. |
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Israel Hershberg,
"Tree-oh"
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Israel Hershberg,
"A flask of water with two lemons" |
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Edwin Dickinson,
"Helen Souza" |
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| "Israel Hershberg changed the artistic landscape in Israel, and how we actually see the landscape" explained Barbara Wies, Chairlady of the Board of the Jerusalem Studio School
which Hershberg founded in 1985. The school offers students "an
immersive, comprehensive and convergent painting experience'. Even
though Hershberg's own work has not included nudes for over a decade, he
is adamant about the necessity of providing students with a live model
as part of the daily curriculum, as well as access to the school's
unique Hall of Casts, a cross-section of classical sculptural
archetypes. |
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| Hall of casts, Jerusalem Studio School |
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Drawing class, Jersualem Studio School |
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| Over
a lunch of typical Middle Eastern fare, I asked Hershberg to try to
pinpoint why the human form is so essential to the fundamentals of art.
"Unity," responded Hershberg. "There is a convergence that occurs in the
human body." Rather than rendering an arm or a leg, Hershberg
encourages his students to observe and understand the confluence of
every crease and angle to every other crease and angle in order to grasp
the whole. Hershberg's artistic vision and approach has produced a slew
of successful artists who have grasped the concept of unity and
redefined it on their own terms.
One graduate of the JSS is Heddy Abramovitz,
whose painterly studio is tucked in a narrow alley not far from
Jerusalem's famous Machane Yehuda market. Her studio walls are hung with
a variety of still life compositions and misty urban landscapes of
Jerusalem. But it was her nudes which caught my attention; her drawings,
sketches and oil paintings of the nude range from the highly refined to
the exuberantly gestural. In light of the fact that Abramovitz is a
religiously observant woman as well as a painter, independent thinker
and lawyer, I was curious to hear her personal perspective on the
subject of the nude. "The body is a beautiful form," she reflects. "We
owe it to ourselves to marvel at its creation." |
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| Heddy Abramovitz, "Within" |
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Heddy Abramovitz, "Egg Tempera Studies" |
| Heddy Abramovitz, "Egg Tempera Studies" |
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| As
I met with other figurative artists in Israel, Hershberg's widespread
influence became ever more apparent. One of the country's figurative
painting stars, Aram Gershuni,
names Hershberg as his most influential mentor. Gershuni's still life
paintings and portraits have placed him firmly at the forefront of the
new realist movement in Israel and abroad.
One evening, I paid a visit to Gershuni's Tel Aviv-based school for figurative arts, Hatahana.
The smell of turpentine and the strains of jazz led me up to the third
floor of a deserted industrial building to the school's premises, where
night students were hard at work on independent variations of a
classical still life arrangement.
The walls were lined with
impressive nude sketches that belied their status as beginner student
works (see examples below). Similar to Hershberg's approach, Gershuni's
students are fed a menu heavy on life drawing from the model – advanced
students even have the luxury of working up to four months on one pose. |
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Video: Model Lesson with Adam Gershuni |
| The centrality of the nude in the creation of art
seems obvious to Gershuni. "We can't imagine ourselves without the body.
It provides us with empathy and identification which no other subject
can provide. Besides, it is through the body that we absorb the world,"
Gershuni pointed out. He considers the mastery of figure drawing and
painting as the highest of artistic challenges, making it the imperative
starting point for students. |
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| I was
fortunate enough to meet with another ex-pat American painter who has
made an enormous impact on the figurative arts in Israel. Mitch Becker came to Israel in 1972 out of the Chicago art scene where American painters such as Jim Dine, De Kooning and Larry Rivers loomed large on his visual horizon.
While Mitch and I shared a glass of Arak at his
studio, he talked about the figure as the inspirational thread
throughout his career. But it took him several decades to come to terms
with his natural realist tendencies. He was wary of the 'trap' of
realism – the limitation of being restricted to 'what is'.
With the likes of Vermeer and Velasquez
in his sights, he has made the 'what is' his own, with realistic nudes
making up the bulk of his oeuvre today. His stunning gold series was
inspired by encounters with icon art during a trip to Barcelona.
Mitch Becker, "Premier Coup" |
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Mitch Becker, "Twice as Good" |
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| Becker does not believe
one can separate the sensual from the sexual aspects of the nude. His
relationship to the female model is an unconventional one. When he began
painting the nude from life, he was disturbed by the fact that he was
paying the model to undress. "The feeling was not unlike that of a pimp"
recalls Mitch. In order to overcome his discomfort, he eventually
turned to his willing students to model. This was a way for his female
students to actively participate in both the process of painting and
teaching, and for Becker to bypass any sense of exploitation. |
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On
my last day I wandered through Tel Aviv's impressive arts and crafts
fair, musing about the scope and variety of art being produced in such a
tiny country. Those not intimately familiar with Israel will more often
than not, associate this sliver of land with war and international
controversy, or alternately as the center of the world's three
monotheistic religions. But Israel is also a fiercely cultural hub
fueled by the same energy and creativity which has forged its unique and
eclectic artistic voice.
And that's when I happened upon the perfect souvenir. :)
Lilianne Milgrom
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My Reward: Ron Gilboa's small wire scultpure |
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