Page 54 - Studio International - October 1967

ISRAEL abroad. Britain is a magnet for sculptors, due to isolation. For a long time the older artists with
their personal and stylistic contacts with the major
its fame as a modern sculpture centre and the
first-rate equipment of its art schools, where it European centres, provided the air, if not the
commentary by
is possible to work with internationally-known reality, of integration within a European move-
Charles Spencer artists. Paris remains a major attraction for paint- ment. After all, Janco had been one of the original
ers, particularly those hankering after an idealized Dadaists, Ardon studied under Klee at the Weimar
Bohemia, and in the case of Agam and others Bauhaus; others of their generation had been on
still provides a base for outstanding work. In intimate terms with Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall.
recent years Italy has welcomed growing numbers The passing years, the death of leading figures, the
of Israeli students. The United States is too far and Second World War, the eclipse of Paris, the trans-
too expensive to serve as a training centre, which fer of global power to New York and London, and
probably explains the marked lack of American the rapid turnover of styles and values, made it
influence in current Israeli art. impossible for a small, isolated country to keep up
The Surrealist and fantasist factor But against all this movement, indeed the opposite the pretence of representing a vital link in the
in the new art side of the same coin, is a distinct impression of modern movement.

As a regular visitor to Israel and student of Israeli
art, I had a fairly positive idea of what I would
find when, at the request of Camden Art Centre, I
went earlier this year to choose an exhibition of the
work of young artists, to be shown in London in
January 1968. Nevertheless, I was surprised by the
changes.
The development of the arts since the pioneering
days at the beginning of the century is a simple and
predictable story. Briefly it begins with the opening
of the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem in 1906 and
the efforts of Professor Boris Schatz to persuade
established European artists to found a new kind
of Jewish or Biblical art. The latter inevitably
failed, although vestiges of romantic historicism
still bedevil much Israel craftwork. But in the
process Schatz attracted well-trained professional
artists to Palestine—both as teachers and students
—such as Rubin, Shemi, Litvinofsky. These were
reinforced by successive groups of immigrants or
refugees— Mokady, Levanon, Ardon, Janco, Ka-
hana, Mairovich, Zaritsky, Streichman, Stematsky.
This thoroughly European background, with its
strata of Russian, German, Parisian influences,
gradually overcame efforts at a vaguely oriental,
decorative style, even to the extent of Westernizing
emergent artists from North Africa and the Orient.
Local colour is often present in the art of the
'twenties and 'thirties—Arab life, Bedouin markets,
Moslem architecture, but seen from the outside,
with tourist eyes, not part of a stable, living
continuity.
The anxiety of the older, foreign-born generations
was to remain part of European culture, yet to
contribute to the creation of a new society. As
teachers and leaders they instilled their own ideals
in their followers, for whom, after all, no other
tradition existed. Largely as a result many Israelis
have come to Europe to study and work. A contri-
butory factor, however, is the need for a first-class
art school. Older artists teach in their studios or in
small, private schools; the Bezalel remains an old-
fashioned craft-school, in outmoded, ill-equipped
premises. This is in contrast to the level of higher
education in the country, at the Hebrew Univer-
sity, the Tel Aviv University and the Haifa Tech-
nion, where the town-planning faculty, under the
sculptor Dantziger, provides a standard to which
art education should aspire.
Thus younger men and women seek training
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