Page 56 - Studio International - October 1967

strange creatures, filled with immaterial objects, in Italy and later made a reputation as a stage belong to the category of Rafie Lavie's child-like
peopled by wingless beings that defy the laws of designer. His work has a delicate, oriental quality; images, although in Halevy they are even less
gravity and hover in the air against all reason ... ' indeed Sharir himself looks distinctly oriental. His forced, less imposed. Dubuffet, Lucebert are among
This prognosis can be taken further to a deeply family are of Russian, possibly Khazar origin, and the familiar names these paintings conjure up—but
held tradition in Jewish thought and art. Surrealism he says that this preoccupation with oriental fan- again less troubled, less profound perhaps than these.
of a kind, after all, is a major factor in the early, tasy and mannerisms is a return to childhood style Tuvia Beeri is a print-maker of quite exceptional
most authentic work of Chagall, just as it is after twenty years. It occured when he was asked quality. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, he came
evident in Altman, Ryback, Lissitsky and other to design a play 'Queen Esther' for the Cameri to Israel in 1948 and later returned to Europe to
Russian-Jewish artists who sprang from the same Theatre, when the Persian background of the study under Johnnie Friedlaender. He works in
Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe. In the visual story provoked and extended the earlier involve- aquatint, precise elegant images which are a com-
arts, this influence stems directly from Jewish ment. pound of the Israeli landscape as it might have
folk art, the sign-paintings, book illustrations, The five artists I have so far mentioned all appear- appeared in the book of Genesis, allied with
synagogue murals which Chagall himself claims as ed in the 'Image— Imagination' exhibition. To organic, sexual symbolism. Thus a print bearing
his origins. These primitive artists reflected a these I would add a group who, despite differences, the simple title The apple turns out to be a dissected
Kabbalistic, legendary world of symbolism in seem to me to express similar sur-real or fantasist image of the fruit, with an ambiguous representa-
quaint, mysterious, irrational images. From them qualities. In the case of Rafie Lavie the 'infanti- tion of its seed, against a strange head-like form,
is derived Chagall's Fiddlers on the Roof, dancing lism' is imposed. A round, tubby, gentle-faced half mechanical, half human, from which shafts of
cows, inverted heads, flying donkeys and the like. man of 30, Lavie has never been outside Israel. light pour forth. Symbolism of a very esoteric kind
But it is hardly a tragic, introverted world, or even He is, however, an extremely well-informed teacher is here employed, perhaps relating to the apple in
a disturbing one. It is story-telling, the poetic of art and says he has been influenced by Dubuffet, the Garden of Eden, to sexual corruption or the
description of a milieu and a way of life, not a Lucebert and Roger Hilton. His simplicity is evil at the root of knowledge. This is all con-
neurotic, self-deprecatory gesture. highly sophisticated, but unforced. After a short jecture, but Beeri's complex image, with its mix-
The Surrealistic or Fantasist factor in much of the period of formal abstraction he abandoned texture ture of reality and fantasy, is brilliantly expressive.
new Israeli art is distinctly uneasy, a hankering back for a more original Pop world, derived from comics, Reuben Berman, born in Philadelphia in 1929,
to remembered patterns of behaviour and thought Batman, James Bond, the cinema. This fantasy has been resident in Israel since 1950. He paints
which only succeeds in heightening isolation. At world of childish images, grinning faces, aero- almost exclusively in black and white, forms which
its simplest, in the work of Bonneh and Bezem, planes, exploding pistols is organized with con- are a mixture of organic and geometric elements,
it remains well within the tradition of Jewish summate skill and results in a sur-real formality of or in other terms a conflict between irrational,
fantasy, similar in fact to the hieratic unreality of poetic charm. subjective, emotional responses and a need to con-
Italian primitives, and in terms of colour and Also clearly related to the Pop-world are the trol, to elucidate. While some paintings bear
atmosphere close to the world of Fra Angelico. pretty, coloured, photographic images of Segret, simple titles like Anatomy or Concave/Convex, a more
Apart from Bezem and Bonneh, the following who was born in Trieste 33 years ago and has lived irrational view is represented in A hole eater under
artists can be linked in this broad theme. in Israel since the age of ten. His work fits less surveillance, as though the schizophrenic world of
Yosl Bergner, who came to Israel in 1950 from easily into the surrealist heading. They are realistic Lifchitz has suddenly found its way into Berman's
Poland, via Australia, inherited a Chagallian past scenes of pretty girls in the city, full of a youthful troubled domain. It is this breaking through the
to which the reality of gas chambers gave a bitter vitality and an unblinking response to the visual, surface which gives Berman's forms their dramatic,
edge. His earlier work depicted anonymous, gnome- graphic qualities of the image. But in effect Segret's imposing power.
like heads, behind barred windows in blank walls. world comes across as a kind of fantasy, as unreal, Michael Gross, born in Israel forty-seven years
Now after a period of wandering in landscape he in comparison with the real world, as is Lavie's ago, paints walls and windows, not solid, Magritte-
has returned to walls and bricks, but seen with a or Sharir's. It is, perhaps, a more recognizable case like brick walls, but heavy mud structures with
meticulous, Magritte-like surrealism, perhaps a of an artist selecting and creating from the natural gaping holes. If there are not walls, deep fissures
little too playful in comparison with the tragic world, less imbued with undertones of doubt or fear. divide the canvas, suggesting untold mysteries.
overtones of earlier work. Uri Lifchitz represents an almost diametrically Gross is more deeply influenced by Paris and la
Samuel Bak, also born in Poland, came to Israel different response. Born on a Kibbutz in 1936, he belle peinture than the other artists mentioned, and
in 1948 at the age of 15. After studying at the is largely self-taught. His powerful, agressive forms, represents a kind of transition.
Bezalel, he lived in Rome and there held his first in bright, lurid colours, half-human, half-monster, An older artist and a significant influence is Arie
exhibition. His visual world is similar to Bergner's, represent a nightmarish world which makes Aroch, now 59 years old, who also studied in
in which eerie inland lakes, gaunt rocks, cracked Francis Bacon seem relaxed and tame. Lifchitz's Paris. Here are the origins of a new kind of
bottles and scarred jugs contribute to a kind of art is a kind of Marat/Sade investigation of anecdotalism, the mixture of the naive and in-
Gothic mannerism. He sees his pictures as allegor- schizophrenia. He says he paints this theme as a tellectual in the scribbled, figurative, childish
ies: 'I have a feeling of constant danger; my public protest, 'because we don't recognise schizo- manner and a more rational or French approach
situation may collapse. When I feel like that I find phrenia as a sickness'. His canvasses are full of to art. Although less active of late, since he is an
nothing so peaceful as two apples on a table. But brute force and horror, fleshy, sensuous, anony- official of the Foreign Ministry, Aroch remains a
to paint a still-life is an attempt to conform. Yes, mous Bosch-like bodies with soft, pudgy flesh, highly respected figure with the younger generation.
I suppose there is a connection between my curiously defensive, warding off the real world. Another interesting figure is Aika Brown, who
isolated imagery and a childhood spent in a ghetto Josef Halevy might be said to represent the other died in 1964 at the age of 29. He worked largely
and concentration camp, but I try to make it side of Lifchitz's schizophrenia. Born in Tel Aviv in Paris and developed a kind of Pop-surrealism in
enigmatic, even a little humorous'. That perfectly in 1924 of Yemenite parents, he too is self taught. which dolls and puppets were incorporated in
describes the intuitive Jewish philosophy which After training and working as a physical-culture roughly constructed reliefs, painted, or slashed,
has ensured survival. The most common feature of teacher he decided in 1962 to take up painting. with black paint. In his work is the same kind of
Bak's imagery, whether it is of desolate landscapes, In Halevy's work the aggression has turned to wit, sophisticated naivety, the withdrawal from 'fine
vacated stone villages, still-lifes of bottles, is the the heavy lumbering forms to Mire,- or Klee-like art' traditions, the aggressiveness common to many
depiction of every form as cracked and broken, a images of birds, fish, and plant-life. It is a free of the artists mentioned in this article.
world struck by holocaust. This is very different world of invention, in delightful pinks and browns, In none are these qualities more marked than in
from the tragicomedy of Chagall's milieux, or the with relaxed spaces of white. The forms are charm- Yigael Tumarkin. An enfant—or rather middle-
ebullient optimism of the Zionist founders of Israel. ing and inventive, opening out from themselves, aged — terrible, he is talked of in a mixture of fear
David Sharir has an entirely different artistic growing intuitively on the canvas. Here the sur- and respect; his work, his exhibitions, his words
personality. Born in Israel in 1938, he too studied real elements are entirely unfrightening; they make news. Now 34 years old, Tumarkin returned
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