Visual Arts : Isreal

Fewer than 80 years have passed since the sculptor Boris Schatz set up the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, marking the beginning of formal art activity in the country. Bezalel attempted to fuse a Western approach with various oriental’ styles, and to link a traditional Jewish past with Utopian visions of the future. Intense: vitality and development characterizes the period since the school’s founding, with later students and faculty’ rejecting the romantic vision of the founding fathers.

In the 1930s, local artists invoked a dark, emotional expressionism. At the same time- immigrants from Germany, fleeing the terror of rising Nazism, congregated in Jerusalem around the “New Bezalel.” continuing the tradition of German expres- sionism, rich in dramatic contrasts. The events of the 1948 War of Independence did not evoke an art of political scope and of epic character; rather, the abstraction of the “New Horizons” group had the decisive effect on Israeli art for decades after the 1940s. For many of those artists, born and educated in Europe, the blinding east-em Mediterranean light and the Israeli landscape-amazingly variegated, violent, and austere-were prime movers; the hill terraces and ridges of the coastal regions, the rolling agricultural plains, and the surrealistic forms of the desert influence and inspire the line and shape of early Israeli art.

Later Israeli art remained relatively unaffected by French and American Pop Art of the 1960s; it rather turned to what was later coined as “the poverty of matter", using spartan, austere means of expression that reflected the material poverty of the country itself. In contrast to the minimalist art of the 70s, today’s artists seem to be searching for thematic content, often a political-critical one, and a sense of emotion. In line with contemporary postmodern trends in Western art, Israeli artists today often incorporate texts, evoke other works of an, and use mixed media to create complex works full of references and layers of meaning.

A word of warning: Israeli art is not what you see in the galleries of Old Jaffa. The country’s artistic life is centered in Tel Aviv, where most artists live and most galleries operate. Gordon St. has the biggest concentration of mainstream, distinguished galleries, while more avant-garde galleries are scattered throughout town. For listings of current exhibits, get Four by Five, a comprehensive bi-monthly guide for Israeli art, available in English (and Hebrew) in museums and galleries.