Angela Levine
Lessons in seeing
There is plenty to look at and think about in "Shalom,
Shalom," a captivating new painting series by Larry Abramson, a veteran
teacher at the Bezalel Academy of Arts, and chairman of its Fine Arts Department
since 1992.
The eight fairly large (120 cm. square or 120 x 40 cm.)
oil and acrylic canvases in this series have a uniform appearance. Each
has been primed with a layer of pearl-gray paint on top of which Abramson
has painted branches and flowering shoots, and the double shadows formed
when the "real" objects he was about to paint were laid onto this gray
background in the full glare of studio lighting.
These are not subjective paintings of fragments of Nature,
but life-size, trompe-l'oeil renderings which are so effective that one
is reminded of the story concerning the fabled Greek painter Zeuxis who
depicted a bunch of grapes so realistically that birds swooped down to
feast on it.
Abramson's own replicas of Nature have been arranged
together so that each painting spells out a single letter of the Hebrew
alphabet, the contours completed in some cases by the addition of a painted
line resembling a strip of wood. Together, the eight units spell out the
words "Shalom, Shalom," a phrase frequently used by Israelis as an offhand
form of greeting or leave-taking.
The beauty of these paintings lies in the fact that they
can be read or viewed on several levels. Abramson actually proffers a clue
in this direction. On a wall at the entrance to the gallery, he has placed
a set of rudimentary sketches of a face on which the only constant feature
is a pair of buttoneyes with an unfocused gaze.
By means of these eyes, existing but unseeing, Abramson
appears to be sending out a message which might read tike this: the possession
of eyes does not automatically endow its owner with the gift of sight or
with the understanding of what he sees.
Looking at these paintings as works of art, pure and
simple, one can admire their elegance, and Abramson's skill in combining
a crisp, minimalistic touch with a trompe l'oeil style of painting which
is centuries old. This is an illustration of his intention to be an artist
of his times, but also to pursue a dialogue with painters and schools of
the past. Just as significant, and in a certain sense humbling, is the
way that Abramson, a mature and well-known artist, continues to research
the basics of his craft, starting for instance, with the correct positioning
of an object in a space limited by finite borders.
Another specific problem that Abramson readdresses here
(which he first tackled in his "Artificial Light Gardening" series shown
at the Israel Museum in 1989) concerns the whole subject of studio representations
of plants and bushes displaced from their natural outdoor habitat.
To "see" Abramson's paintings on another level, one might
question why he has chosen to focus on the phrase "Shalom, Shalom" in this
new series, and why he does so by writing with "dead" pieces of wood.
Answers to this question lie with earlier paintings that
Abramson made of branches and flowering sprigs. They were part of a landscape
series shown in 1995 at the Kibbutz Gallery, Tel Aviv (and which were also
included at the recently closed exhibition of Israeli Orientalism at the
Israel Museum).
These landscapes were based on closeup photographs of
the ruins of Tzuba, an Arab village which was abandoned during the
War of Independence.
"New Horizons" guru Zaritsky frequently painted these
ruins during summers spent between 1970 and 1985 at a nearby kibbutz. However,
he ignored the historical-tragic aspect of this site, "seeing" it simply
as a picturesque starting point for his lyrical abstractions.
Ten years later, Abramson "saw" the site quite differently.
Without making any political statement, he chose to give expression to
the human tragedy that lay behind the image. First he painted the site
realistically from close-up photographs, and then tampered with the paintwork
by blotting its surface with newspapers.
In addition, he collected "relics" at Tzuba in the form
of dead branches and other fragments of Nature, which he brought into his
studio and painted.
Knowing this story, one may well conclude that there
is a definite connection between the Tzuba series and and these new paintings,
which are incidentally the first in which Abramson employs a form of text.
By using dead wood, like that which he plucked from the ruins of a dead
village, to pick out the phrase "Shalom, Shalom," Abramson is implying
that the words have become moribund, drained of all meaning by casual repetition.
Perhaps, in a timely lesson, Abramson is asking his public to look again
at the word "Shalom" and consider what it really means. (Noga Gallery,
Tel Aviv)
The Entertainment Guide of THE JERUSALEM POST, November
6, 1998
Smadar Sheffi
Only beauty can console
ShalomShalom, Larry Abramson.
Noga Art Gallery, Tel Aviv.
"ShalomShalom"
is one of the most beautiful exhibits of the past year. Abramson offers
spectacular art, but avoids total virtuosity, and presents precise paintings
with a bitter message. The show consists of two series. One has with eight
pieces, each of which includes a Hebrew letter formed by a realistic painting
of branches and masking tape. Together, the letters form the word "shalom"
twice. Simple pencil sketches of small heads, purposefully drawn in a clumsy
manner, comprise the second series.
The first series, still-life paintings, are a clear continuation
of the artistic process Abramson began at the start of the decade with
the series "Coincidences." In those works, presented in 1993, Abramson
repeated the motifs of a black square, a blooming branch, a thick branch,
half a sickle, and a planed board. These were enigmatic works, with a scope
of meaning that ranged from the suprematism of Russian abstract painter
Kasimir Malevich to views of the Land of Israel as we like to remember
it.
Two years later, Abramson presented "Tsuba," a declared
political exhibit. Here, along with natural landscapes done on newsprint,
he also showed a series of paintings of branches and dried blossoms, done
in the tradition of still-life nature drawings for botanical study.
The "ShalomShalom" series is a formal and conceptual
continuation of the two earlier ones. The masking tape relates directly
to the planed board from the beginning of the 1990s, and the branches done
with painstaking precision are a continuation of the paintings of branches
in the "Tsuba" exhibit. Then, the paintings were of branches brought from
a deserted Arab village in
the area of Tsuba. They were used by Abramson to express
Israeli blindness to the suffering of the Palestinians on the one hand,
and as an example of the blind spots in art and culture in general, on
the other. This time as well, Abramson paints the branches under studio
lighting, which leaves a double shadow on the canvas and creates the illusion
of clear three-dimensionality.
The big difference between the still life in the "Tsuba"
exhibit and the present paintings is that now, the branches are not an
end in themselves. They form parts of letters and lines in a new, private
typography Abramson has created. This typography, which forms letters from
different objects, often growing things (like the representation of the
names of cities in bushes and flowers) brings to mind a folk aesthetic.
But this is excellent painting. The construction of a level of meaning
and its repeated contradiction, in an impossible weave, forms the heart
of Abramson's statement.
The branches (the great attention given to their realistic
representation is demonstrated in every stroke of the brush) are set in
empty space. This cuts them off from the term "nature." They are combined
in a representation, pregnant with sadness, of culture in masking tape.
Masking tape, which since the Gulf War has symbolized the dread of war,
and helplessness in the face of it, is also connected to covering, transporting
and moving on, because it) is used to close packing cartons.: Abramson
renders the tape with great precision, at times creased and grayish, as
if it were taped on paint, and at other times clear and straight. He leaves
the pencil marks that indicate the exact rectangle for drawing the tape,
as if to make sure the viewer is at all times aware that this is only an
illusion. To emphasize the dimension of illusion he makes small "errors"
in drawing the branches - a discrepancy between the shading of the branch
or the flowers.
The fact that a letter appears in each of the paintings
is not necessarily clear at first glance, even if the viewer knows he should
look for it, since the image falls apart on close inspection. Abramson
experiences the nature of peace in a not particularly optimistic fashion;
as a word that has been eroded more and more over the years.
The almost tangible fragility, vulnerability and frailty
of the branches he draws, along with the threatening suggestion in the
masking tape, radiates uncertainty. Only the enormous beauty of the works,
of the art, is consoling,
In the second series, faces sketched in pencil in a simple
childish fashion speak mainly of bewilderment. The small black eyes, the
pupils wide open, are set far from each other. The mouth, when it appears,
is drawn as a thin, balanced line, and sometimes disappears completely,
the expression falling silent.
The similarity here to the "rosh deshe" (grass head)
- the amusing figure made from a nylon stocking with grass growing out
of it (another meeting between nature and culture) - is a kind of childish
prank, reminding one of the fact that court jesters, like blind prophets,
have traditionally been used by playwrights and storytellers to express
truth.
HA'ARETZ GUIDE November 6, 1998
|
An Exhibition
by LARRY ABRAMSON