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The man chair

Funny thing happened at a birthday party the other night. We walked in, and a few male friends were vying for what a friend of mine calls “a man chair.” You know what I’m talking about. It’s the La-Z-Boy or Berkline recliner, footstool at the bottom, cushy fabric, often soft leather, but doesn’t have to be. There are man chairs with drink holders and massage buttons, man chairs with magazine holders, man chairs that recline into fully flat positions.

I laughed, because this chair that we were all gazing at looked exactly like my friend’s husband’s former chair. I say former, because she made him get rid of it. Yes, she had succumbed at some point, and they had purchased the slimmest, most attractive recliner they could find, but in the end she couldn’t face having it in her living room and they sold it, and got — to my mind — a much cooler living room option, the Ligne Roset Ottoman. My husband couldn’t believe they got rid of it, and, it appears, other men who knew of this furniture change were also dumbfounded.

But the thing is, and this is what some of us were discussing, that Israeli living rooms really don’t lend themselves to reclining man chairs. Our salons are smaller than their American counterparts, often joined to the dining room, and one needs to maximize seating space in slimmer options. True, you want your furniture to be comfortable and inviting, but not at the expense of the entire space. And even though they now make ‘lady recliners’, it’s still the same idea. Lots of bells and whistles, and too big.

In any case, a few of us set off the next day to some furniture gazing and possible shopping, including looking for a slim recliner for said friend who had been hogging the birthday party home man chair. Found a couple of possibilities at an Italian outlet in Jerusalem, in leather and we all felt that these chairs could work in a living room. I’d even be willing to consider it at some point in time, but I’d have to get over seeing all that hardware every time the chair is opened.

It also turns out that said chair from Saturday night, which I kept saying looked like friend’s husband’s former chair, was actually his former chair. You know why? They had sold it to said couple, and as that new owner kept saying, “I can’t believe you sold me your chair.”

Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv’s new wing takes flight

The new wing of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art opened last week with the fanfare befitting to a world-class museum building for Israel’s cultural hub. Patrons were treated to a week of festivities, exclusive exhibition previews, cocktail parties, dinners, concerts, a symposium on Contemporary Architecture of Museums with the architect of the new building, and a glittering opening gala in the presence of Shimon Peres, President of the State of Israel, Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv and a Who’s Who directory of local celebrities.

The Herta and Paul Amir Building is being touted as Israel’s answer to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Its proponents hope that Tel Aviv will be touched by the magical “Bilbao Effect” in which the building itself becomes a tourist destination. Interestingly, its architect, Preston Scott Cohen, calls the new wing, “An antidote to the Bilbao phenomenon, the new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art represents a new direction: an interiorized and socialized space of spectacle, as opposed to the ’90s model of an exterior sculptural object displayed to the city.”

Spectacle or sculptural, the 195,000 square foot new wing is an exciting break with the past. Built to house the museums’s ever-expanding collection contemporary art, the structure centers around a monumental sculpture, the Lightfall, that reaches toward a skylight which sends natural light into the building’s interior. Ramps and stairs spiraling down around the Lightfall provide access to the galleries, art library, center for Architecture and Design, 400-seat auditorium and ancillary spaces.

Although Cohen takes inspiration from the White City’s Bauhaus Modernism, it’s a far cry from the old building, designed in the Brutalist style by architects Dan Eytan and the late Yitzhak Yashar, which was completed in 1971, and for which Eytan and Yashar won the Rechter Prize of Architecture.

And it’s an every farther cry from the first Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, the historic Modernist building that was home to Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, and the site where the State of Israel was declared.

Throughout its various incarnations, however, the spirit of the museum belongs to artist Marc Chagall.

According to a lovely essay on the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum website, “Mayor Dizengoff had a vision of Tel Aviv becoming a great commercial and cultural center. After building houses, a movie theater, hospital, synagogue and slaughterhouse, bath houses and other structures the Mayor began to feel the need to foster beauty—which meant art and an art museum.

“Dizengoff visited Paris in 1930, met Chagall and asked his help in establishing a museum. The… artist readily accepted. In a letter to Dizengoff after meeting him in Paris and prior to his first visit to Israel, Chagall stated: “‘. . . we are prepared to help you. I am happy that finally a Jew has emerged who wants to establish a Jewish museum, and who understands how indispensable it is (not only as a useful element of tourism) . . . in the major centers of Europe and America, societies of friends of the Jewish museum should be established . . . to collect money and artistic material fit for a museum.’

“Chagall visited Tel Aviv a year later. Tel Aviv had a population of 50,000 people and three repertory theaters. Mayor Dizengoff had donated his home as the future Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The Mayor met Chagall, his wife and daughter at the head of the city’s fire brigade. Horse races on the seashore were organized in Chagall’s honor.

“At a reception in Tel Aviv Chagall said “I am amazed how a handful of people, surrounded by hatred, rather than love, builds and creates a new land. I am jealous of your idealism, and I wish you from the bottom of my heart to continue what you started. And for me I wish to come and wallow among you, and maybe I shall be able as an artist to do something for your future Jewish museum as well . . .”

“Chagall advised Mayor Dizengoff as to what works should be included in the Museum’s collection. Chagall’s work ‘Jew with Torah’ was the very first work to enter the Museum.

“The Museum has thirteen masterworks by Marc Chagall. Three works were a gift of the artist, the remaining ten works and many others were donated by friends from around the world. Marc Chagall visited Israel eight times. He died at the age of 97 [in 1985] in Saint-Paul de Vence, France.”

To honor the new wing, the Museum opened a special exhibition entitled Five Moments: Trajectories in the Architecture of the Tel Aviv Museum which presents “five key moments in the Museum’s history through five architectural prisms, providing two different and complementary viewpoints that turn these moments into a complete cultural continuum.”

Hopefully, Chagall’s contribution is mentioned as a force driving those trajectories. It’s nice to think of his spirit infusing the new wing, with lovers, doves, cows, sheep and fiddlers, all in constant ascension along the Lightfall towards the open sky.

Gilad’s shirt

You may have read this already, but it’s too good to miss. Remember that shirt Gilad was wearing when first handed over — and first interviewed on TV — by the Egyptians last week?

It was probably mostly polyester, a blue-and-white collar (any significance to that?), with epaulets and a small blue-red-and-and white check. Not very attractive, and not a great look for the emaciated Gilad, but it seems to have become a fashion trend in Gaza.

Stores in Gaza are offering ‘The Shalit shirt’ in a wide range of colors, for a reasonable NIS 60, which is around $17. And it’s not just Gazans who are fans of the shirt; there are at least two Facebook pages that have been created, devoted to Gilad Shalit’s shirt.

Upon closer perusal, one page appears to be a front for some anti-Israel sentiments. But the other has become a kind of conversation, mostly unpleasant, but a forum of sorts for Arabs and Jews to write both nasty and conciliatory comments toward one another, and not about Palestinian menswear. And they’re on the same page because they’ll both ‘like’ a Gilad Shalit shirt page, but wouldn’t normally look for each other on Facebook.

Coexistence? No, not really. But does it mean anything positive to have Gazans wearing Gilad’s Egyptian shirt?

Foto Friday – The First Israeli Meme

A “meme”, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” During the past few days, driven by the excitement and euphoria over Gilad Shalit’s release, and too much time on their hands given the long holiday weekend, Israelis took to their computer graphics programs to create the first Israeli meme.

Known as Bibi Bombing, it has been defined by Know Your Meme.com as “an exploitable Photoshop meme that involves placing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu in various pictures that were taken in a moment of happiness, monumental historic events, and pretty much anywhere. The meme is considered by Israelis to be the first original Israeli internet meme.”

Already by Tuesday evening, blogger Gal Mor, who runs the Hebrew-language HolesintheNet.col.il, began posting a gallery of images created by any number of contributors who have been spreading the meme primarily through Facebook.

Mor writes, “In this photo, Bibi appears not only as a leader making history behind the scenes but also documents [his] activities in the field. This unusual image, which itself appears to have been Photoshopped, ignited the creative spark among a number of folks who envisioned Netanyahu as a personage whose life and actions are interwoven with the history of Israel’s people, a sort of Israeli ‘Forest Gump’ or Woody Allen’s ‘Zelig’”.

Mor also refers to Netanyahu as having “pushed himself into the family frame”. This perception is, to large extent, the source of this public bile. The day before the release, on his radio show journalist Yaron Dekel made the unusual request to both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to forgo the public hoopla, allow Shalit to return home quietly, and pay a visit after a day or two. But keeping politicians away from a photo opp is as impossible as keeping journalists away from a red-hot scoop. (This is the truth about the media game, the childish whines emanating from Israeli journalists towards their Egyptian colleague Shahira Amin notwithstanding).

The images provide insight into the Israeli psyche: many are not complimentary, sore-headed, some are downright nasty, others miss the point. But some are funny, even sweet, presenting the PM as a warm avuncular figure who is smiling with satisfaction at being present before great happiness.

It’s also very likely that the flood will taper down to a trickle within the next few days as the euphoria abates and our very short collective attention span turns to the next item on the public agenda — or we simply go back to work where we can only Photoshop and post crap half the day. That said, here are are few Bibi Bombs.

At the concluding episode of Friends…

At the Last Supper…

On the tarmac with Bogie and Bacall…

This is Sparta?

See more on Know Your Meme

Foto Friday – Decorated Sukkot

For those of us who grew up in chilly northern climes, building a sukkah was a complicated affair. Late September or early October meant cold weather, frost and sometimes the occasional freak snowstorm. This in turn meant a quick kiddush under the open sky before dashing into warmth and shelter. Upon moving to Israel, however, it dawned on me that the timing of the holiday, with its traditional move outdoors into the sukkah, fit the seasonal change exactly.

At first, after a lifetime of sturdy plywood, the typical nylon fabric-draped Israeli sukkah seemed rickety and a bit disconcerting, but I came to realize that cloth is probably closer to the way our forefathers did it. What they didn’t have — and we do — is fancy yardage imprinted with seasonal motifs, like the Seven Species — wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates (or honey) — listed in the book of Deuteronomy as special products of the Land of Israel.

Pomegranates are a particular favorite at this time of year.

I love these brightly colored sukkah fabrics and am particularly enamored of the ones celebrating not only the holiday but aspirations for the Jewish people, like the heavenly Jerusalem — Yerushalayim shel maala — the Holy City as it will be in the time to come.

However, eating before the Western Wall may be carrying the idea a bit too far!

There are any number of companies in Israel selling Sukkot gear — Sukkot Netsarim, Suka LaNegev, Sukot Yerushalaim, Sukkot Nehalim — including reusable bamboo roofs and storage/carrying cases. But what’s really important is what goes on inside the sukkah, a gathering of family, friends and community under one roof beneath the sky. May it be a happy holiday as we all look forward to bringing in one more very much wanted guest, whom we expect will be coming home next week.

All photos, with the exception of the first, which is courtesy of Wikipedia, are from the online catalogs of the sites listed above.

 

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