Foto Friday – Richard Margolis’ outdoor sculpture hunt

July 2, 2010 - 2:30 PM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Art, Blogging, design, Environment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Travel 

Richard Margolis hails from Rochester, New York, the “Center of Photography” but this year makes his home in Tel Aviv. In Rochester, birthplace of the Eastman-Kodak company, Margolis generally works in black and white but the sights and sounds of “the City That Never Stops” has had a colorful effect on his current work.

IsraelPublicArt.com is his new project: an online catalogue dedicated to Israel’s creative artists. “I am new here and impressed with the variety and quantity of public art, and with the lack of information about it. This is my attempt to contribute.”

Traveling mostly by foot, on each outing Margolis tries to find more artworks to add. “I’ve delayed uploading the list because each day I find more that ought to be included, but, clearly, it won’t ever be complete.”

The list ranges from Israeli classics such as Nathan Rappaport’s Monument to Mordechai Anilewicz at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai to Ezra Orion’s virtual Inter-Galactic Sculpture, which cannot be seen and is described online here.

Margolis defines “Public” to mean “that no restrictions are imposed or admission charged. Most items are out-of-doors, but could be inside. Usually, they are in prominent locations and easy to find.”

The project is important because it brings attention to those works that, despite being well-displayed in central locations, are sometimes barely noticed. For example, Nordo Gordiano by Gideon Graetz. How many Tel Avivians know its name?

Or this untitled sculpture by Gedalia Sucho (Suchowolsky) at Tel Aviv University, passed by thousands of students every day, yet barely given a glance.

And there are those well-intentioned projects gone awry, such as Ship of the Desert by Nitzan Refaeli, one of a planned eight sound sculptures (only four were created before funding ran dry).

There are whimsical installations, like Cup by Tanya Preminger in suburban Ganei Tikva.

And successful ones, like The Choir by Ofra Zimbalista, a popular sculpture decorating the balcony of venture capital group Evergreen on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard.

As for that tricky word, “Art”, Margolis says “The best art creates a response in viewers. Sometimes it provokes emotion or thought, but I am not judging quality. If the work is finished, installed and I find it, then I include it.”

IsraelPublicArt.com is intended to be a resource “that will call attention to an important cultural resource: The art, monuments, sculpture, and memorials in Israel. Margolis is trying to collect as much information about each item, sculpture, mural, installation, or other pieces of public artwork as can be identified.

There are currently 141 items and 271 photographs now on the site, with more to be added monthly. Margolis invites visitors “to fill in missing, or incorrect, information, including artist’s names, titles, locations, references, or point out typos and glitches.” Comments or suggestions are welcome.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Earth. Water. Tree. – Itzhak Danziger

June 13, 2010 - 9:54 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, design, education, Environment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, Travel 

Earth. Water. Tree., a new show examining environmental aspects in the work of Israel Prize laureate Itzhak Danziger opens this week at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. The location is a natural fit; as well as being an artist, sculptor and landscape designer, Danziger was a professor at the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture.

Danziger’s most famous work is the statue entitled “Nimrod” which was commissioned for the Hebrew University in 1939 when the artist – freshly returned from art school in London – was only 23. The statue, made of red sandstone from Petra, depicts the biblical king as a youthful hunter, bow in hand and a hawk on his shoulder.

At the time of its unveiling, the nude modernist sculpture caused something of a scandal but was shortly thereafter, says Wikipedia, “acclaimed as a major masterpiece of Israeli art, and has noticeably influenced and inspired the work of later sculptors, painters, writers and poets up to the present.”

“The Nimrod statue was also taken up as the emblem of a cultural-political movement known as ‘The Cannanites’ which advocated the shrugging off of the Jewish religious tradition, cutting off relations with Diaspora Jews and their culture, and adopt in its place a ‘Hebrew Identity’ based on ancient Semitic heroic myths – such as Nimrod’s. Though never gaining mass support, the movement had a considerable influence on Israeli intellectuals in the 1940s and early 1950s.”

The current exhibit looks at the adult Danziger’s later career from the early 1970s until his death in 1977. Curator Sharon Yavo Ayalon writes “For many, Danziger is identified with ‘Nimrod,’ the figurative-archaic statue he created in 1939 that was repeatedly chosen as the quintessential Israeli masterpiece. Few were aware of his environmental work, to which he brought an innovative perception of the landscape as a system that combines both ecological and cultural elements.”

“His experimentation with subjects like conservation and restoration, and his field and theoretical studies of the issues of earth, water and tree, are a source of inspiration for contemporary artists, architects and scientists grappling with issues that Danziger long ago identified as urgent and acute, and that should never again be allowed to disappear from the public awareness.

True to his Canaanite roots, Danziger “offered a new model of the Israeli, one who found a different way to wander across the country, exploring its treasures and its open spaces, appreciating its natural and cultural qualities – and crafting the ideal relationship between society on the one hand, and place, environment, sites, landscape, art and history on the other.”

“For Danziger, earth, water and tree were natural elements that carried multiple meanings. Earth meant land and ground for rehabilitation and garden design; but in its solid state – the rock from which a sculpture emerges – it was also, or perhaps especially, the very earth of the Land of Israel from which one could elicit the ancient cultural milieu. It was that relationship, he felt, which would allow him to flourish and nurture his roots.”

“He was inspired as well by water. Its natural and aesthetic association with holy places, and the methods of channeling it across the landscape, found expression in many of his sculptures and drawings, and was central to his environmental work.”

“The tree, on the other hand, is an organic link between earth and water and between earth and the human being… He attached great importance to trees, especially in the context of sacred trees and groves.”

The exhibition recreates two legendary environmental installations by Danziger, both evocative of our ancient heritage: “Hanging Artificial Landscape” and “Aqueduct”. Another part of the exhibition is devoted to photographs, drawings and prints connected to the rehabilitation of the Nesher Quarry, the Wadi Sheikh bustan (grove), Hurshat Ha’arba’im (the Grove of the Forty) and his last project: a memorial tree-planting ceremony for the casualties of the Egoz army unit in the Northern Golan, near Nimrod’s Castle.

Sadly, writes Yavo Ayalon, “All those places Danziger tried to rehabilitate were soon ignored and neglected, and in their deteriorated state they cry out, now more than ever, for help. Nesher Quarry is still an abandoned gash in the landscape; the well in Hurshat Ha’arba’im is still in ruins; and there is a demolition order out against the bustan of Wadi Sheikh. The water problem has only worsened.”

Earth. Water. Tree. runs from June 13 to July 30 at the Paul Konrad Hoenich Center for Art, Science and Technology at the Technion’s Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning.

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Improv Everywhere

July 28, 2008 - 2:52 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art 

Frozen Tel AvivIt all started in August 2001, a group of creative New Yorkers decided to bring joy to a city which had recently experienced it’s greatest tragedy of all time. They founded Improv Everywhere, a organization whose goal is to simply to “make scenes” in public. It’s where street theater meets public art meets entertainment. They’ve done some pretty quirky stuff such as a fake U2 concert on a NY rooftop, turning a subway car into a haunted house, and even conducting a musical in a mall food court (my personal favorite). Their most ambitious scene involved over 200 participants who simultaneously “froze” in the middle of Grand Central Station. The video of this event on YouTube has over 12 million views and has inspired many other groups around the world.

Including in Tel Aviv.

On July 11 a few dozen (sadly not hundreds) of Tel Avivites “froze” in the middle of a main public square at the end of the Carmel market simultaneously confusing and entertaining the myriad of shoppers, tourists and passersby.

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