Drawing, sculpting and designing women

November 19, 2008 - 4:20 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, History and Culture 

Sitting TorsoIt’s well known that women played a key role in the forging of Israel’s military, intellectual and agricultural successes in the early generations of the nation. Just ask the leadership of the Union of Creative Women in Israel.

But many argue that women’s role in Israel’s formative visual arts scene has been given the short end of the stick. A group of women scholars has recently undertaken an extensive research project exploring the matter, yielding a formidable report entitled Creative Women in Israel, 1920-1970. The volume chronicles the lives and accomplishments of some 51 female photographers, 28 female architects and 86 female painters/sculptors, many of whom were celebrated in their time but are sadly overlooked or under-respected now – and that’s not counting 35 more figures not covered in depth in the book but currently being examined by the group.

Now that the book is set to be published imminently by Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of the Arts, the school has organized an entire day-long conference surrounding the occasion.

Entitled Creative Women of the Visual Arts in Israel and taking place this Sunday from 10:15 a.m. into the evening hours, the conference has been planned by an academic board headed by Dr. Ruth Marcus of the TAU Department of Art History. Many local and international presenters are involved as well, including Dr. Ines Sonder of Potsdam’s Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies, speaking about under-celebrated architect Lotte Cohn; Dr. Ruth E. Iskin, Ben-Gurion University professor of the Arts, author of Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting; and Prof. Tamar Garb of London’s University College, speaking about Feminism, Art History and the Challenge of the Woman Artist.

Pictured is long-lost sculptress Sulamit Nem Salom’s bronze Sitting Torso, used by permission from Creative Women in Israel, 1920-1970.

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Statuary Style

November 8, 2008 - 11:13 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

Jews aren’t big on statues – you won’t find too many bronzed generals on horseback in Israel – although I actually found one, of this guy (http://tinyurl.com/6bu5mp). What monuments there are dedicated to a person or group are generally abstract sculptures, where you can kind of make out the human form (http://tinyurl.com/553nyu), or completely symbolic, like http://tinyurl.com/5vfzux. The long ingrained strictures against graven images run deep in the Israeli psyche, to the extent that you won’t even find images of people on Israeli coinage (a special edition of a five shekel coin with the blurred image of Maimonides raised some eyebrows a few years ago, though).
donquixote110708.jpg
There does seem to be one outlet for statuary that appears to be acceptable in Israel – sculptured topiary, made out of a bushes and shrubs. I’ve seen “statues” of birds, rabbits, cows, even people. And then we have this prime example: Don Quixote (know as “Don Kishot” in Hebrew) in a Petach Tikvah high tech center. The Spanish hero sits atop a horse – much like this “real” statue (http://tinyurl.com/6j6luh). Next to Don at this industrial park (not seen) is a topiary of his sidekick, Sancho Panza. Topiaries don’t seem to have raised the hackles of those most likely to feel uncomfortable with statues (religious Jews), maybe because their not “etched in stone,” so to say.

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