Jerusalem Diary: Monday 18 August

By Tim Franks
BBC News, Jerusalem

RELIGIOUS MODERN ART FANS

The "big black boy" was probably "not even circumcised", the curator said (Image: Israel Museum)

Over the summer, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, staged Real Time, an exhibition of Israeli artists' work from the last 10 years.

The blurb at the start suggested that this would not be overtly political work, in that it would not refer, directly, to local or regional confrontations.

Not that that would allow any of us any easy passage - we were told that the artists were preoccupied, as artists so often are, with visions of global unease or even catastrophe.

In one sense, the exhibition had a particularly Israeli, or at the least, Jerusalem flavour.

When I went, the viewers were not the well-coiffed or uber-hip exhibition-goers of London or Tel Aviv, but rather, in large measure, highly religious Jews with their impressively large broods.

They were engaging, unusually, with a cool and secular contemporary art space.

Their children, from time to time, were relating in a particularly tactile way to the works, despite the polite requests dotted around the walls, for young children to remain physically restrained.

FLESH AND A SUPERMARKET TRIP

There was another twist. Yes, the art was replete with the multimedia installations that say "Modern". But there was little that was confrontationally explicit or graphic.

Shopping Day also held the attention of a religious family next to me (Image: Israel Museum)

That is not a criticism - but it is what characterises an important wedge of contemporary art.

I wondered whether the selection of exhibits had been tailored for a Jerusalem audience.

The most disturbing piece was by the prominent Israeli artist Sigalit Landau: she had created a large sculpture peopled by figures with peeled flesh. It seemed a little melodramatic, compared to some of her smaller work.

Still, Landau is one of Israel's true international stars. She has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and this year she was shortlisted for the Royal Academy's 2008 Wollaston Prize.

That was for one of her more famous works, Barbed Hula. The journal "Art In America" describes it thus: "With a leaden and noisily roiling Mediterranean in the background, the nude Landau smoothly gyrates to keep a hoop of barbed wire in orbit around her bruised torso.

"The two-minute loop archly conflates the seductive Eastern art of belly dancing with one of the loonier emblems of Western leisure."

The exhibition includes one of Sigalit Landau's more melodramatic works (Image: Israel Museum)

The curator of the exhibition, Amitai Mendelsohn, told me that there had been no self-censorship.

He pointed out that the biggest sculpture, "the big black boy from south Tel Aviv" could have been considered offensive.

"A giant nude child. I don't think he was even circumcised. But we didn't get complaints - quite the opposite."

There were some exhibits that hinted at local unease: photographs in what appeared to be a rural Israeli or Palestinian setting.

There was a mother and daughter, snapped from behind, the mother with her hand to her cheek, as if gripped by what is taking place in the blurred distance; and two pictures of scrubby land partially clouded by dust or smoke, maybe thrown up by speeding vehicles.

My favourite exhibit was the five-minute video, "Shopping Day" by Doron Solomons.

It was set in an Israeli supermarket, but subverted that universal, identikit shopping trip.

It was beautifully shot, which a lot of video installations do not seem to bother to be.

It had a narrative line: ditto.

And it had a disconcerting finish: the protagonist stood, gazing flatly ahead, as his shopping bags burst, and the contents splattered across the pavement.

I was held. So, alongside me, was a large, religious family.

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Your comments:

I enjoyed this article. On my last photo assignment to Israel, I stumbled upon an amazing phenomena - Ein Hod Artist Community; which is just south of Haifa. Perhaps it merits a visit for the essence of its existence. Culturally and spiritually, I believe the world is a better place for its practices, humanitarian projects, its art, etc. It made quite an impression on this American. With regret; nothing like this community exists in the States.
Kenneth Paul Duszynski, Deerfield, IL USA

The Israeli supermarket piece sounds worthy of a look. Shopping culture here, while geared toward the customer in many areas, is less customer oriented than in the west with other cultural attitudes often readily evident. It makes for an interesting case study. It's refreshing to see this type of article because Israel is actually a very complex society and there is an enormous amount going on here apart from politics - with plenty for an artist to take inspiration from.

Yehuda N, Modiin, Israel