I have generally accumulated a great deal of experience concerning the meanings of color and its relationship to observed form.
On that level, my work, including my sculpture, constitutes a contemporary perspective on the relationships of color and pattern in primitive society.
On another level, my “masks” are an interpretation of my life experiences in two diverse cultures that share an intense and politically volatile relationship to the land: in Israel, where I was born and bred, and in South Africa, where I spent a decade of my middle adulthood.
They reflect a search for the primeval in oneself and the connections to one’s roots, and attempt to scratch at the surface of the present to reveal personal (Israeli) and ancient (tribal) cultural memories through an exploration of the forms of expression of the anonymous (tribal) artists who created both the paintings on the walls of ancient caves and the ritual masks.
There is a close connection between the “primitive” modes of these drawings/paintings and mask making, and the “modern” modes of drawing/painting and object making which have sought to express themselves in a “new” way: in short, a close similarity in the mode of expression in primitive art to that of modern artists.
My “masks” accordingly serve as tiny illustrations of the recurrent “laws” of representation which appear in human history and the tradition that connects past and present artistic expressions. The images embody values and beliefs that survive eras, becoming part of an eternal visual vocabulary that floats in collective memory. To this end, expression of time is of the essence, and is compressed into a dense abraded surface; the colors I use are, for the most part, primeval: earth-toned and evocative of soot-smudged cave walls.
These works are intended to be impenetrable, appropriate to the “Darkest Continent”; we may consider them as semi-abstract signs, as though the vegetable and animal worlds have undergone some reductive process, with the source of their vitality nevertheless taken from nature: we live in nature and are influenced by it.
On a more mundane level, my work relates to the lifestyles of both the diverse and culturally integrated communities in South Africa, particularly that of the Bushman (San) people of the Kalahari Desert, and that of the besieged population of a village at the top of a mountain called Masada in Israel who committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans about 135 CE..
It can be said to be reminiscent both of (and inspired by) the African tribal masks we have collected and encountered over the years, and the tattered remains of textiles found in the caves of Masada which were created with basically the use of only three dyes – yellow, red and blue, taken from plant roots and minerals, and which I use as the basis of the colors for most of my pieces.
Because of the similarities of these remnants to the materials used on African artifacts,
I had found a link between my Israeli background, with its childhood memories of striped talit and robes worn by members of the orthodox religious sect, and my African experiences, and a way to express that connection in the textured surfaces, muted banded colors and materials in my work (such as burlap/jute, wood spools, and binding twine, which for the most part is found in my constructions in the form of copper or galvanized metal wire, or implied in my paintings by strips or rolled cheesecloth that stretch from edge to edge.)
Other links between these cultures involved the layering (new over old) of Bushman cave paintings which inspired the “palimpsest” quality of many of my pieces; handprints laid over the paintings to establish the ownership of their creators, which led to the Jewish symbol of Yad, the hands (or, for the most part, fingerprints) I place over almost all my pieces.
Each piece is also part of the whole and tells its story best in accompaniment with the others, just as both primitive and present-day cultures do with their icons.
References:
Meyer Schapiro, “Style”, in A.L. Krober, ed., Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Invention, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953
Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba, Jerusalem: Weidenfield and Nicolson Jerusalem, 1971
A footnote: Bill Ainslie, my mentor in South Africa, was killed in a motor car accident in August 1989, returning from a seminar in which he had participated in Zimbabwe. Many of my later works, with their inscribed Hebrew messages, have been executed as tributes to him and his vision. A wonderful colorist, he was responsible for starting me on the road of awareness of color and its relationship to observed form. He taught us to be utterly faithful to what we saw and respond in a sensational, rather than an intellectual, way.
On that level, my work, including my sculpture, constitutes a contemporary perspective on the relationships of color and pattern in primitive society.
On another level, my “masks” are an interpretation of my life experiences in two diverse cultures that share an intense and politically volatile relationship to the land: in Israel, where I was born and bred, and in South Africa, where I spent a decade of my middle adulthood.
They reflect a search for the primeval in oneself and the connections to one’s roots, and attempt to scratch at the surface of the present to reveal personal (Israeli) and ancient (tribal) cultural memories through an exploration of the forms of expression of the anonymous (tribal) artists who created both the paintings on the walls of ancient caves and the ritual masks.
There is a close connection between the “primitive” modes of these drawings/paintings and mask making, and the “modern” modes of drawing/painting and object making which have sought to express themselves in a “new” way: in short, a close similarity in the mode of expression in primitive art to that of modern artists.
My “masks” accordingly serve as tiny illustrations of the recurrent “laws” of representation which appear in human history and the tradition that connects past and present artistic expressions. The images embody values and beliefs that survive eras, becoming part of an eternal visual vocabulary that floats in collective memory. To this end, expression of time is of the essence, and is compressed into a dense abraded surface; the colors I use are, for the most part, primeval: earth-toned and evocative of soot-smudged cave walls.
These works are intended to be impenetrable, appropriate to the “Darkest Continent”; we may consider them as semi-abstract signs, as though the vegetable and animal worlds have undergone some reductive process, with the source of their vitality nevertheless taken from nature: we live in nature and are influenced by it.
On a more mundane level, my work relates to the lifestyles of both the diverse and culturally integrated communities in South Africa, particularly that of the Bushman (San) people of the Kalahari Desert, and that of the besieged population of a village at the top of a mountain called Masada in Israel who committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans about 135 CE..
It can be said to be reminiscent both of (and inspired by) the African tribal masks we have collected and encountered over the years, and the tattered remains of textiles found in the caves of Masada which were created with basically the use of only three dyes – yellow, red and blue, taken from plant roots and minerals, and which I use as the basis of the colors for most of my pieces.
Because of the similarities of these remnants to the materials used on African artifacts,
I had found a link between my Israeli background, with its childhood memories of striped talit and robes worn by members of the orthodox religious sect, and my African experiences, and a way to express that connection in the textured surfaces, muted banded colors and materials in my work (such as burlap/jute, wood spools, and binding twine, which for the most part is found in my constructions in the form of copper or galvanized metal wire, or implied in my paintings by strips or rolled cheesecloth that stretch from edge to edge.)
Other links between these cultures involved the layering (new over old) of Bushman cave paintings which inspired the “palimpsest” quality of many of my pieces; handprints laid over the paintings to establish the ownership of their creators, which led to the Jewish symbol of Yad, the hands (or, for the most part, fingerprints) I place over almost all my pieces.
Each piece is also part of the whole and tells its story best in accompaniment with the others, just as both primitive and present-day cultures do with their icons.
References:
Meyer Schapiro, “Style”, in A.L. Krober, ed., Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Invention, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953
Yigael Yadin, Bar-Kokhba, Jerusalem: Weidenfield and Nicolson Jerusalem, 1971
A footnote: Bill Ainslie, my mentor in South Africa, was killed in a motor car accident in August 1989, returning from a seminar in which he had participated in Zimbabwe. Many of my later works, with their inscribed Hebrew messages, have been executed as tributes to him and his vision. A wonderful colorist, he was responsible for starting me on the road of awareness of color and its relationship to observed form. He taught us to be utterly faithful to what we saw and respond in a sensational, rather than an intellectual, way.
