Raffi Lavie Catalog for the Israel Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale
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Transcript of Raffi Lavie Catalog for the Israel Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale
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Raffi Lavie
The Israeli Pavilion
The Venice Biennale
53rd International
Art Exhibition
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Raffi Lavie
The Israeli Pavilion
The Venice Biennale
53rd International Art Exhibition
Team: Doreet LeVitte Harten, Diana Dallal, Ilan Wizgan, Arad Turgeman, Michal Sahar, Koby Levy, Daria Kassovsky, Yael Braun, Mati Broudo, Carmit Blumensohn
Catalogue printing & binding: A.R. Press Ltd., Tel AvivPhotographs: Yigal Pardo, Meidad Suchowolski
© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Oded Löbl and Sigal Kolton
On the cover (English):Raffi Lavie, (“Shulkhan Aroch”), (detail), 2001 Acrylic and pencil on plywood, 120x120 Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv
On the cover (Hebrew):Michal Heiman, Raffi Lavie, Tel Aviv, 1992B&W print, 80x56
Measurements are given in centimeters, height x width
The Israeli Council of Culture and ArtVisual Art Section
Steering Committee:Deganit Berest, Uri Katzenstein, Philip Rantzer, Drorit Gur Arie, Ellen GintonCoordinator: Idit Amihai
Ministry of Science, Culture and SportCulture and Arts Administration, Museums & Visual Arts Department
Ministry of Foreign AffairsCultural & Scientific Relations Division
Embassy of Israel in Rome
ISBN: 978-965-91402-0-6
Thanks Ilana Lavie, Yair Garbuz, Amir Mandel, David Ginton,Yona Fischer, Michal Heiman, Sarah Breitberg-Semel,Michal Na'aman, Itamar Levy, Ilana Tenenbaum, Jachin Hirsch, Alon Altaras Deganit Berest, Philip Rantzer, Uri Katzenstein,Drorit Gur Arie, Ellen GintonGivon Art Gallery, Tel AvivIrit and Boaz Biran, Gil BrandesFriends of the Israeli Pavilion (IPS)Idit Amihai, Yona Marcu, Yossi Balt, Shlomo Yitzhaki, Micha Yinon, Efrat Livny, Moran ShoubNoam Segal, Shay Raz, Gabriel LevinHotel Montefiore staff, Tel Aviv, Sotheby's Israel, Galai PRYoel Rassabi, Daniella Atach, Diana Shoef, Ofer MazarAurelio Rampazzo, Venice; MB Audiovisivi, Padua Giovanni Boldrin, Padua; Lucia Briseghella, PaduaMichele Galizia, Padua; Mirco Lunardello, PaduaStefania Scarafia, Padua; F.lli Marcato, StraFloricoltura Scarpa G.M.&.F., (Lido) Venice
Edna Moshenson, Levia and Helman Stern, Tammy and Martin Weil, Dov and Hana LeVitte, Jürgen Harten and Shelley HartenTammy and Danny Litani, Nily Noyman
Ora and Tamir Agmon, Danny Unger, Adina Alsheich, Oli and Zippi Alter, Noemi Givon, Noa and Asaf Danziger, Nurit Wolf, Hillela Tal, Itay and Rina Talgam, Benno Kalev, Doron Sebbag, Edna Kowarsky, Ari Raved, Timna Rosenheimer, Ofer and Hagit Shapira
ScribaNetStudio, PaduaVetreria Bonini BEB srl., MassaSapore Italiano, Alessandria
Publication of the catalogue was supported bythe Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts
Raffi Lavie:
In the Name of the Father
Doreet LeVitte Harten _5
Biographical Notes _31
Works _34
Selected Bibliography
[Hebrew] _128
About Raffi Lavie—Fragments _85
Sarah Breitberg-Semel _86
Meir Ahronson _87
David Ginton _88
Itamar Levy _89
Deganit Berest _89
Yair Garbuz _90
Meir Wieseltier _92
Aïm Deüelle Lüski _93
Jacob Mishori _94
Michal Na’aman _94
Ariella Azoulay _95
Moshe Ninio _97
Yona Fischer _98
Irad Kimhi _99
Sarit Shapira _99
Dalia Karpel _100
Shva Salhoov _101
Tamar Getter _101
Amir Mandel _102
Sarah Breitberg-Semel _103
Table of Contents
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Raffi Lavie:In the Name of the Father
– Doreet LeVitte Harten –
Dedicated to my six faithful readers
PART I in which the nature of the audience is being speculated and a bifurcation is thus achieved
For the Israeli public, Raffi Lavie is a household
name, a local icon, and a cultural hero. A figure
in which the clan invested its image, dreams,
and doubts. He forms a nucleus which bespeaks
territories beyond his art and his being an artist,
to the extent that even those who deny his
qualities acknowledge his cultural impact. For
this Israeli audience, this particular clan, Lavie
is central in understanding their own culture.
For those not of our people, however, those
who are not at home with our manners, codes,
and behavioral apparatus, Lavie is an unknown
entity to be regarded through the prism of
familiar influences. These may range from Cy
Twombly to Robert Rauschenberg, or from Paul
Klee to Arnulf Reiner. Those who are not of our
people would not recognize names such as Aviva
Uri and Arie Aroch—two Israeli artists whose
impact on Lavie was immense and immediate.
Lavie as a peripheral variant would be at best
comprehended as having been shaped by the
gravitational forces emanating from the center,
and in the worst case scenario—he might be a
sacrifice to the Omai syndrome. Omai, let us recall,
was a Tahitian native brought to England in 1774
by the notorious Captain Cook, to become the
attraction of London’s high society during the
two years to follow.
By way of comparison, the universal values
of aesthetics may be well and good in explaining
Lavie as an artist, but they are insufficient in
explaining the fatal attraction he cast on his local
peers. When we deal only with the universal, we
are telling half a story. His almost mythological
presence, in the sense that he represented a
quintessence of Israeli culture, inquires into the
nature of that mythogene that responded to the
collective ethos.
During his lifetime, Lavie escaped both the
bitter destiny of being exotic, and the sweeter
fate of being a second among equals, due to
the simple fact that he was only rarely exposed
* For visual references see p. 30.
“In fifty years things will straighten up, and on a sunny Saturday a family will go out and visit the ‘Raffi Lavie Museum’.”
Adam Baruch, “Raffi Lavie. A Bit of Hysteria, Please,”
Haaretz, 19 May 2003 [Hebrew].
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in a major show abroad, and when foreign
dignitaries came to Israel, he was too much of
an aristocrat to pay them tribute. That is to say,
he did not go out of his way to be discovered.
On the other hand, his fellow Israelis were not
sure he would be understood according to their
own gospels. This deadly combination made him
a hidden treasure up to the present Biennale (or
so we hope).
A dilemma persists though—why is it that,
while being so central to the art scene in Israel, he
never made it abroad; and why, two years after
his death, he is officially sent to the Biennale?
What do his art and persona invoke? What
does his memory imply? We might also ponder
about what we wish to remember, and why this
memory, therapeutic in character, has the taste
of urgency.
Let me first put forth some facts about Lavie’s life:
— Raffi Lavie was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in
1937; he died in Tel Aviv in 2007.
— He was the central figure in the Israeli art
scene for four decades, starting his activities
in the early 1960s.
— He was a teacher at the Midrasha Art
Teachers’ Training College, later to become
the Art School, Beit Berl Academic College,
one of the two leading art institutes in Israel,
and he revolutionized methods of teaching
art: art was not taught on the practical level,
but rather the outcomes were discussed in
class.
— He curated numerous exhibitions, and was
responsible for the second wave of modernism
in its abstract aspect.
— Most of Lavie’s students became leading
artists in turn, and created around him what
Sarah Breitberg-Semel had termed in her
canonical text the “want of matter” aesthetic.1
According to Breitberg-Semel, it was an art
meager in terms of its materials, which was
not simply Israeli, but rather typically and
essentially Tel Avivian. It expressed a secular
spirit, a pioneering social ethos, an art of the
native-born—the Sabra, who gave up the
Zionist pathos, yet adhered to the anaesthetic
aspect of his Judaism. Lavie, she maintained,
created an art in the spirit of the place, a
native sensuality which he was the first to
articulate, implemented on plywood rather
than on canvas, employing collage, scribbling,
and industrial paint. “The grand old Zionist
experience, replete with pathos and values,
is ultimately diminished to a physical love
for the city. For the ‘Tel Aviv child’ there is
no ‘religion,’ no ‘nation,’ no ‘land,’ there is
only the concrete city. There is no ideology,
but true vitality.”2
— Lavie was a connoisseur of music. He held
1. Sarah Breitberg-Semel, cat. The Want of Matter:
A Quality in Israeli Art, trans. Susann Codish (Tel Aviv
Museum of Art, 1986).
2. Ibid., p. 182.
Still from: Raffi Lavie,
Yona Hanavi (St.), 1979
8 mm film
פריים מתוך: רפי לביא,
, 1979, סרט 8 מ"מ א י ב נ ה ה נ ו י
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weekly meetings at home dedicated to
music appreciation, and thereby developed a
comparative system of music comprehension.
— He developed a bartering system whereby he
would exchange his works with other artists.
At the outset of his career, the art market was
almost nonexistent in Israel, and the barter
system was an efficient tool in spreading art
and circulating images.
— He opened his house to anyone seeking his
advice and friendship, thus turning it into the
real place where art in Israel was discussed.
His apartment on Yona Hanavi (Prophet
Jonah) Street acquired a mythological status,
introducing an alternative to the role of
museums as canon-making loci.
— He was an authoritative and charismatic
figure.
PART II in which we air some prejudice and contemplate the possibility of being an Israeli artist
Two facts befall the eye upon observing Raffi
Lavie’s works. First, that he paints as though
he were a child, and second, his obsession with
erasing images through scribbling, etchings, and
generous strokes of paint. These topics were
masterfully addressed in essays by David Ginton3
and Mordechai Geldman4. I find these two
phenomena connected with a deep understanding
of his being an artist in the periphery, and more
so—of his being Jewish and Israeli, and therefore
twice removed from the great womb of Western
aesthetics. Lavie, in recognizing what might be a
disadvantage, took that to be the fundamental
concern of his work, and in employing the act of
erasure and the child-like stand, being blessed by
the euphoria of eternal infantilism, which was
manipulated towards his own needs, reached a
new definition of the outcast. Concerning the
erasure, Geldman writes:”…His erasures have
many forms and nuances—they emerge as color
surfaces, stains, scribbles, tears, and cuts… The
erasure, however, always acquires a presence as
a new reality, replacing or adding to that which
was erased… Lavie’s painting is a catalogue
of all the prohibitions that were cancelled by
modernism, a collection of everything excluded
from classical painting,” going on to connect this
aggressiveness with that of a child: “The erasure
furnishes Lavie with the power to domesticate
the world, to force his own subjectivity on it.”5
Indeed, you may now ask what the big deal
is in those iconoclastic acts. They were enacted
by generations of artists from Dubuffet to Miró
and from Malevich to Duchamp, and did not
3. David Ginton, “Head Birth: Portrait of Raffi as a Young
Painter,” cat. Raffi: The Early Paintings, 1957-1961, trans.
Richard Flantz (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1993).
4. Mordechai Geldman, “The Last Erasure: On Raffi Lavie’s
Retrospective Exhibition at the Israel Museum, February
2003,” The True Self and the Self of Truth: Psychoanalytic
and Others Perspectives (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad,
2006) [Hebrew], pp. 209-15.
5. Ibid.
Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg march
into Rome like the barbarians before them and
harvest all its mythological wealth?
The difference, it seems to me, lies in the
starting point. Those artists, well-immersed in
their cultural heritage, could afford to wave
the banner of iconoclasm without the risk of
appearing ridiculous, being safely tucked in the
arms of their own Western tradition. To wit, it
is not the act, but the performer, who decides
its credibility, and it is here that the difference
is encapsulated as a dilemma inherent in matters
of good taste. Lavie took risks from which those
artists inside their security fence were immune.
This means he had to take into account by-passes
and strategies of camouflage. He had to acquire
certain shrewdness so that his paintings would
feel at home in a hostile surrounding. I may be
exaggerating in matters of hostility, but it was
there, and one had to create ways to avoid or
manipulate it.
Lavie’s understanding of the periphery in its
double role, as an actual place and as a spiritual
dimension, is crucial to his aesthetic. By the
beginning of the 1960s he was in his mid-20s
and already knew himself to be an artist. But
what does it mean to declare oneself an artist
in a place which understands abstract art as a
ticket to the moderna only in its utopian form,
and by means of splendid manipulation succeed
also to harness its zeal to the idea of a new
society. A place which never decided whether its
people are the orphans or the forefathers of the
West, to borrow Michal Na’aman’s words. What
does it mean to be an artist in a place which relies
on reproductions, second-hand knowledge, a
handful of art books, and the stories of those
who were at the center and came back to tell its
glories?
By the end of the 1950s the local art hegemony
belonged to a group called New Horizons which,
in resisting the Paris school and the local style
they identified as pure propaganda, tended
toward what they called Lyrical Abstraction,
which they believed would connect them to the
rest of the world. Lavie took this group as a point
of departure. By forming a cadre of young artists,
the 10+ group, he aired some notions concerning
the avant-garde, injected new tendencies, such
as collage and assemblage, rejuvenated the
scene via a series of exhibitions that had arbitrary
themes, and as such, were under the halo of
the Now which was grasped as both local and
universal.
The 1960s were Lavie’s formative years,
and they were very different from the 1960s in
Europe and the United States. The generation
that rediscovered love in America, or took up
barricades in Paris, was not allowed to interfere
with the New Man being created here. Even the
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Raffi Lavie
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1957, ink on paper
35.6x49.6, Benno Kalev
Collection, Tel Aviv
1957, ink on paper
35.1x49.5, Benno Kalev
Collection, Tel Aviv
1957, דיו על נייר
49.6”35.6, אוסף בנו כלב
תל אביב
1957, דיו על נייר
49.5”35.1, אוסף בנו כלב
תל אביב
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Beatles were prevented from performing in Israel,
lest their music corrupt the Zionist discourse and
its poetic expressions; it was Isser Harel, former
head of Israel’s internal security service, who
years later in an interview said: “We dictated to
you what to think, what to see, what to read. We
did not want revolutions here,”6 and by “you” he
meant Lavie’s generation.
Those were the years in which the myth of
the New Hebrew consolidated into the figure of
the native Israeli called Sabra; a construct made
from the ashes of those who perished in the
Holocaust, who nonetheless went unrecognized
as his legitimate forebears. There was an abyss
between them as Jews and him as a native Israeli.
Not only did he stand at the opposite pole from
the diasporic Jew, but also as the opposite of
the latter’s caricatural image, hence he had no
biological family that could be translated into a
symbolical status. This native—like Athena who
sprang full blown and fully-armed from the head
of her father, Zeus—is a further achievement
in the art of parthenogenesis for his biological
progenitors were replaced by the State, which
becomes a pseudo-biological entity. Thus, the
State is the begetter; the peer groups are the
nuclear family, and the friends are the siblings.
Since he was born as a finished product, the
Sabra is also an eternal youth, which explains
why Israeli grown-ups are still called Bibi and Udi,
Dani and Shuki, thus preserving the eternal state
of the product. By the same token, it is also Raffi,
and not Rafael.
Sarah Breitberg-Semel, in the aforementioned
essay and in connection to Lavie and the group
that formed around him, wrote: “Beyond the
scribbling and the meager materials, Lavie’s
work presents us with a new figure, that of the
‘dispossessed Sabra,’ who identified Judaism
with the ‘doomed diaspora’; who scorns the
Zionist myth and its pathos, as he does all
myths, symbols and rhetoric; who ridicules the
European bourgeois decadence and its ‘worldly
possessions,’ and clings to a mode of behavior
which consists of ‘torn and threadbare rags’ with
which to express his authenticity.”7
By the time Breitberg-Semel wrote her text
in 1986, the myth of the Sabra was nearing its
end. For Lavie, it had already ended in 1956. “As
far as I am concerned,” he said in an interview,
“Israel collapsed in 1956. It started with the Sinai
Campaign... One day I heard Ben Gurion declare
the establishment of ‘the third kingdom of Israel’
on the radio, and that gave me a shock. Since
then I have been feeling the collapse; it’s been
years now that people are saying the situation
cannot get any worse. It turns out it can.”8
Lavie as the mythological native is a thesis
that was repudiated in later time, when the figure
lost its credibility and its banner bearers came to
6. Quoted in Dan Lachman, “The 1960s,”
http://www.e-mago.co.il/Editor/hagut-948.htm [Hebrew].
7. Breitberg-Semel 1986, note 1, p. 181.
8. In an interview with Dalia Karpel, Ha’aretz, 21 December
2005 [Hebrew].
1957 (detail), oil on paper
50x35, courtesy Givon Art Gallery
Tel Aviv (see cat. 41)
1957 )פרט(, שמן על נייר
35”50, באדיבות גבעון
גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב )ר' קט' 41(
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understand that the joke was on them. What had
started as an answer to a caricature, ended thus. A
counter-interpretation of Lavie removed the local
components and wove him into the matrix of the
world by employing postmodern epistemologies
or by negating the appeal of formal explanation
and tending towards the symbolic values in his
art. This approach was already discernible in
David Ginton’s essay in the catalogue of his 1993
exhibition of early paintings, and was further
developed by Sarit Shapira in her essay for Lavie’s
retrospective at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, in
2004.9
Beyond all the attempts to clarify the Raffi
Lavie phenomena and explain his centrality in the
landscape of Israeli culture, there is the fact that
his art, like a mirror, reflects the virtues and values
with which we wish to identify. The aesthetics he
offers encapsulates the quintessence of our being
here. Lavie is the Good Samaritan, the keeper of
a certain dignity which is lost, since that which
is reflected from his paintings, the symbolical
figure they produce, could be summed up as that
of the Good Israeli, and he/she is an embodiment
of those values gone awry. This Good Israeli still
contains the stratified myth and the renunciation
of his nativeness. Lavie, aware of that dream,
being himself its product, understood the nature
of that inner dispossession, which is exteriorized
by dispossessing the other. In other words, Lavie
put the finger on that melancholic aesthetic as
characteristic to the Israeli, and that is why when
Adam Baruch summed up his greatness, he wrote:
“Most of those writing about Lavie, had they
been men of truth, had their spirit been free,
would have possibly said ‘Raffi Lavie reaffirms
my private values and ensures their survival, and
this is his greatness for me,’ and would settle for
that.”10
PART III in which we explore the paintings themselves
If I put forward the claim that Lavie was spawned
by a scopophobic tradition that might have
influenced the very roots of his art, it still does
not negate the very fact of his being an artist
measured by universal standards. What it does is
create a deviation that may help understand his
works in the context of his specific culture. In this
sense, making art for Lavie (and any other Jewish
and Israeli artist) is an act stained by anomaly,
and is not self-evident, axiomatic or natural.
I say stained and not colored because such an
anomaly should be taken in proportion. Consider
it as background noise. Moreover, there is great
beauty inherent in such prerequisites, for they
turn the artist into someone who is forced to act
against the grain, a stand that catapults him into
9. Sarit Shapira, cat. Raffi Lavie: Works from 1950 to 2003
(Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2003).
10. Adam Baruch, How Are Things At Home (Tel Aviv: Kinneret,
Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2004), p. 193 [Hebrew].
2004 (detail), acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection (see cat. 28)
2004 )פרט(, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי )ר' קט' 28(
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the traditional role of the romantic artist. One
may trace this pathos of emancipation in Lavie’s
public activities, in his capacities as organizer,
in his charismatic personality which gathered
people around him, but not in his paintings.
In describing his works, several periods are
discernable. The beginning is marked by child-
like figures, objects, and scribbles which remain
constant throughout the years. In the early 1960s
he flirted with abstract white color fields, and
later—especially in the 1970s and 1980s—he used
collage techniques as a major tool of expression.
Also consistent is his use of plywood which
is almost always the support material of the
painting, and which was discussed at length by
Itamar Levy11, Aïm Deüelle Lüski12, Sarit Shapira,
and Sarah Breitberg-Semel.
Plywood was considered an inferior, valueless
material, lacking in decorum, almost a found
object by essence; an artificial product akin to
plastic, its cheapness a defiance of the cultural
notions essential to the history of art. In many
works, the plywood is a major player along with
the brush strokes and the scribbles in organizing
the picture surface into a coherent unit. But its
status does not catch my eye as much as two facts:
the first is the accidental character associated
with it, the contingency of its being. Plywood
as a primary surface implies a stand maintaining
that the scaffolds holding the whole cannot and
should not be given any status, because such a
notion (embedded, for example, in the use of
canvas as a classical painterly surface) would entail
an opinionated, if not prejudiced, attitude which
would, a-priori dictate our relationship with the
visual impact of the picture. Either the work in this
sense cuts off its relations with the world or else
it needs to speak its language. What does it mean
to speak the language of the world? It means
keeping the flow to reality and back; being aware
of the work’s capacity to integrate itself into the
world until it becomes a natural component of
its perception. This is one way to keep relevance,
because the work does not respond to reality, as
much as it is a part of it. Such is Lavie’s procedure
that it allows us to conceive a certain freedom
emanating from the painting being one with
the world. This might explain the significance
attributed to the margins of the picture, as well
as the fact that the images are not terminated,
but rather go beyond the frame.
The other fact concerning plywood almost
negates the first in the sense that it touches
hidden spheres. Under the pretence—or,
according to Moshe Ninio, the mask—of the
plywood’s humility, there lurk a movement and
an afterimage due to the wavy pattern of the
wood grain.13 Indeed poverty has its own tactics
and pleasures when it comes to camouflaging
its real aims. After leaving the land where art
12. Aïm Deüelle Lüski, „The Ways of Plywood,“ Please
Read What Is Painted Here, eds. Efrat Biberman and Deganit
Berest (Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl Academic
College, 2009), pp. 85-100 [Hebrew].
13. Moshe Ninio, in Sarah Breitberg Semel, “Yehudit
Sasportas and Moshe Ninio Talk about Raffi Lavie on
the Occasion of his Retrospective Exhibition at the
Israel Museum,” Studio Art Magazine, no. 141 (March 2003),
p. 34 [Hebrew].
11. Itamar Levy, “Jars, Heads, and White Noise,” cat. Raffi
Lavie (Works, 1985-1990) (Tel Aviv & Berlin: Givon Art
Gallery & and Galerie Asperger, 1991-92).
blooms and tackling the bare reality, such as
the stains and scribbles, there opens the ghost
kingdom with its surface of invocation, and
that which is being invoked oscillates between
histories of art as public domain and your own
private hallucination. How ironic that the same
support which belonged to the world order, is
the one that throws you out.
This reversible game is not just retained to the
plywood; it is enacted through numerous agents.
In the arsenal of Lavie’s motifs, the couple and
the jar appear time and again, sometimes in the
same work and sometimes in different ones. As
in the case of Rubin’s Vase, the negative space
between the couple acquires the form of a jar,
and vice versa; thus the fullness of the jar is the
emptiness of the couple. This means that opposite
forces are at play within the painting and
something must be given up; namely, one image
will not survive. It can be either the rabbit or the
duck, its own iconoclast or its own savior, and it
is here also that Lavie’s work maintains a familial
resemblance to the work of his former student
and subsequently colleague, Michal Na’aman,
who is a master in constructing rebuses as the
cornerstone of her art. Both share a genealogy
which leads them through Marcel Broodthaers
(who was then unknown to both of them) to
Magritte. One more thing: what these two artists
have in common is the use of the emblematic
device, at least the parts of the motto (in Lavie’s
case, the words head and geranium, and in
Na’aman’s case—a collection of linguistic puns
introduced unto the surface of the work) and
the pictura (picture, icon), whereas the subsciptio
(epigram) is avoided, yet forms a third part in
the viewer’s interpretation. Emblems, it is well
known, are related to the Egyptian hieroglyphs
and are considered a secret iconic language, a
riddle by its very nature, and this also resembles
the ideographic character of Lavie’s images.
I would like to go back to the issue of
reversibility, to the state of aporia where choice
between two superimposed realities has to be
made. In this oscillation between what is and
what is not, between the fullness of an image
and its negative space, Lavie seems to have opted
for the latter, and this choice has to do with the
double periphery mentioned above. To produce
a painting which is not there and yet its presence
is mediated through material substance calls for
a set of prohibitions with which Lavie surrounded
himself: not to paint like a mature artist; not to
use a conservative support; not to use traditional
paint; not to paint, but to smear; not to draw, but
to scribble; to create accidental events; and to
declare the act of painting, as he did repeatedly
during his lifetime, as something he hates but is
nevertheless forced to do. In short, he removed
the air of materiality from his art and left it
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almost asthmatic. In this sense he was truly aware
of working both inside and outside a culture
immersed in images, and knew the importance
of applying a strategy of suspicion with respect
to images.
It is in the very act of throwing out almost
all the requisites and scaffolds identified with
art, in the empty spaces of his paintings, in the
folds between child-like images, scratches and
scribbles, and above all—in the act of raising (a
better word will be the German Aufheben) his
art beyond its own image that an entity enters
the surface of the work which I—with all due
respect and a decent portion of irony, and to the
horror of the artist himself—would describe as
the Israeli Sublime. This therapeutic element is
very different from the American Sublime which
was cinemascopic in both scale and intention,
tending toward a certain decorum and pathos.
This Israeli sublime has more of the silence of
John Cage than the oily seraphic voices of John
Tavener, and the very mention of the term
“sublime” suffices to make us blush. Nevertheless,
it is difficult to avoid its presence, and the ways
in which it influences the aesthetics it demands.
In this Hester Panim—the hiding of the face, to
borrow a Jewish theological concept denoting
the absconded God, and in contradistinction to
Lavie’s quintessential secularity—lies, I think, the
rebus-like quality of his art.
If we dare to point at the negative space as
the locus of the sublime, what purpose, then, does
its positive rival serve? What do the contours of
the jar or the couple denote? It would be easy to
associate them with a set of symbols, such as love
in the case of the couple or fertility in the case of
the jar. Lavie himself explained the jar as a sign
in Sarit Shapira’s 2003 essay. The jar, he said, is
“one of the most common images of painting
throughout history, which to this day serves as a
model in amateur painting classes—and therefore
is also an image of painting itself.”14 Shapira also
reminds us of Ingres’s The Source from 1856, a
work well-known to Lavie, where a woman
balances a jar on her shoulders; but it is in another
painting by Ingres, Vénus Anadyomène (‘Venus
Rising from the Sea’), on which he worked from
1808 until 1848, where the woman attains the
very same contrapposto without the jar, the same
posture that Picasso used for the central figure
in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon of 1907, a posture
paradigmatic of the representation of the female
nude going back to Apelles. In the economy of
signs engulfing art, the jar, then, is a metonymy,
a token of the woman’s naked body laying bare
its erotic radiation, and Lavie’s use of it, like a
letter to a distant beloved, is characteristic of the
way in which he borrows from that circulation,
applying it to his own needs. Lavie admitted that
the jar to him was a woman.15
14. In Shapira 2003, note 9, p. 262 n. 288.
15. Ibid., p. 263.
2001 (“Shulkhan Aroch”), (detail)
Acrylic and pencil on plywood
120x120, collection of Oli Alter,
Tel Aviv (see cat. 27)
2001 )"שולחן ארוך"(, )פרט(
אקריליק ועיפרון על דיקט, 120”120
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב )ר' קט' 27(
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Raffi Lavie
-21-
-21- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the Father
The skirting of the erotic iconography, as by
turning the woman into a jar, did not prevent
many from identifying a fullness of erotic
expression in Lavie’s images: in his couples, in the
rounded forms and wavy lines, in the scribbles
taken as an expression of the libidinal, in the
symbolism embedded in the works. There is a
certain truth to such an assertion in so far as it
is difficult to produce a painting lacking in erotic
aura because the very act of putting materials on
a surface, the ductus reassuring us of the artist’s
physical presence, is already a highly sensual fact.
In Lavie’s case, however, the erotic seems
to be systematically avoided, and a legion of
defense mechanisms is put into action to prevent
its appearance, at least on the conscious level.
His art is puritanical; saving on myth and means,
the art of a “priest, poor and bitter,” as he once
ironically commented about himself.16 What does
this lack mean? Is it that once the sublime enters,
the erotic exits, because the horror of the two is
incompatible?
The couple, a recurrent motif in the works,
was described by Lavie as a depiction of himself
and his wife Ilana. He called them “the kissing
couple,” although only seldom are they depicted
in the act of a kiss. They are a far cry from the
erotic passion conveyed by Auguste Rodin’s
lustful couple, Gustav Klimt’s pair in The Kiss of
1907, or Edvard Munch’s woodcut by the same
name from 1902. They are nearing Brancusi’s Kiss,
but more in the way their arms are interlocked,
and less in the way Brancusi’s lovers melt into
one another. Lavie’s couple has its genealogy in
another domain, in a lineage attributed to the
kiss of St. Anne and St. Joachim in The Meeting
at the Golden Gate at the Arena Chapel in Padua
from 1304, in the face-to-face scenes in Piero Della
Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross frescoes in
Arezzo. This lineage leads also to James Barry, in
his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida (ca. 1800), and
from there to Marc Chagall and his Pair of Lovers
from 1916. This confrontational mode creates a
resemblance to Paris Bordone’s Venetian Lovers
from 1525, and to Palma il Vecchio in his painting
of Jacob and Rachel from 1515-25.
I have mentioned all these examples not
because they show a mutual understanding of
a certain emotive stance between couples, but
because, as in the case of Lavie’s couple, they
address an event that is pointed out by its very
avoidance—a kiss that either never happened
or did happen, not on the surface of the work
but in our imaginations. It is, once again, about
something that is not visualized, yet all its
requisites are there to perplex our notions about
what actually is happening—what we see, and
more importantly, what cannot be visualized. The
couple is a device in art’s arsenal used by Lavie to
enhance his method of a negative appearance,
16. A phrase borrowed from an inscription in Hadas Tamir’s
work hung in his apartment. See: Dana Gilerman, “Priest,
Poor and Bitter,” Ha’aretz, 5 May 2007 [Hebrew].
and as such, it is highly congruent with the rest
of his method. By applying a child-like aesthetics
to the couple, as to all his motifs, they gain
the status of a paradigmatic Adam and Eve.
Through their child-like rendering they become
prelapsarian, devoid of sexual drive, devoid of an
erotic aura. By avoiding this erotic iconography
habitually attached to such a motif, the emphasis
turns toward their ideographic expression.
Discussing the couple, which he designated
heads, Yair Garbuz wrote: “They [the heads
and kiss paintings] are never portraits. They
are simple, yet multi-faceted, and as with other
games invented by Raffi about himself, they have
laws which generate a necessity… Two heads
close together create, as we know, a chalice
which, in Raffi’s case, is transformed into a jar.
Heads without flesh, yet by no means skeletons.
They are road signs—the road that enters, and
the one that exits, and the cul-de-sac, and the
way of a man with a woman.”17
Child-like drawings and the use of ideographic
methods are highly connected. Lavie employs
this aesthetic for very different reasons from
those of Paul Klee, Joan Miró or Jean Dubuffet,
who saw in such aesthetics a way to reconnect
art to the natural world and commune with
it while concurrently breaking with Western
tradition. In short, they thought about a certain
type of authenticity, about children having
an unmediated affinity with the world, an
association unblemished by experience.
Some of these notions were presumably on
Lavie’s mind as well when he started employing
the child-like aesthetics, but I doubt that they
stemmed from the same logic which guided Klee,
Dubuffet, and Miró. Children use ideograms
as their natural way to grasp the world. It is a
shorthand mode where concentration on the
essential compensates for skill limitations, and
this concentration also shortens the distance
between content and sign. That sign equals
content means that a person beyond childhood
must be aware when employing a method that
programmatically annihilates this distance, and
that by this annihilation he will be free of all
the supplements that such a method gives up. In
one of his early works from 1967 Lavie inserted
a note on which he wrote, among other things:
“Please do not read what is written here.” Why
not read? Because the sign and its content are
one, and because no barrier separates the two.
The same logic was at his service when he was
asked the meaning behind the picture, and said
that behind the picture there is a wall, or so the
story goes.
There are many more benefits in using
ideograms as a basic vehicle in keeping the
surface clean of appropriated subjects. Thus, for
example, Lavie uses signs that are part of the
17. Yair Garbuz, “Regarding Raffi: Stain Crown Ketchup
Love,” Regarding Raffi, The Midrasha 2 (Journal of the Art
Teachers’ Training College, Beit Berl Academic College),
ed. Naomi Siman-Tov (May 1999), pp. 66-67 [Hebrew].
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Raffi Lavie
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-23- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the Father
national heritage, such as the Star of David, the
Menorah, and later—a bearded man who may
easily be identified with the figure of the Jew. This
led some critics to regard these manifestations as
an illustration of antithetical ideologies battling
on the surface of the picture. Such was the
interpretation given by Shva Salhoov to a group
of works entitled Arab—Violet Moustache from
2004-05, which she regarded as the “dramatic
encounter of the two great histories to which
modernism gave birth: the history of Nationalism
which is also that of Fascism, and the history
of modern art, which is also the history of the
struggle for freedom.”18
I am very much in doubt whether such an
agenda was on Lavie’s mind when he created the
series. He was not that kind of political artist, and
when he did launch a political statement, as in
the case of Rabin’s assassination, he did not need
bypasses to put his opinion on the picture surface,
and was very explicit in putting a blood-like stain
on Rabin’s image. I think he employed the signs
leading Salhoov to her dramatic statement the
same way one collects tribal signs as collective
paraphernalia accompanying one through life,
from childhood to death, and obviously, during
this long journey, these signs are also treated
ironically. It seems to me that he was not a man
of ideologies, but a man of ideas, and these were
consciously limited to his immediate surroundings,
to his home, friends, students. I assume that he
knew what richness is wasted when one does not
concentrate on the essential, and that this kind of
approach is the right one considering his culture
and place. No visual expression other than the
ideographic could be better suited to this kind of
world management.
If the ideographic use in the child-like images
shortened the way between content and sign,
it may be seen independent of interpretation
foreign to the scenarios revealing themselves
on the plywood, thus pushing iconographical
expressions to be of secondary importance. If the
notion of depth as a value was ridiculed by Lavie
time and again long before post-modernism
roamed the earth, to what context, then, could
they be attributed? In avoiding the grand
narratives or the iconoclastic approaches such
as those employed by Klee, Dubuffet, and Miró,
what end did such a strategy serve?
In Lavie’s rhetoric we observe a great irony
and a greater shrewdness, the kind to which Irad
Kimhi alludes when in the closing sentences of
his article about the artist he says that Lavie’s
basic gesture is that of unlimited shrewdness.19
Conscious of all the forces around him, whether
Western tradition or his own Jewish and Israeli
heritage, well-aware of the double peripheries,
or even diasporas, in which he roams, he takes
upon himself the role of the artist, while
19. Irad Kimhi, „A Painter of Modern Life,“ Studio Art
Magazine, no. 141 (March 2003), p. 29 [Hebrew].
18. Shva Salhoov, “Ich bin nicht/ich bin: In den
Fussstapfen Gemäldegruppe ‘Araber—Lila Schnurrbart’
(2004-05),” cat. Raffi Lavie: Gemälde 2003-2005 (Tel Aviv
and Berlin: Givon Art Gallery and Galerie Asperger, 2005),
p. 54 [German].
2005 (detail), acrylic and
pencil on plywood, 122x122
Private collection (see cat. 34)
2005 )פרט(, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי )ר' קט' 34(
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Raffi Lavie
-25-
-25- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the Father
concurrently ironicizing it. He paints as if he were
an artist painting as if he were a child, and this
double “if” is also marked by the rebus quality.
Ultimately, we confront beautiful paintings,
seemingly accidental in their success to please the
eye, and as such, they are true treasures having
been destined for other prairies.
Thus, Lavie takes a reverse procedure.
Reality, as it appears on the surface, is already
a symbolized reality, extracted, adapted, and
not in need of interpretation that will unearth
a depth, and therefore a value. The ideographic
grammar, as it appears in Lavie’s works, begs
not to be interpreted but to be imagined. Think
about the grave painting at Paestum, and you will
see a very similar procedure where symbolism is
already given, but imagination only begins.
PART IV in which a change occurs, putting previous notions in great doubt
Between 2003 (or slightly earlier) and his death in
2007, Lavie created a body of works which could
be crudely divided into several series. These are
the “Chagalls,” as he called them, the Arab-Violet
Moustache, and subsequently the white, red, and
black series. In all these works a change occurs,
and visual richness which was highly restricted
theretofore, is given free reign. The paintings
are still ideographic in style, but more condensed
and colorful.
It is difficult to think of an artist farther from
Lavie than Marc Chagall, whose Jewish imagery,
bordering late in his life on clichés, stood in
opposition to all notions of contemporary
aesthetics. Laboring on such imagery has been and
still is considered anachronistic, narrative-oriented,
even obscene in its sentimentality. The last thing
you would want as an Israeli artist is to be buried
under irrelevant longings, thus missing your place
in the beating heart of the Now. Still, it is the
same Chagall to whom Lavie refers, even putting
his name in block Hebrew letters on some of the
painting surfaces as if to be sure that the point
gets across. Lavie the necromancer brings Chagall
back from the dead, forcing his main icons—the
couple, the flowers, the ladder, the Menorah,
and the violin—to breathe again, all this in a
grand mutative manner which, while ironicizing
the source, enacts a process of deconstruction
which explains the choice of the child aesthetic
as an ideographic tool for deconstructing images,
and which, in the case of the “Chagall” group
[cat. 33], is revealed as a didactic measure. Ory
Dessau deemed this evocation a generous act.
“Lavie’s Chagall,” he says, “is the Chagall of the
history of modern art, of the École de Paris, and
not that of the surrealistic kitsch decorating the
Parliament hall.”20 Far from being a tribute to
another artist, Lavie launches an act of cleansing.
It is as if he wants to bring back a primary quality
shared by both, to save Chagall from himself,
to save his colors from their fatal narrative, and
reassert them in the rightful order.
Two works in the “Chagall” series, both from
2003, are mirror images, at least in terms of
colors and motifs [cat. 31, 32]. In both of them
the surface is divided horizontally; in one—the
lower part is painted red, and on the higher plane
the flower signs are green, whereas in the other,
the colors are inversed. This categorical division
echoes the paradigmatic divide exhibited in the
icon of modernity, The Large Glass by Marcel
Duchamp who said that The Glass is not meant
to be looked at, that is, not to be conceived
as a retinal image, but to be accompanied by
a literary text as amorphous as possible, a text
which never takes form, and these two features
were to complement one another. Above all,
each was meant to prevent the other from taking
an aesthetic-plastic or literary solitary meaning.
Duchamp was very keen on emphasizing the third
space created between two modes of perception.
Lavie understood this space as a Jastrowesque
figure—the very space we described as a negative
space, the one between the figures, the one
inside the jar once its contours become irrelevant.
That space between heaven and earth, mediated
through ladders and angels, is the place where
things matter, where they levitate from the
surface of the painting and begin their own
lives; the space where art, or whatever name you
choose to give it, truly becomes autonomous.
The ladders and angels in Lavie’s paintings
are indeed such mediators of that space.
Traditionally, they are religious agents. Along
with the Star of David and Menorah signs, they
create an illusion of a religious vocabulary.
Not only are they well-embedded as narratives
in the history of art, they are also the primary
religious signs used by children (in Israel), and
therefore indoctrinated as signifiers of a vogue
religiosity. If Jacob’s ladder fascinated artists such
as Rembrandt, Johann Weigel, William Blake,
Bartolomé Murillo, and Marc Chagall, and the
depiction of angels—a legion, the same symbols
within Israeli culture have a meaning which
surpasses religiosity, pertaining to a political
ethos as well. Lavie’s choice of these images is
therefore accurate. They are the ideal objects,
culled from the religious paraphernalia, on
which he can perform the act of deconstruction
to make room for that secular sublime, adapted
to different purposes. By deconstruction I do not
refer to the Derridean concept, but rather to a
simpler linguistic use, the act of a craftsman who
takes an object apart in order to improve it. An
insight which has its didactics.
20. Ory Dessau, “Lavie and Gershuni Together Again,”
Globes, 18 November 2003 [Hebrew].
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-27- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the FatherRaffi Lavie
2003 (detail), acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection (see cat. 33)
2003 )פרט(, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי )ר' קט' 33(
I would like to go back to the group
entitled Arab—Violet Moustache. Many of the
paintings portray the image of a man with a
violet moustache and a beard, red or black or
both. Sometimes depicted in profile, he has a
cigarette in his mouth, and is accompanied by
other previously known motifs—the couple, the
jar, the smoke, and the flowers. An Arab with a
cigarette and a moustache is a figure of great
temptation, and Lavie, in preparing this narrative
trap, is well-aware of this, being experienced in
the interpretative mode of his public. What could
be more politically incorrect, more endearing,
than a self-portrait cum the great Other via a
discourse steeped in post-colonial desires?
David Ginton, following comprehensive
research, rejected such interpretations.21 I concur
with him on this point. The title is indeed a trap
and a caprice. The figure, reduced to its basic
ideographic characteristic, is expressionless, save
the moustache which is pulled down, lending the
face a melancholic air. There are lines extending
from his eyes, triangles which are remnants of
the Star of David, metamorphosed into a net of
coordinates and vanishing points [cat. 15, 23, 28,
29]. We are in the land of painting, not theory.
We are forced to contemplate the exact tools
required by our eyes to organize the space, and
make it coherent. The lines running from his eyes
lead directly to a group of stains whose role as
flowers is secondary to their color scheme in the
painting sphere—they are more maculae than
stains or clots, to borrow Roland Barthes’s terms
in his description of Cy Twombly’s paintings.22 In
other words, they are events restricted in their
coherence to the language of painting, and not
the language of symbols. This is a lesson Lavie is
careful to repeat throughout his oeuvre. This is
not to say that Lavie did not have his pleasures
in hearing interpretative explanations, but they
were secondary and negligible to him. In this
sense, presenting the painting with its own tools
was also an introduction of an ethical value,
political even.
That the figure is about painting rather than
an illustration to a grand narrative critique is
also conveyed by its design, when, en face, its
ideographic character often collapses and its
features disintegrate into strokes, stains, lines,
and scribbles. In profile, he looks bored enough
and indifferent to something not in the picture.
In both cases, his eyes are at the center, where
the vanishing point, once a Star of David,
converges. He might be the end product of the
act of looking, enacted by a viewer other than us,
or the source of looking at something denied us.
This means that there is always an event taking
place, but it is well-hidden from our perception,
and although Lavie would offer us all the tools
leading to it, it still evades our eye. This is what I
22. See: Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms:
Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation,
trans.: Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991), p. 179.
21. David Ginton, “The Unsaid Name: What is Arab—Violet
Moustache?,” Please Read What Is Painted Here, (Hamidrasha
School of Art, Beit Berl Academic College, 2009), op. cit.,
note 12, pp. 45-66 [Hebrew].
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-29- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the FatherRaffi Lavie
mean when I say that Lavie’s paintings are about
a presence, painterly at that, which is not in
the paintings, and that is why, risking ridicule, I
named it the Israeli Sublime.
If the “Arab” series was still faithful in parts to
the ascetic procedure, the final three groups, the
red, black, and white series, are saturated in color,
rich and enriching in their effect. In comparison
to earlier works, they are almost Baroque in
character. It is not clear whether at this point Lavie
knew he was terminally ill, and how it might have
influenced his paintings. But such knowledge
surely affects the viewers’ understanding,
who tend to identify in the paintings signs of
departures and the fear of death; to comprehend
them as a requiem. Indeed, the figure of the
angel, the couple, and the ladder mutate toward
such an understanding, for they are frequent and
develop close relations among themselves. In two
works, one belonging to the red series, the other
to the white, the angel hovers horizontally at the
top of the picture, while a ladder leads to him,
with the couple at its foot [cat. 8].
This angel, who was and maybe is a cadaver
(per Lavie’s own description) and has its roots
in Arie Aroch’s images, reminds me of the most
famous cadaver in the history of art, and I am
referring to Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1521
painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the
Tomb, now at the Basel Museum. Both images are
strikingly horizontal. While in Lavie’s work the
disintegration is almost immaterial and his angel-
cadaver is about to be dissolved into the plywood,
the body of Holbein’s Christ, in its realistic state of
rigor mortis, disintegrates according to the laws of
nature. Holbein’s Christ and Lavie’s cadaver, two
extreme poles, are two grand gestures echoing
each other. They are also two great examples of
secularizing symbols and harnessing them in the
service and terms of the painting.
There is another famous angel in the history
of art, Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, created in
1920. Starting as an almost jovial figure, child-like
and innocent, he turns, once Walter Benjamin
supplied him with an auratic text, into one of
the most tragic figures in modern consciousness.
Benjamin, designating him the ‘angel of history’,
matures him through a process of catastrophes,
but both angels, Klee’s and Lavie’s, start from
a very similar source which is ideographic in
character.
Why does the angel look down at the
couple? What are the relations denoted by this
secular trinity (there is a ladder as well)? The
couple, always representing the artist and his
wife Ilana in the paintings, is hugging, but the
presentiment produced by our knowledge of
impending death sees the hug as a farewell and
departure. In this configuration, the angel is part
of a rebus, or so I would like to think. It reminds
me of Emanuel Swedenborg , who wrote in his
1768 book Conjugal Love, that the soul of a
man and the soul of a woman who are (happily)
united by marriage enter heaven and become
an angel. Thus, the angel above and the couple
below, connected by the ladder, are two aspects
of one apparition. Not that Lavie necessarily read
that book, but such a story is ever so consoling.
There are many topics, motifs, periods, and
paintings left out of this short article due to the
want of space. I am still at loss for words which
could not only enact the right ekphrasis, but
also explain what was in him that made his art
so crucial and true to the way we understand
our world, by which I mean the one surrounding
us in its immediacy, under the burning sun of
the Middle East. Any text concerning Lavie will
inevitably re-tell the histories of the clan, and will
have to deal with matters of ascetic approaches,
cultural restrictions, and the act of going against
the grain—all these chained to the histories of art.
Adam Baruch once wrote a sentence concerning
Lavie that puts things in the proper perspective.
He said: “In a hundred years things will straighten
up, and on a sunny Saturday a family will go out
and visit the ‘Raffi Lavie Museum’.” Four years
later he changed the number of years to fifty.23
This tells you something about hope and wishful
thinking.
23. Adam Baruch, “Starless Night”, Regarding Raffi,
The Midrasha 2, note 17, p. 25 [Hebrew]. The second version
appeared in: Adam Baruch, “Raffi Lavie. A Bit of Hysteria,
Please,” Ha’aretz, 19 May 2003 [Hebrew].
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-31-
Raffi Lavie: Visual References
Palma il Vecchio, Jacob and Rachel, c. 1520-25
ב ק ע פלמה איל וקיו, י
, 1520-25 בקירוב ל ח ר ו
James Barry, Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida c. 1800
ר ט י פ ו ג'יימס ברי, י
ה ד י א ר ה ל ע ו נ ו ' ג ו
1800 בקירוב
Paris Bordone, The Venetian Lovers, 1500-71
ם י ב ה ו א פריס בורדונה, ה
1500-71 , ה י צ נ ו ו מ
Giotto, The Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305
ה ש י ג פ ג'וטו, ה
1305 , ב ה ז ה ר ע ש ב
Gustav KlimtThe Kiss, 1907-8גוסטב קלימט
1907-8 , ה ק י ש נ ה
Auguste RodinThe Kiss, 1901-4אוגוסט רודן
1901-4 , ה ק י ש נ ה
Constantin BrancusiThe Kiss, 1908קונסטנטין ברנקוזי
1908 , ה ק י ש נ ה
Hans Holbein, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, 15211521 , ת מ ה ו ש הנס הולביין, י
Jean Auguste Dominique IngresVénus Anadyomène1848 ז'אן אוגוסט דומיניק
ן מ ה ל ו ע ה ס ו נ אנגר, ו
הים, 1848
Jean Auguste Dominique IngresThe Source, 1856 ז'אן אוגוסט דומיניק אנגר
1856 , ע ו ב מ ה
Marc ChagallPair of Lovers, 1916מארק שאגאל
1916 , ם י ב ה ו א ג ו ז
Pablo PicassoLes Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907ת ו מ ל ע פאבלו פיקאסו, ה
1907 , ן ו י נ י ב א מ
Edvard MunchThe Kiss IV, 1902אדוארד מונק
1902 , ה ק י ש נ ה
Marcel DuchampThe Large Glass, 1915-23ת י כ ו כ ז מרסל דושאן, ה
1915-23 , ה ל ו ד ג ה
Arieh Aroch, Red House (How Are Things at Home?), 1960ם ו ד א ה ת י ב אריה ארוך, ה
1960 , ) ת י ב ב ע מ ש נ ה מ (
Paul Klee Angelus Novus, 1920 פול קליי,
1920 ,Angelus Novus
Biographical Notes
Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, 1937;
lived and worked in Tel Aviv; died in Tel Aviv, 2007
1954-55 Studied drawing with Ludwig Moss
1959-60 Studied at the Midrasha – State Art Teachers’
Training College, Tel Aviv (with Kosso Eloul, Dan
Hoffner, and Abba Fenichel)
1960s Was among the founders of the 10+ group
1966-99 Taught at the Midrasha – State Art Teachers’ Training
College, Tel Aviv-Herzliya-Ramat Hasharon, and
subsequently—The School of Art, Beit Berl Academic
College
1972-74 Taught at the Art Department, Bezalel Academy
of Art and Design, Jerusalem
1978 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture (with
Eliyahu Gat), Tel Aviv Municipality
One-Person Exhibitions—Selection
1960 Rina Gallery, Jerusalem
1961 Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv; curator: Yona Fischer
1965 Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv
1966 Collages – 65, Oil Paintings – 66, Massada Gallery,
Tel Aviv
1967 Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1970 Experiments in Sculpture & Objects, Sketch for a Film
(20 minutes), Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Paintings 1970, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1973 21 Paintings, 1962-1972, The Israel Museum,
Jerusalem; curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)
— Recent Works, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1974 Works on Paper, 1961-69, Debel Gallery, Jerusalem
1975 Paintings, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem
— Recent Works, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1977 Recent Works: Oil Paintings and Mixed Media,
Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Raffi Lavie, 1975-77, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem
1978 Early Works, Oil Paintings, and Drawings, 1960-61,
Debel Gallery, Jerusalem
1979 A Selection of Paintings, The Tel Aviv Museum;
curator: Sara Breitberg (cat.; texts: Sara Breitberg,
Hanoch Ron)
1985 New Works, Noemi Givon Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv
1986 New Works, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
1987 Uri and Rami Nehushtan Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot
Yaacov Meuchad, Israel; curator: Dorit Keidar
— The Art Gallery, Kibbutz Cabri, Israel
1988 Raffi Lavie: A Retrospective, The Museum of Israeli
Art, Ramat Gan, Israel; curator: Meir Ahronson
(cat.; text: Meir Ahronson)
1991 Heads & Jars, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Works, 1985-1990, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv;
W. Asperger Gallery, Knittlingen and Strasbourg
(cat.; texts: Adam Baruch, Itamar Levy)
1992 New Works, Mary Faouzi Gallery, Jaffa, Israel
— Beyond Drawing, Galerie Marie-Louise Wirth, Zurich
1993 Raffi: The Early Paintings, 1957-61, Tel Aviv
Museum of Art; curator: David Ginton (cat.; text:
David Ginton)
1994 Paintings and Drawings, 1993-94, Givon Art Gallery,
Tel Aviv
2000 Recent Paintings and Mini-Retrospective of Works
on Paper, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2003 Raffi Lavie: Works from 1950 to 2003, The Israel
Museum, Jerusalem; curator: Sarit Shapira (cat.; texts:
Yona Fischer, Sarit Shapira)
2005 Arab—Violet Moustache, Paintings 2003-05, Givon
Art Gallery, Tel Aviv and Galerie Asperger, Berlin (cat.;
texts: Ory Dessau, Shva Salhoov)
2008 The Last, Not Least, Heavenly Paintings, Givon Art
Gallery, Tel Aviv
Two-Person Exhibitions—Selection
1978 Raffi Lavie, Yudith Levin, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem
2001 New Paintings and Shulkhan Aroch, Givon Art Gallery,
Tel Aviv (with Yair Garbuz)
— Raffi Lavie and Yoav Efrati, Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv
2003 New Works: Paintings, Video, Givon Art Gallery, Tel
Aviv (with Moshe Gershuni)
2006 New Works: Raffi Lavie, Simcha Shirman, Gordon
Gallery, Tel Aviv
-32-
-32-
Raffi Lavie -33-
-33-
Group Exhibitions—Selection
1960 Three Young Artists, Rina Gallery, Jerusalem
1961 Recent Acquisitions, Bezalel Museum, Jerusalem
— 61: Exhibition of Modern Art, Helena Rubinstein
Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum
1962 Trends 1, The Levant Fair, Exhibition Grounds, Tel Aviv;
curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)
1963 Today’s Form—Young Israeli Artists, Bezalel Museum,
Jerusalem (cat.)
— New Horizons, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel;
curator: Yona Fischer
— Calligraphy and Paint, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam;
curator: Ad Peterson
— Young Artists Biennial, Paris; curator: Haim Gamzu
1964 Art Israel: 23 Painters and Sculptors, Bezalel Museum,
Jerusalem; Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv
Museum; Museum of Modern Art, Haifa; The Negev
Museum, Beersheba; Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel;
curator: William C. Seitz
— Tazpit: Exhibition of Israel Painters and Sculptors,
Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)
— Art Israel: 26 Painters and Sculptors, travelling
exhibition in Israel, the United States and Canada,
organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York;
curator: William C. Seitz (cat.)
1965 Beersheba Museum, Israel
— Ramat Gan Artists, Immanuel House, Ramat Gan, Israel
— Trends in Israeli Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;
curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)
— Exhibition of Young Israeli Artists, Helena Rubinstein
Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)
— The Autumn Exhibition: Israeli Artists, Helena
Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)
— Artists Painting Fashion: 10+ on Textile, Maskit Gallery,
Tel Aviv
1966 10+: Large Works, Artists Pavilion (Painters and
Sculptors Association), Tel Aviv (cat.)
— Collage, Artists Pavilion (Painters and Sculptors
Association), Tel Aviv
— Dizengoff House, Tel Aviv
— The Autumn Exhibition: Israeli Artists, Helena
Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)
— The Smallest Works of the 10+ Artists and Others,
Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
— 10+: Flower Exhibition, Massada Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Prints, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1967 10+: Exhibition in Red, Katz Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Animals, The Artists Pavilion (Painters and Sculptors
Association), Tel Aviv
— 10+: The Nude, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
1968 10+: For and Against, 220 Gallery, Tel Aviv
1969 10+ in Round, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
— Young Artists Biennial, Paris; curator: Reuven Berman
1970 10+: 10+ on Venus, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv
— 10+ (The Mattresses), Dugit Gallery, Tel Aviv
1971 Original Graphics by Rudulf Lehmann, Moshe Mokady,
Yohanan Simon, Igael Tumarkin, Raffi Lavie,
Yehuda Wallersteiner, The Jerusalem International
Book Fair, Jerusalem
1977 10 Artists from Israel, Louisiana Museum,
Humlebaek, Denmark; curators: Hugo Arne Buch
and Yona Fischer (cat.)
1978 Artist and Society in Israeli Art, 1948-1978, The
Tel Aviv Museum; curator: Sara Breitberg (cat.)
1984 Collection C. Majorkas: Contemporary Israeli Art,
The Tel Aviv Museum
— Two Years, 1983-1984: Israeli Art, Qualities
Accumulated, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for
Contemporary Art, The Tel Aviv Museum; curator:
Sara Breitberg-Semel (cat.)
1985 Milestones in Israel Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;
curator: Yigal Zalmona (cat.)
— Kunst in Israel 1906-1985, Koninklijk Museum
voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp; curator: Yigal
Zalmona (cat.)
1986 John Byle, Lea Nikel, Raffi Lavie, Shlomo Vitkin,
Ephraim Lifschitz, Pinchas Zinovich,
Yehezkel Streichman, Uri and Rami Nehushtan
Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov Meuchad, Israel;
curator: Ilana Teicher (cat.)
— The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art, The
Tel Aviv Museum; curator: Sara Breitberg-Semel (cat.)
— Art a Israel: Mostra De Pintura Conemporania, Centro
de la Ciudad, Madrid; Palau Robert, Barcelona;
curator: Yigal Zalmona
1993 Eye Contact, The Artists’ Studios, Tel Aviv; curator:
Yair Garbuz (cat.)
1998 Perspectives on Israeli Art of the Seventies: The
Boundaries of Language, Tel Aviv Museum of Art;
curator: Mordechai Omer (cat.)
— Good Kids, Bad Kids: Childliness in Israeli Art,
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; curators: Yigal Zalmona
and Nirit Nelson (cat.)
1999 Not to be Looked At: Unseen Sites in Israel Today, The
Israel Museum, Jerusalem; curator: Sarit Shapira (cat.)
2002 The Return to Zion: Beyond the Place Principle,
Time for Art – Center for Art, Tel Aviv; curator:
Gideon Ofrat (cat.)
2004 Towards Cinema: The First Generation of Projected
Images, Haifa Museum of Art; curator: Ilana
Tenenbaum (cat.)
— Yona at Bezalel, Bezalel Gallery, Tel Aviv; curators:
Sarit Shapira, Sandra Weil (cat.)
2005 Hazeret, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv; curator:
Ory Dessau
— Die Neuen Hebräer: A Century of Art in Israel, Martin-
Grupius-Bau, Berlin; curators: Doreet LeVitte Harten
and Yigal Zalmona (cat.)
2008 10+: The Ten Plus Group—Myth and Reality, Tel Aviv
Museum of Art; curator: Benno Kalev (cat.)
— The Birth of ‘Now’: Art in Israel in the 1960s, Ashdod
Art Museum / Monart Center, Ashdod, Israel; curators:
Yona Fischer, Tamar Manor-Friedman (cat.)
— Near and Apparent—Connections and Contexts:
A Selection from the Benno Kalev Collection, The
Open Museum, Tefen Industrial Park, Israel; curator:
Benno Kalev (cat.)
— Van Gogh in Tel Aviv, Rubin Museum, Tel Aviv;
curators: Carmela Rubin, Edna Erde, Shira Naftali (cat.)
Filmography
— Mitz (Petel) [(Raspberry) Juice], 1970, 4 min,
soundtrack: Karlheinz Stockhausen
— Sheets, 1970, 20 min
— Candies, 1970, 4:30 min, soundtrack: Karlheinz
Stockhausen, Momenta (1965 version)
— Sky, 1972, 8 min
— Lawn, 1972, 8 min
— The Other Side of the Street, 1973, 12 min
— Geranium, 1973, 8 min, soundtrack: John Cage,
Niccolò Paganini, Raffi’s voice discussing sculpture in a
radio program
— Walking, 1974, 9 min
— Balcony, 1975, 11 min, soundtrack: Steve Reich
— Yonah Hanavi (St.), 1979, 12 min, soundtrack:
Philip Glass
— Sunset, 1981, 17 min, soundtrack: Vito Acconci, Niccolò
Paganini, Steve Reich, the voices of Yair Garbuz, Siona
Shimshi, and Igael Tumarkin (DVD version: 14 min)
— Home Movie, 2003, 5:12 min, soundtrack: John Cage,
Laurie Anderson
— Balcony Movie, 2003, 3:22 min, soundtrack: David
Avidan reading his poem “Sanction” (1962)
— To t h e D i s t a n t B e l o v e d , Beethoven, or An Open
Letter to H a a r e t z Editorial Board, 2005, 4:20 min
Biographical Notes
-34- -35-
-36- -37-
2006, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection, Tel Aviv
prev. pages:
1998, acrylic and pencil
on reproduction, 37x28
Benno Kalev Collection, Tel Aviv
3
2006, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי, תל אביב
1+2
בעמודים הקודמים:
1998, אקריליק
ועיפרון על רפרודוקציה, 28”37
אוסף בנו כלב, תל אביב
-38- -39-
2006, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection
2006, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Shibolet & Co. Law Firm Collection
5
2006, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי
4
2006, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף שבלת ושות' עו"ד
-40- -41-
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
7
2007, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
6
2007, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-42- -43-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection, Tel Aviv
9
2005, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
8
2007, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי, תל אביב
-44- -45-
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
11
2007, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
10
2007, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-46- -47-
2006, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Timna Rosenheimer
12
2006, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף תמנע רוזנהיימר
-48- -49-
2006, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, collection
of Hagit and Ofer Shapira
14
2006, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף חגית ועופר שפירא
2007, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
13
2007, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-50- -51-
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 104x104
Private collection
16
2004, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
15
2004, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 104”104
אוסף פרטי
-52- -53-
2005, acrylic and pencil on formica
coated fiberboard, 47.5x47.5
Courtesy Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
17
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון על סיבית
מצופה פורמיקה, 47.5”47.5
באדיבות גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-54- -55-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Ora and Tamir Agmon
18
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אורה ותמיר אגמון
-56- -57-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection, Tel Aviv
19
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי, תל אביב
-58- -59-
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv
21
2004, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
20
2004, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
-60- -61-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
22
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-62- -63-
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Hillela Tal
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Raved collection
24
2004, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף הללה טל
23
2004, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף ראב"ד
-64- -65-
2003, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection, Tel Aviv
25
2003, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי, תל אביב
-66- -67-
2005, acrylic and pencil on veneer
coated fiberboard, 41.5x38
Collection of Edna Kowarsky
26
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון על
סיבית מצופה פורניר, 38”41.5
אוסף עדנה קוברסקי
-68- -69-
2001, (“Shulkhan Aroch”), acrylic
and pencil on plywood, 120x120
Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv
27
2001 )"שולחן ארוך"(, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 120”120
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
-70- -71-
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
2004, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection
29
2004, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
28
2004, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי
-72- -73-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv
30
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
-74- -75-
2003, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv
32
2003, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
2003, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection
31
2003, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי
-76- -77-
2003, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Private collection
33
2003, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי
-78- -79-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 124x122
Collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv
35
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”124
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
2005, acrylic and
pencil on plywood, 122x122
Private collection
34
2005, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף פרטי
-80- -81-
2005, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
37
2005, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
2003, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122
Collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv
36
2003, אקריליק
ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122
אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב
-82- -83-
2002, acrylic and pencil
on plywood, 122x122, courtesy
Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv
38
2002, אקריליק ועיפרון
על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות
גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב
-84-
2004, acrylic on veneer coated
fiberboard, 47.5x54, collection of
Hagit and Ofer Shapira
39
2004, אקריליק על
סיבית מצופה פורניר, 54”47.5
אוסף חגית ועופר שפירא