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Tel Aviv’s Push For Art Tourism
Tel Aviv — In the past few years, Tel Aviv has been dubbed a top travel destination for everyone from beach lovers to gays and lesbians, but until relatively recently few overseas tourists traveled to the city specifically to take in its contemporary art scene.
That’s starting to change, thanks to efforts by the Tel Aviv municipality and Israel’s tourism ministry to acquaint the world with the city’s artists, studios and galleries. While the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s stunning new wing is reason enough to spend a day in the city, it should be just the starting point for those who appreciate a wide variety of art forms.
Launched in March, Tel Aviv Art Year 2012 is offering a dizzying assortment of exhibitions, performances and events in Israel’s cultural capital. It will showcase not only Israeli artists with an international following, but dozens of independent, emerging artists as well.
Just as New York’s artists and gallery owners gravitated to Soho and Chelsea in search of larger, more affordable space, many of Tel Aviv’s artists are moving to the city’s southernmost neighborhoods, on the border of Yafo (Jaffa). Though most of the buildings are quite grungy, the studios and galleries are warm and inviting.
During a tour of Kiryat Hamelacha, the southern neighborhood where some 100 artists now work, Tzachi Rosenfeld, owner of the venerable Rosenfeld Gallery, said he relocated from tony Dizengoff Street in the city center in order to expand, and “to be where the artists are.”
The Dizengoff gallery, which his family established decades ago, “was small and there wasn’t any parking,” Rosenfeld said in his current, spacious downtown space. He was surrounded by the very large oil paintings by Marik Lechner, some of which go for more than $20,000, that were recently on view there.
Yuval Caspi, one of the first artists to purchase a space in the downtown neighborhood, said the flow of so many artists into south Tel Aviv is starting to push up real estate prices.
“I was lucky I bought when I did,” said Caspi, who shares his 600-square-foot studio with artist Ido Shemi. Their cramped workshop is packed with bright papier-mache figures in comic or ironic poses, and innovative 3D posters — many of them depicting New York scenes — that are popular with foreign art collectors.
To defray costs, several artists, or aspiring artists, may share a studio.
“That leads to a lot of collaboration,” said a 20-something children’s book illustrator who works in a cozy studio alongside an equally young costume designer and an artist who sculpts in metal. Many of the materials they use in their work come from their neighbors – small factories that have been in the neighborhood for decades.
During the inaugural weekend of Tel Aviv Art, Caspi and Shemi opened their studio to visitors, who were also given access to dozens of art spaces — many of them ordinarily invisible to the public — taking place in the city. These art tours are run by the Association of Tourism Tel Aviv-Yafo.
While galleries and museums operate day in and day out, Tel Aviv Art Year offers clusters of events several times this year.
The Fresh Paint Contemporary Art Fair (May 14-19) is Israel’s largest, most influential art event. The focus is on the top art galleries, promising emerging galleries and the Greenhouse, which showcases the work of up-and-coming Israeli artists.
The wildly popular Houses from Within (May 18-19) offers rare glimpses inside 100 Tel Aviv homes with special architectural value. The include the homes of some of Israel’s most influential artists, and homes with unique art collections.
The annual White Night (June 28) is an all-night happening that includes 100 events, during which cultural institutions stay open till sunrise.
Loving Art, Making Art (Sept. 6-8) officially launches Tel Aviv’s new art exhibition season, with the collaboration of 60 museums, galleries and exhibition halls. At the same time, 240 local artists will simultaneously open their studios to the public. There will also be street exhibitions.
Gay Pride Week (June 1-8) includes a number of art-related activities as well as the ultra-colorful annual Gay Pride Parade down the main streets of Tel Aviv.
During warm weather, the Tel Aviv Pixel Hotel (opening Oct. 15) on the Burgrashav Beach is a lifeguard shack. Next winter, as part of a project to repurpose interesting but unused space, it will become a one-room hotel open to the public.
Unrelated to Tel Aviv Art Year 2012, visitors to the city can attend performances of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Opera, and the Israeli Chamber Orchestra, or hit the many performance spaces that feature everything from Israeli folk music to jazz (listings in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, or Time Out Tel Aviv).
A visit to Tel Aviv isn’t complete without a tour of Tel Aviv’s historic district, which boasts the largest collection of International Style (Bauhaus) buildings in the world. Nine years ago, UNESCO proclaimed the area where these iconic buildings are located The White City. The 4,000-plus structures, with their modern, clean lines, date back to the 1930s and ’40s. They are being lovingly restored, one at a time.
Before hopping into a taxi, consider renting a bike (the municipality recently introduced the park-and-ride system so popular in Europe). The most cycling-friendly city in Israel, Tel Aviv has 60 miles of bike trails including the one that runs parallel to the beach. The city’s mild climate encourages cycling almost any time of the year.
Source: The Jewish Week
Israeli artist to present pope with illustrated Book of Genesis
Avner Moriah to present the fruits of his two-year long project to the pope on May 16 in a special audience at the Vatican • Moriah: “I think I am also representing my people and 2,000 years of a Jewish-Christian relationship.”
Israeli artist Avner Moriah is to receive one of the biggest honors an artist can wish for: an opportunity to present his art to Pope Benedict XVI and have his artwork kept among the Vatican’s distinguished holdings.
Moriah, known for his paintings of Israeli landscapes, will present the pope with an illuminated Book of Genesis, a project he has been laboring over for the past two years.
“The project lasted two years. The first year I concentrated on developing the visual themes for the book, and I built up the visual material for the tales in the book. In the second year I sat together with my calligrapher and we painted page after page, designing the amount of text and the relationship between the text and the visual images, so there will be some kind of a balance within the book itself,” Moriah told Reuters in his studio in the community of Har Adar, near Jerusalem.
The elaborate Hebrew text was written by calligrapher Izzy Pludwinski.
“I think the uniqueness about my project is that it has a tremendous amount of illustrations in it, and the text and the illustrations bring the story up to life. And it’s a coherent story that is relevant to our times,” explains Moriah.
The illustrated Book of Genesis will be presented to the Holy See on May 16, during a special audience at the Vatican. Israel’s Ambassador to the Vatican, Mordechay Lewy, will also attend the event.
“It’s not only that I, myself, am excited to be at this occasion; but I think I am also representing my people and 2,000 years of a Jewish-Christian relationship. I think the fact that at this point an Israeli artist can be there shows how far we have come from earlier times,” Moriah said.
After the ceremony, Moriah intends to continue and illuminate the entire Bible with his colorful images.
Born in 1954, Moriah received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale. Some of his works are displayed at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University and Yale University, which have already purchased several of only 100 copies of the book available worldwide.
Source: Israel Hayom
Photographer Ron Shoshani presents high-gloss Tel Aviv + Interview
Israeli photographer shows the world the first modern Jewish city in all its true beauty, revealing its landscape in aspects very different from traditional notions of Tel Aviv. (Also check out SDM’s profile of Ron Shashani by clicking here)
By Olga Lavi
Ron Shoshani is a professional photographer whose photographs appear regularly in the Israeli magazine Time Out Israel. Within a few minutes after the appearance of a new photograph, hundreds of “Likes” are recorded on Facebook.
The secret of his popularity is that Ron Shoshani does what no one did before him.
Ron grew up in a family where a lot of attention was paid to design. This contributed to the development of his interest in photography, especially in the tourist genre. At some point Ron noticed that there is a big difference between the way cities like New York, London and San Francisco are presented in glossy international magazines and the images representing Tel Aviv.
“It was really sad. On the one hand are glossy pictures of cities which, believe me, I have seen in reality and at close range, and they do not look as fantastic as in the magazines. But the sell is successful – tourists come from all over the world.
“And what about Israel? How do we look in the eyes of the world? Again and again, there are images of a market with oranges spilling all over, a couple of Hasidim with sidecurls, people with bronze skin on the beach, a soldier with a gun, the Wailing Wall – and that’s it. What, we have nothing more to show?
“Nowadays every self-respecting city is interested in tourism and has a portfolio of photos showing its potential and the beauty of its landscapes. Tel Aviv has as much to offer as those other cities, I’m absolutely sure.
“Current trends in photography can turn any place into “eye candy”, wrapped in brightly colored wrappers, and, in the case of Tel Aviv, underlining the dynamism and urban energy, the special magic for which the city is famous. And, most importantly, these photos create an irresistible desire to see the city and the country with one’s own eyes. To see the living miracle, to communicate with the city directly, not vicariously or virtually.
“I realized that my city deserves such a portfolio, deserves it as a modern developing city, endlessly interesting for tourists. A city of business and entertainment, the sea and nightlife, wonderful parks, fascinating museums, and diverse architecture.
“So I decided to make Tel Aviv high-gloss, worthy of attention and inspiring the urge to drop everything and come to know it personally. My motivation was particularly influenced by the publication of a ten-year city development plan, which involves dramatic changes in the shape of Tel Aviv. Therefore, the urgent need to capture the moment, the beauty of the city in which we live, here and now, before it grows into a small Bangkok, to capture it from above, unchanged, nostalgic and familial. ”
Shoshani began his project about two years ago, and it continues to gain momentum. It’s a process of revealing Tel Aviv’s landscape, its contours, in aspects very different from traditional notions of Tel Aviv, like the difference between walking along the street with your head down, or watching the city from the window of an airplane during takeoff or landing. Shoshani gives us a brief glimpse of the city from another dimension. He’s taking his time in photographing the Israeli metropolis: he not only wants to show a portrait of a modern city, but he also finds amazing camera angles, and the usual, familiar Tel Aviv buildings often look completely unrecognizable.
Shoshani has ambitious plans – he’s going to come back to the same places in ten or fifteen years to capture changes in the shape of the city. Dynamics of development are important to him; he captures them with his photographic eye, every shot conveying love and respect for Tel Aviv, intimate and very personal.
It’s hard to believe, but the richly colorful images do not go through much post-shooting treatment. “I’m doing an easy color correction, and the whole process is barely ten minutes per image,” says the author.
His special secret is dramatic lighting and natural phenomena, going to shoot very early in the morning or in the midst of a storm, returning time and again to the same point to capture his ideal image.
“I love my city. And I want to show it to those who have never been here, as well as to those who have lived here for years and have not seen all its matchless beauty. Once a girl from Thailand wrote me that, after viewing my pictures, she decided to come to Tel Aviv and see it with her own eyes. And what do you think? She arrived with her friends and they asked me to be their guide through the places they loved in my images… It was very touching, and in fact, this is the best affirmation of what I’m doing. ”
Source: MFA
POEM: BONO leaves note in the guestbook at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel… READ IT HERE
At the end of his visit in the Holy Land… BONO leaves note in the GuestBoo of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem… ENJOY.
“Hope is like a faithful dog, sometimes she runs ahead of me to check the future, to sniff it out and then I call to her: Hope, Hope, come here, and she comes to me. I pet her, she eats out of my hand and sometimes she stays behind, near some other hope maybe to sniff out whatever was. Then I call her my Despair. I call out to her. Here, my little Despair, come here and she comes and snuggles up, and again I call her Hope.
With great thanks for great room in great hotel in great city, Bono.”
Why is Israel so happy?
Op-ed: What’s Israel’s secret, which allowed Jewish state to rank 14th on global Happiness Report?
Israel ranked 14th in the United Nations’ first World Happiness Report. The list is headed by Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, the paradises of political correctness, welfare, anti-war, ultra-liberal and anti-nationalistic feelings, beacons which, according to the Global Peace Index, topped the list of the most “peaceful” places in the world.
So how can we explain the happiness of Israel, the only civilized country under mortal danger, the only nation without recognized borders and globally selected to be an emblem of evil?
To people who don’t live in Israel, this is a mystery. Many Israelis probably can’t figure it out, either. How is it possible that a population living under a perpetual emotional strain and ghettoizing itself behind new Maginot lines is so happy?
How can the Jews be happy when Iran is going nuclear and threatening to wipe them off the map? How can they be happy when the Arabs are firing rockets every day at civilians in Ashkelon, Beersheba, Ashdod and Sderot? What are the sources of the happiness of the only UN member condemned to death and boycotted all over the world?
Israel is much happier than all the European countries that experienced their last war six decades ago. The Jewish state’s population exceeds 7.5 million, nine times that of 1948, the year of the state’s creation. Israelis are happy because they succeeded demographically; considering the Diaspora’s low birth rates and high assimilation rates, it may not be long before most of the world’s Jews will be Israelis.
Despite Jewish heroism and Israeli collectivism giving way to Western individualism, self-criticism and frivolous hedonism, Israeli happiness is much more than the American dream of a large house and a nice car. It lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning, “a nation like all other nations” but also “a light unto the nations.”
Belief in God
Israelis, which have one of the longest life expectancies of any nation in the world, are happy because their country has a history of scintillating enlightenment, with the highest production of scientific publications per capita in the world, more museums per capita and the highest worldwide publication of new books. In a war-ravaged country like Israel, the past few years saw five Israeli Nobel Prize winners.
Another reason is economic success. No other industrialized country does it better, especially for a nation that doesn’t have natural resources and has a population roughly half of Belgium’s. Israel’s high-tech industry is flourishing, making the country known as “start-up nation.”
While Israel’s social fabric is deeply divided between ultra-Orthodox Jews and “Hellenistic” Israelis, nationalists and leftists, two-thirds of Israelis believe in God, therefore maintaining the hope and feeling that there is higher meaning and purpose to their lives. There is also the attachment to the Jewish land, while love for one’s land is a nationalistic taboo in the West.
Overall, Israel’s population is very resilient. A new governmental study just found that Intifada-era violence did nothing to affect Israel’s national morale. Israelis are also happy because they know that Dimona and the IDF are there to protect them, even if the army lost some of its famous deterrence.
Finally, there is the most important reason why Israeli happiness is an enchanting and heartening mystery for all free men. When comparing the fertility rate to the suicide rate, one can see the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own. This is why the Jews will ultimately win a centennial war against an enemy ready to sacrifice all of its children in order to throw all Israelis into the sea.
In Israel, the celebrations of life are far more numerous than the memories of death. That’s Israel’s secret for happiness: it’s a lighthouse of life on the border between survival and destruction. Ultimately, life will prevail over death.
by Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio.
Source: Ynetnews.com
Israeli plays reach London stage
Israel, UK to collaborate as part of new initiative which brings contemporary Israeli plays to British audiences
Israel’s cultural relations with the UK have suffered the effects of the anti-Israeli boycott movement in recent years, as Israeli art struggels to find its place in Britain. A new initiative seeks to expose contemporary Israeli theatre to British audiences and creators.
The project ‘New Writing from Israel’, initiated by the Tik-Sho-Ret Theatre Company of Israeli artists who live and work in Britain, is set to open in London’s Tristan Bates Theatre on April 29. As part of the project, some of Israel’s most prominent emerging playwrights will showcase their work in the UK for the first time, revealing a wide range of styles and points of view.
The project will feature five plays: Gesher Theatre’s “5 Kg of Sugar” directed by Yevgeny Arie; Beit Lessin’s “Here Comes the Light Behind Me” by Oded Lifshitz; Tmuna Theatre’s “Jump” by Ella Moshkovitz Weiss and “Hoky Poky” by Eyal Vizer; and Habima’s “The Promised Land” by Shay Pitovski and Sahar Pinkas.
Tik-Sho-Ret Theatre Company was established by Ariella Eshed in 2005 with the aim of giving Israeli and Jewish plays a platform, creating educational and community-based projects around themes of communication and co-existence and promoting cultural exchange through collaborations.
The new initiative is supported by the British Council’s Bi-Arts program, and the Foreign Ministry’s Cultural Relations Department. The project will also include open panels with Israeli artists and writers.
Source: Ynetnews.com