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Just as great sums of money and considerable ingenuity and energy
are expended on exploring the rich archaeological past of this historic
land-a retrospective nationalism common to new nations-so similar
national resources are freely used to ensure Israel's place as a
modern, progressive country, in the mainstream of contemporary technological
and artistic achievement.
Lying in the dynamic crossroads between Europe and Africa, which
were responsible for so much of Palestine's bloodstained history
and spiritual vitality, modern Israel and her people are determined
to be both European and international. Despite nationhood, Israelis
have not cast off the cosmopolitan sophistication which marked the
Jewish Diaspora, and contributed so much to European civilisation.
The minority status, and indeed persecution, which drove Jews to
an introspective curiosity and the need to prove themselves, is
echoed in the striving for viability by this tiny nation of 21 millions,
living on a narrow strip of mainly arid soil.
This psychological force has made the desert bloom, has seen a
phenomenal rise in population, evoked a military superiority over
numerically larger enemies. So in the arts Israel seems determined
to provide its population with amenities which richer, older countries
might envy, and its artists with outlets and opportunities few contemporary
societies rival. The fact that for religious, historical and social
reasons Jews were late in emerging as significant visual artists,
a fact often commented upon by critics and historians, has also
played its part in Israel's artistic activity.
All these factors make up the background to the creation of the
new National Museum in Jerusalem. These remarkable buildings are
neither an isolated effort, nor of a sudden, spontaneous phenomenon.
The need for national culture, art education and the civilising
role of the creative artist were all part of early Zionist philosophy.
The new museum, indeed, is the direct descendant of the Bezalel
Museum founded, with the famous art school of the same name, in
1906. Professor Boris Schatz (1866-1932) a sculptor and art historian
of Russian origin, who lived in Paris and other European cities,
named both institutions after Bezalel ben Uri ben Hur, the legendary
Biblical creator of the Ark of the Covenant. This romantic gesture
was part of Schatz's aim at founding a national art form, expressive
of Biblical and Jewish themes, with a dash of oriental motifs for
local colour. It cannot be said that he succeeded, or contributed
to modern Israeli artalthough an unfortunate residual effect can
be seen in much of the poor design and craftsmanship in the tourist
gift shops. But his school remains the leading art academy in the
country and the collection of Jewish religious art has now become
the finest in the world. His successor Mordecai Narkiss expanded
the collection to international dimensions, from African art to
Renaissance drawings, thus laying the foundations of the present
Museum.
Since those pioneering days many other museums have arisen in the
country, notably in Tel Aviv where there are a number of well-endowed
public collections, ranging from modern Israeli art to the pavilions
of the charming Ha'aretz Museum devoted to glass, coins, costumes,
etc., and the Jaffa Museum of local history. Haifa, Acre, Beersheba,
and even new towns such as Eilath, all have growing collections.
One of the finest museums of modern art in the country was started
30 years ago on the collective settlement Ein Harod; and at Kibbutz
Hazorea, near Haifa, the Wilfred Israel House contains a surprising
collection of Far Eastern art.
With the creation of the Israel National Museum in Jerusalem, Israel
can be said to have come of age culturally. It is part of a new
Kirya, or official city, which includes the Hebrew University, the
new Parliament, a group of Ministries and the President's official
residence. This ambitious scheme is designed to give the somewhat
dull, unprepossessing capital a new dignity, worthy of its importance
as the centre of government and learning, and, also, a centre of
tourist attraction.
The site, indeed, is magnificent. The Museum gracefully rests on
a 22 acre hill with the charming Biblical name NavÈ Shaanan-'Tranquil
Habitation', overlooking an 11 th century Crusader Monastery in
the Valley of the Cross. The architects of the main buildings, Professor
Alfred Mansfield and Mrs. Dora Gad, have clearly been inspired by
the traditional architecture of the region, at its best in the Arab
villages. The squat, cubist pavilions seem to grow out of the hillside,
rhythmically blending with the angle of its slope; not, as with
the new tall, monolithic apartment blocks, at variance with the
natural contours of the land.
Mansfield and Gad were prize-winners in a national competition
held in 1959, chosen by an international jury. Professor Mansfield,
born in St. Petersburg and trained in Berlin and Paris, is Head
of the Department of Architecture at Haifa and among his best local
buildings is the Lod Airport. Mrs. Gad was trained in Vienna and
is currently responsible for the interior of the new Parliament
and the Hilton Hotel at Tel Aviv. For the Israel Museum they have
created a complex of small linked pavilions, asymmetrically placed
in relation to each other. The exterior pattern is unpretentious
and light, and internally they have avoided large, pompous spaces.
The exhibition areas are relatively small and flexible, admirably
suited to the narrow range of the Museum's possessions, making for
intimate, easily comprehended displays. A belt of high windows provides
natural light without restricting wall space.
The Museum is divided into two distinct sections ; the Bezalel
Museum of Fine Arts in the southern area, and the Bronfman Museum
of Archaeology in the northern part. Both extend on what is virtually
a single storey, although due to the topography of the site there
are interesting changes of level. The museums share common services
on a lower level-offices, laboratories, store-rooms, archives. Public
amenities include an extensive library, book stalls, restaurants,
etc.
Quite distinct from this central complex, and indeed stylistically
at variance with it, is the domed Shrine of the Book which houses
the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. It is a pity that the Gottesman Foundation
of New York, which donated the building, did not allow it to be
part of an overall plan by the Israeli architects. Instead American
designers. Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos, were commissioned,
and appear to have been influenced by the melodramatic title given
to the building. Their romantic conception strikes a discordant,
theatrical note on this austere hillside, beside the simple practicality
of the main group. The onion-dome, covered in gleaming white porcelain
tiles, is too obviously an oriental quotation, and placed next to
a massive black basalt wall its prettiness seems all the more shallow.
This is exhibition architecture, suitable for a World's Fair or
an art pavilion. Melodrama is even more emphasised inside; a deep
vaulted basement, reached through Art Nouveau arches, leads to a
spiralled vault, no doubt intended to suggest the Qumran caves.
Portions of parchment are displayed in fashionable show-cases, with
the most important exhibit, the Book of Isaiah, in a central drum
incongruously mounted by a huge phallic column. Formanyof the visitors
this building will be a focal attraction, and those interested in
the discovery of the scrolls in 1947 and their subsequent history,
are provided with an intelligible guide.
Between the Shrine of the Book and the main Museum lies Isamu Noguchi's
garden. Originally termed the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, it is
now called an Art Garden to satisfy orthodox religious opinion which
objects to idols being publicly displayed in the Holy City. One
of the results is that the more naturalistic nude figures tend to
be hidden behind solid walls. Noguchi, a distinguished sculptor
who has designed striking settings for the Martha Graham Dance Company,
is theatrical in the best sense. Instead of imposing discordant
forms on a powerful natural setting, he has moulded the landscape
with the sympathetic understanding a real artist brings to his materials.
The undulating, wave-like forms, created with boulder walls and
heaped earth, echo the shape of ancient terraced agriculture and
the historic moulds to be found throughout the Middle East. With
an intuitive sense of history, an oriental respect for nature, and
a modern artist's daring, Noguchi has produced the most beautiful
and important contribution to the Museum.
The garden, in fact, is a finer piece of sculpture than anything
it contains. The Billy Rose Collection, generous though the gift
is, proves to be rather disappointing. Mostly figurative work of
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the finest group are the
delightful Daumier bronzes. These, of course, are not shown out
of doors. The Rodin Adam is a powerful work, also more suited
to indoor display; Maillol, Epstein, a thick limbed Lipshitz Mother
and Child, inferior examples of Archipenko and Zadkine, weak
American academic sculpture by Zorach and Richard Hunt, make up
the rest. Fortunately a few acquisitions or loans of importance
are also on view, notably two masterly Henry Moores, perfectly placed,
a powerful Wotruba, a monumental iron structure by Cesar. A number
of important artists, such as Arp, Uhlmann, Richier prove unsuited
to the setting. The Israeli sculptors Dantziger, Shemi and Haber
are more impressively at home in their native landscape.
One aspect of the sculpture display is echoed in the small group
of contemporary paintings in the Museum. This I can only describe
as the too dominant influence of William Sandberg, the distinguished
former Director of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, who has been
acting as special adviser to the Israel Museum. Sandberg, it is
generally agreed, is one of the most brilliant, creative museum
officials in the world, an educator and designer of exceptional
talent. It is right that his views on modern art should be reflected
in his work, but I hope it is not churlish to suggest that this
influence is too strongly felt in a new national museum with, as
yet, limited coverage of modern art. Thus the sculpture garden includes
a large group of Dutch sculpture, some of it good, but including
three unworthy efforts by Appel. Similarly the limited display of
contemporary painting includes an unbalancing preponderance of the
Cobra Group and other Dutch artists. In a fuller, more comprehensive
survey these inclusions would be unobjectionable, but in Jerusalem,
where very little space is devoted to native Israeli art, they seem
overbearing.
In that parenthetic criticism I have forestalled comment on the
contents of the Museum proper. The Archaeological collection is
vast and fascinating, although one must not expect the artistic
glories of Cairo, Athens or the British Museum. Jerusalem offers
a treasure house for the student of the Bible and the prehistory
of Palestine, with illustrations from the Greek, Roman, Christian
and Arab periods. Among the outstanding items are well preserved
Synagogue mosaics, indicating an early relaxation of the Commandment
forbidding the creation of images, the superb Sumerian Head of
Gudea, the Voss-Hahn collection of Mesopotamian seals, the Borowski
ivories, and extensive cabinets of coins. Of exceptional beauty
and range is the Persian collection, including Amlash ceramics,
gold vessels, sculpture and a magnificent 17th century tiled Prayer
Niche.
The richest section of the Bezalel collection is devoted to Jewish
religious and ethnographic art. It is probably the finest in the
world, including costumes, jewellery, a complete early 18th century
rococo Synagogue from Italy, 14th and 15th century illuminated Hebrew
manuscripts, 11th century carvings from the Maimonides Synagogue
in Cairo, and hundreds of religious appurtenances made for ritual
and domestic use.
Inevitably for a new, non-European country, the Museum is weakest
in Western painting and sculpture. One cannot expect to find in
Israel the masterpieces of the great European or American collections;
but a good start has been made. A strong group of Dutch paintings
includes Rembrandt, Ruisdael, Guyp, Van Goyen, de Witte and V‰n
der Neer. There are works by Tintoretto, El Greco, Rubens, Murillo
and Magnasco. French art of the 19th and 20th centuries is richly
represented by Delacroix, Courbet, Monet, Renoir, Degas; L'Ècole
de Paris by Bonnard, Picasso, Matisse, Dufy, Redon, Leger. Jewish
artists include Chagall, Soutine, Pascin, Kisling, Oppenheim, Israels,
Liebermann, Ury, Jankel Adler. Mention should also be made of the
well stocked graphics cabinets, with master drawings from Durer
to contemporary artists. In addition there are good examples of
Egon Schiele, Munch, Klee, Magritte, Feininger, Bissier. Among recent
gifts there is a Francis Bacon portrait of Lucien Freud, and
works by Philip Guston, Soulages, Stuart Davis, Dubuffet and Vasarely.
Most disappointing, as I have indicated, is the inadequate display
of contemporary Israeli art. Ardon, the doyen of Israeli painters
is present, with Agam, Tumarkin, Zaritsky, Stematsky, Lea Nikel-a
very arbitrary choice. Visitors to Jerusalem will rightly expect
the National Museum to provide evidence of the not inconsiderable
national talent.
For the opening of the Museum in May a number of special exhibitions
were mounted. The most impressive was a group of fifty drawings
and etchings by Rembrandt on Old Testament themes. No Christian
artist so immersed himself in Jewish thought and character. Living
and working in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter, a free haven for Spanish
refugees, Rembrandt's neighbours and friends were the models for
some of his greatest masterpieces. In contrast the small group of
Chagall paintings and Lipshitz sculpture on Jewish themes seemed
thin in content and imaginatively weak.
The main loan exhibition was entitled The Bible in Art. The
Old Testament, of course, has been one of the seminal sources of
inspiration for European artists, but unfortunately public collections
find it difficult to loan their greatest treasures. Among the outstanding
works in Jerusalem were Rembrandt's Moses from Berlin, Rubens'
The Dead Abel, a fine Van Dyke Abraham and Isaac from
Prague, a group of grisaille paintings by Mantegna, some magnificent
Russian icons from Recklinghausen and Poussin's The Finding of
Moses from the Louvre.
Karl Katz, the young, energetic Curator of the Bezalel Museum has
described its foundation in 1906 as 'a tabernacle in the wilderness'.
That is still a good description, even though the wilderness has
since borne other fruit.
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