A Century of Naive Art in Israel
...As will be made clear, the rightful place to consider the work of
Eliahou
Eric Bokobza (b. Paris 1963; here since the age of 6), is at the end
of this survey of Israel naive painters.
A Jew of Tunisian origin, he came to Israel from France at the
age of six with his family. But even now, having lived in this country
for more than 30 years, he still sees the country through the critical
eyes of a tourist. A point brought home by the title of a very recent exhibition:"Artist-Tourist".
A pharmacist by profession, Bokobza only started painting seriously
at the age of 32, enrolling to study in Tel Aviv at the Pollack-Kalisher
Art School. Since the year 2000, his paintings have been exhibited to critical
acclaim. He has held three solo shows (two at the Nelly Arman gallery,
Tel Aviv) and participated in group exhibitions at museums around the country.
Featured in an early series of Bokobza's large oil paintings are family
groups based on photographs taken in Tunis and Paris. Into them, Bokobza
inserts his own figure, depicted as the eternal child in bourgeois European
clothing. Childhood drawing of houses, harlequins, cockerels and
donkeys are source material for other paintings. In one of these, which
is also inspired by a snapshot taken in the Tuileries Gardens when he was
aged about five, he shows a chubby figure in a sailor suit seated on the
back of a donkey. It is this child (i.e. Boboza), quite often depicted
in the role of an obnoxious little tourist, who appears in all Boboska's
recent pictures. Whether it is as a figure is set against the red roofs
of Paris, stylized local landscape or flat, overlapping oriental patterns.
Incorporated into these pictures are stencilled fragment of typical
scenes found in the paintings or prints of the artists and teachers associated
at the beginning of the 20th century with the Jerusalem's Bezalel School
of Arts and Crafts. Most of them worked in a simplistic style which
was intended to mirror the fresh and idealistic vision of the early 20th
century pioneers, striving to build a Jewish state.
In many of his paintings Boboza pokes fun at this generation and the
artwork they produced; or else he mocks at the sentimental Zionist-orientated
imagery produced prior to the creation of the Israel by artists living
in Europe. In his version of the "The Jewish May, " an illustration
from Songs of the Ghetto (1903) by the Galician born artist and graphic
designer Ephraim Moshe Lilien, Boboza replaces the image of an elderly
religious Jew, his body entangled in thorns, who turns his face and
prayers towards the holy city of Jerusalem with the figure of a young
tourist. His back to the landscape, he unenthusiastically waves a toy flag.
Bokobza is perfecting a calculated child-like style of painting by means
of which he either makes critical statements about Zionism, religion, militarism
and nationalism (and much else); or else sets out to debunk revered icons
of Israeli and Jewish art history. In doing so, he employs a means of expression,
which lacks the qualities of artlessness, spontaneity and a purity of vision,
which are basic to naive painting. It seems with Bokobza, at the start
of a new and sophisticated millenium, we are witnessing the demise of a
unique style.
ANGELA LEVINE
ARIEL, THE ISRAEL REVIEW OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Published quarterly in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish
Editor: Asher Weill
This article was first published in May 1999. An updated version was
brought out in the Russian language in June 2002 with the inclusion of
five additional artists; Leah Zarembo, Menia Litvak, Slavia Denisov - all
of Russian origin: and Chaim Charbon and Eliayahu Eric Bokobza.
Illustration: Eliayahu Eric Bokobza, Boy on a Donkey
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