Raffi Lavie
אקריליק ועיפרון,) (פרט2005
2005 (detail), acrylic and
122”122 ,על דיקט
pencil on plywood, 122x122
)34 'אוסף פרטי (ר' קט
Private collection (see cat. 34)
-23-
-22-
Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the Father
national heritage, such as the Star of David, the
to his home, friends, students. I assume that he
Menorah, and later—a bearded man who may
knew what richness is wasted when one does not
easily be identified with the figure of the Jew. This
concentrate on the essential, and that this kind of
led some critics to regard these manifestations as
approach is the right one considering his culture
an illustration of antithetical ideologies battling
and place. No visual expression other than the
on the surface of the picture. Such was the
ideographic could be better suited to this kind of
interpretation given by Shva Salhoov to a group
world management.
of works entitled Arab—Violet Moustache from
If the ideographic use in the child-like images
2004-05, which she regarded as the “dramatic
shortened the way between content and sign,
encounter of the two great histories to which
it may be seen independent of interpretation
modernism gave birth: the history of Nationalism
foreign to the scenarios revealing themselves
which is also that of Fascism, and the history
on the plywood, thus pushing iconographical
of modern art, which is also the history of the
expressions to be of secondary importance. If the
struggle for freedom.”18
notion of depth as a value was ridiculed by Lavie
I am very much in doubt whether such an
time and again long before post-modernism
agenda was on Lavie’s mind when he created the
roamed the earth, to what context, then, could
series. He was not that kind of political artist, and
they be attributed? In avoiding the grand
when he did launch a political statement, as in
narratives or the iconoclastic approaches such
the case of Rabin’s assassination, he did not need
as those employed by Klee, Dubuffet, and Miró,
bypasses to put his opinion on the picture surface,
what end did such a strategy serve?
and was very explicit in putting a blood-like stain
In Lavie’s rhetoric we observe a great irony
on Rabin’s image. I think he employed the signs
and a greater shrewdness, the kind to which Irad
leading Salhoov to her dramatic statement the
Kimhi alludes when in the closing sentences of
same way one collects tribal signs as collective
his article about the artist he says that Lavie’s
paraphernalia accompanying one through life,
basic gesture is that of unlimited shrewdness.19
from childhood to death, and obviously, during
Conscious of all the forces around him, whether
this long journey, these signs are also treated
Western tradition or his own Jewish and Israeli
ironically. It seems to me that he was not a man
heritage, well-aware of the double peripheries,
of ideologies, but a man of ideas, and these were
or even diasporas, in which he roams, he takes
consciously limited to his immediate surroundings,
upon himself the role of the artist, while
18. Shva Salhoov, “Ich bin nicht/ich bin: In den
19. Irad Kimhi, „A Painter of Modern Life,“ Studio Art
Fussstapfen Gemäldegruppe ‘Araber—Lila Schnurrbart’
Magazine, no. 141 (March 2003), p. 29 [Hebrew].
(2004-05),” cat. Raffi Lavie: Gemälde 2003-2005 (Tel Aviv and Berlin: Givon Art Gallery and Galerie Asperger, 2005), p. 54 [German].