Jerusalem – ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA

SYDNEY OR MELBOURNE?

March 31, 2021March 31, 2021 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Australia, Canada, Israel, Jerusalem, Major City Rivalry, Melbourne, Montreal, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Toronto, travel

LOCAL / NATIONAL RIVALRIES between urban giants

Cities that enjoy unrivalled pre-eminence within their countries are rare and especially in many of the lands of the newer worlds. As a native of London – a city which similarly to Paris and France, enjoys sole national supremacy – this phenomenon has always interested me. While this development seems natural in geographically enormous countries like Russia (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), China (Beijing and Shanghai) and the USA (New York City and Los Angeles) it is also true of smaller nations, such as New Zealand (Wellington and Auckland), Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) and Italy (Rome and Milan).*

City rivalries develop for a whole host of reasons, including geography, internal competing nationalisms, politics, local nationalisms, commerce and of course, history. Occasionally these rivalries can blow up into full blown rows, and given sufficient regional identity, even war. Often, newer countries with two or more “competing” cities have avoided potential trouble by creating distinct administrative/political national capital cities – such as Brasilia, in the case of Brazil (cf Rio versus Sao Paulo); or by elevating a non rival city to the same position – such as Canberra in the case of Australia (cf Melbourne versus Sydney). Even in newer countries with relatively long-established capitals, such as Washington DC (USA) Durban (South Africa), and Ottawa (Canada), these cities rarely evolve into their respective nations commercial or cultural urban powerhouses.

Presented below are my thoughts on three famous urban rivalries I am familiar with…

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is melbourne-v-sydney.jpg — **MELBOURNE AND SYDNEY** – I seem to recollect the late, great Clive James once describing Sydney as appearing like a fabulous jewel neckless from the air (or words to that effect), and while there’s no doubting that Australia’s largest city wins hands down in the beauty stakes, I have enjoyed my visits to its great rival, (and nearly as large) Melbourne far more. Apart from its truly iconic architecture and geography, Sydney seems parochial and dull compared to its cosmopolitan and vibrant Victorian neighbour. Not only is Melbourne the beating heart of the Aussie arts and culture scene (with all due apologies to the Sydney Opera House), it’s also the sporting capital; not just of Australia, but of the entire southern hemisphere; and not to mention, a gourmet’s paradise – I mean, where else in the world (including Greece) can one find a truly great Greek restaurant?!

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is toronto-v-montreal.jpg — ***TORONTO AND MONTREAL –*** With the risk of this beginning to seem like an exercise in contrary-ism, I often find myself not liking the cities I’m “supposed” to like, while preferring their less hyped rivals. In truth, this might have more to do with the fact that I have always had a conditioned reflex against hype of all kinds, in all walks of life. Thus, I guess that I was always going to be one of those oddballs who much preferred Toronto over Montreal. In fairness, and unlike with Melbourne and Sydney, there isn’t much to distinguish the two Canadian giants vis-à-vis appearances – although even the most die-hard Montreal lovers would probably own that Toronto’s lake-front profile gives it the edge in looks. No, it wasn’t the appearance of Toronto that got under my skin so much as, like Melbourne, it has that almost tangible zing of a happening, swinging town, in stark contrast to Montreal’s overwhelming atmosphere of stale lethargy. Moreover (and this also resembled the Aussie cities), whereas Toronto felt confident and assured, Montreal felt arrogant and complacent.

***TEL AVIV AND JERUSALEM*** – Of the six example cities discussed here, I know these two the best. Having lived in Israel on two occasions and having spent months of my life in both towns, not only do I understand their “todays”, I also have a first-hand knowledge, going back half-a-century of how they got there. For all sorts of obvious, geo-political, geo-religious and geo-cultural reasons (far too complex and difficult to enter into here) Jerusalem is not so much a city, as an agglomeration of fractious urban communities, crammed uncomfortably into a relatively small area. For all its stunning beauty, this has been Jerusalem’s problem for the best part of the past 2000 years, and doesn’t look like resolving anytime soon. Everything about Tel Aviv however, exists in the starkest of all contrasts. While Jerusalem could be as much as four-thousand years old, Tel Aviv is barely one hundred! Whereas Jerusalem is defined by religion and cultural conservatism, Tel Aviv is aggressively secular and culturally progressive (in the good, true sense of the term!). While Jerusalem is aesthetically exquisite, Tel Aviv is an urban dichotomy of 20th century ramshackle and dusty, and 21st century jagged and shiny. The two cities could not be more different, and reveal the two faces of Israel. Which face the visitor prefers will depend much upon their own peculiar political and religious sensibilities. As for me, these days, in beautiful Jerusalem I feel disconcerted, saddened and alienated, while in ugly Tel Aviv, I feel energised and optimistic, and very much at home.

*Apologies to residents and fans of cities like Chicago and Vancouver, who could justifiably argue that in North American terms at least, I have overlooked these towns equally valid competing statures to those named – perhaps in the interest of preserving my hypothesis. However, while there can be no doubting either city’s cultural and commercial importance and influence, in a broad metropolitan sense, not to mention for sheer industrial and commercial might, they are dwarfed by the cities mentioned.

PAINTING FROM PHOTOGRAPHS – mundane craft or true modern art?

March 15, 2020April 1, 2020 by adamhalevi, posted in Art, Banyas / Banias / Panias Falls, David Hepher, Galilee, Haifa, Israel, Jerusalem, Oil on Canvas, Saint Martin's School of Art, Uncategorized

Photography has played an ever-growing role in my picture-making since the first day of the second term, of my second year at Saint Martin’s School of Art. It was a bleak winter’s day in 1980 and I remember feeling particularity depressed about the direction – or lack of direction to be precise that my painting was taking. For the past four terms at the school I’d walked a wobbly tightrope between the pressure to emulate my tutors’ abstract expressionism, and my own innate passion for making representational images. The resulting stream of paintings echoed this dichotomy, rarely convincing as abstract or figurative; more often than not, a clumsy, unresolved mishmash of the two forms. If, as occasionally happened, I turned out a pleasing picture, it was always more by luck than by design, with me clueless as to how or why I had achieved this.

*THE COACH PARTY (detail) – 1980* – oil on canvas
This was the first painting I made after my talk with David. It was huge (the foreground figures were to-life scale) and liberating in equal measure. I was rarely happier or more stimulated when working on a painting.

Then, on that winter’s day in 1980, while I was pacing back and forth, dreading the coming weeks and months, a new tutor called David Hepher walked into my studio space, and my art career was changed forever. David, unlike all the other tutors at Saint Martin’s was a figurative artist and to this day I have no idea how he came to be teaching there, but for me, his sudden appearance was as timely as that of an Old Testament angel. I distinctly recall his expression as he first set eyes on my paintings – large canvases full of expressively, heavily painted figures of young people hurtling boldly through a romanticised Israeli landscape.

*RESTING AT MONTFORT (detail) – 1980 – oil on canvas*
This was the third painting in what I still think of as my “Hepher Series”, and I was already discovering, as he surely knew I would, that “copying” would provide its own form of interpretation…

A warm quizzical smile came across his face like that of someone unexpectedly bumping into an old friend. Then I remember that he sat down on my rickety paint-spattered moulded plastic chair. During the previous four terms at the school not one tutor had ever smiled this kind of smile when looking at my pictures, let alone sat down in my space. By the end of the ensuing conversation it became apparent that he was almost as relieved to see my work in that school, as I was thankful that he was now teaching there.

*The Banyas Waterfall –* 1981 – oil on canvas
One of my favourite spots on Earth; the source of the River Jordan, and almost believably, as the Macedonian soldiers believed two centuries before Christ, the birthplace of the god Pan. Notice the way I played with tonality and shadowing to create more drama…

The first thing he asked me was who my favourite artists were, and when I said Vermeer and Hopper he looked curiously at my wild and frenzied pictures. He then reminded me of Vermeer’s reliance on the camera obscura for achieving these perfectly painted captured moments and asked me why I didn’t use my own photos in a similar fashion?

CHURCH OF SAINT MARY MAGDALENE & GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE – 1982 – oil on canvas
This painting was commissioned, paid for and then returned back to me as a gift, when my patron’s new girlfriend took against it. It could even yet prove to be the first and only painting I sell twice!

While I’d already been using photographs for the past year or so as a form of rough reference, in the same way I worked from my sketchbook, David convinced me to try something “bolder”, in his words, but hugely controversial; especially within such a temple of conceptualism and abstract expressionism as Saint Martin’s. He suggested that I take my favourite photographs and copy them as faithfully as possible in oils, like huge painted photographic enlargements. He felt certain that in this way I would find the inner artistic peace I was craving.

*MOUNT MERON FROM SEFAD – 1983 – oil on canvas*
In a similar way to the Casino painting below, I seem to have slightly shifted the angle of the tombstones, and altered the line of telegraph poles – I’m guessing to increase the sensation of being drawn down into the valley, before being swept up again toward the distant mountain.

And cutting a long story short, David’s empathetic advice proved successful, even though the pictures I went on to produce with this new method ensured that I would prove even more of a problematic enigma for most of his colleagues. Presented here are several of the large canvases I painted as a direct result of David’s tutelage. Some them have appeared on this site before, but never side-by-side with the “offending” snaps!

*THE OLD BRITISH CASINO – HAIFA – 1985 – oil on canvas*
In some ways this is the most faithful photographic copy I made in the entire series of pictures (the removed fisherman notwithstanding), yet the subtle shift in angle and perspective is stark – and effective – I think?

Israelis at large…1977-1991

January 15, 2018November 24, 2020 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam Green, Agfachrome, Canonet 28, Israel, Jerusalem, Kodak Extachrome, Nikon FE, Tel Aviv, travel

One of the things I’ve really been enjoying here in Sweden is playing with all my new toys, including my aforementioned fabulous slide scanner. Its main purpose is to get my years of artwork digitally recorded and logged, but it’s also helping me rediscover thousands of my old general photos.

Between 1977 and 1991 I visited Israel about a dozen times and I never went there without at least half a dozen rolls of high quality slide film.∗ The pictures included here (presented in no particular order) cover most of those seventeen years and present a portrait of a diverse and multi-textured little nation.

∗Cameras used: Canonet 28 and Nikon FE / Film used: Kodak Ektachrome and Agfachrome.

POINTS AND VIEWS

May 31, 2017June 1, 2017 by adamhalevi, posted in Adam and Dido, Atacama Desert, Biblical Landscapes, Blue Mountains, Cardona, Catalonia, Chile, County Kerry, Coursegoules, Dingle, Ein Kerem, France, Israel, Jerusalem, Les Deux Alpes, Mount Gilboa, Mount Herman, Negev Desert, New South Wales, Paradors, Pinochet, Point Sublime, Pre-Inca Civilization, Pukara de Quitor, Ryan's Daughter, San Pedro de Atacama, Santiago, Slea Head, Spain, travel, Uncategorized, Volcan Lincancabur

Standing a loved one or a friend, or even an animal before a fabulous vista is a cultural staple of the holiday snapper. For me, apart from the “I/we was/were there” element, the juxtaposing of a human and or animal before vastness simultaneously humanises and accentuates the majesty of the given panorama. Painters have been doing the same thing since the days of the great Dutch and British landscape painters of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, from Van Ruisdael to Caspar David Friedrich.

Presented here are sadly no Friedrich’s, but this set of enhanced-photos from all my years of travel do nevertheless express something of that dramatic relationship between “us” and the landscapes we move within…

Fellow Worker at Yiftach - Israel — *In 1978 I was a volunteer for the summer on Kibbutz Yiftach on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. This is the view from the north east corner of the kibbutz towards Mount Herman…*

This dates back to the late 70’s when my old mate Simon and I drove around Cork and Kerry in his old orange Datsun. This is Simon peering over the edge at Slea Head near Dingle on the Kerry coast (famous for being the location for the movie Ryan’s Daughter)…

Taken around 1981, this is the summit of Mount Gilboa. The field of boulders could seem to bear witness to the power of David’s curse in his great lament for the fallen Saul and Jonathan that nothing should ever grow upon the mountain’s slopes again…