raffi lavie catalog for the israel pavilion at the 53rd venice biennale

-1-

Raffi Lavie

The Israeli Pavilion

The Venice Biennale

53rd International

Art Exhibition

-2- -3-

Raffi Lavie

The Israeli Pavilion

The Venice Biennale

53rd International Art Exhibition

Team: Doreet LeVitte Harten, Diana Dallal, Ilan Wizgan, Arad Turgeman, Michal Sahar, Koby Levy, Daria Kassovsky, Yael Braun, Mati Broudo, Carmit Blumensohn

Catalogue printing & binding: A.R. Press Ltd., Tel AvivPhotographs: Yigal Pardo, Meidad Suchowolski

© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Oded Löbl and Sigal Kolton

On the cover (English):Raffi Lavie, (“Shulkhan Aroch”), (detail), 2001 Acrylic and pencil on plywood, 120x120 Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv

On the cover (Hebrew):Michal Heiman, Raffi Lavie, Tel Aviv, 1992B&W print, 80x56

Measurements are given in centimeters, height x width

The Israeli Council of Culture and ArtVisual Art Section

Steering Committee:Deganit Berest, Uri Katzenstein, Philip Rantzer, Drorit Gur Arie, Ellen GintonCoordinator: Idit Amihai

Ministry of Science, Culture and SportCulture and Arts Administration, Museums & Visual Arts Department

Ministry of Foreign AffairsCultural & Scientific Relations Division

Embassy of Israel in Rome

ISBN: 978-965-91402-0-6

Thanks Ilana Lavie, Yair Garbuz, Amir Mandel, David Ginton,Yona Fischer, Michal Heiman, Sarah Breitberg-Semel,Michal Na'aman, Itamar Levy, Ilana Tenenbaum, Jachin Hirsch, Alon Altaras Deganit Berest, Philip Rantzer, Uri Katzenstein,Drorit Gur Arie, Ellen GintonGivon Art Gallery, Tel AvivIrit and Boaz Biran, Gil BrandesFriends of the Israeli Pavilion (IPS)Idit Amihai, Yona Marcu, Yossi Balt, Shlomo Yitzhaki, Micha Yinon, Efrat Livny, Moran ShoubNoam Segal, Shay Raz, Gabriel LevinHotel Montefiore staff, Tel Aviv, Sotheby's Israel, Galai PRYoel Rassabi, Daniella Atach, Diana Shoef, Ofer MazarAurelio Rampazzo, Venice; MB Audiovisivi, Padua Giovanni Boldrin, Padua; Lucia Briseghella, PaduaMichele Galizia, Padua; Mirco Lunardello, PaduaStefania Scarafia, Padua; F.lli Marcato, StraFloricoltura Scarpa G.M.&.F., (Lido) Venice

Edna Moshenson, Levia and Helman Stern, Tammy and Martin Weil, Dov and Hana LeVitte, Jürgen Harten and Shelley HartenTammy and Danny Litani, Nily Noyman

Ora and Tamir Agmon, Danny Unger, Adina Alsheich, Oli and Zippi Alter, Noemi Givon, Noa and Asaf Danziger, Nurit Wolf, Hillela Tal, Itay and Rina Talgam, Benno Kalev, Doron Sebbag, Edna Kowarsky, Ari Raved, Timna Rosenheimer, Ofer and Hagit Shapira

ScribaNetStudio, PaduaVetreria Bonini BEB srl., MassaSapore Italiano, Alessandria

Publication of the catalogue was supported bythe Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts

Raffi Lavie:

In the Name of the Father

Doreet LeVitte Harten _5

Biographical Notes _31

Works _34

Selected Bibliography

[Hebrew] _128

About Raffi Lavie—Fragments _85

Sarah Breitberg-Semel _86

Meir Ahronson _87

David Ginton _88

Itamar Levy _89

Deganit Berest _89

Yair Garbuz _90

Meir Wieseltier _92

Aïm Deüelle Lüski _93

Jacob Mishori _94

Michal Na’aman _94

Ariella Azoulay _95

Moshe Ninio _97

Yona Fischer _98

Irad Kimhi _99

Sarit Shapira _99

Dalia Karpel _100

Shva Salhoov _101

Tamar Getter _101

Amir Mandel _102

Sarah Breitberg-Semel _103

Table of Contents

-4- -5-

-5-

Raffi Lavie:In the Name of the Father

– Doreet LeVitte Harten –

Dedicated to my six faithful readers

PART I in which the nature of the audience is being speculated and a bifurcation is thus achieved

For the Israeli public, Raffi Lavie is a household

name, a local icon, and a cultural hero. A figure

in which the clan invested its image, dreams,

and doubts. He forms a nucleus which bespeaks

territories beyond his art and his being an artist,

to the extent that even those who deny his

qualities acknowledge his cultural impact. For

this Israeli audience, this particular clan, Lavie

is central in understanding their own culture.

For those not of our people, however, those

who are not at home with our manners, codes,

and behavioral apparatus, Lavie is an unknown

entity to be regarded through the prism of

familiar influences. These may range from Cy

Twombly to Robert Rauschenberg, or from Paul

Klee to Arnulf Reiner. Those who are not of our

people would not recognize names such as Aviva

Uri and Arie Aroch—two Israeli artists whose

impact on Lavie was immense and immediate.

Lavie as a peripheral variant would be at best

comprehended as having been shaped by the

gravitational forces emanating from the center,

and in the worst case scenario—he might be a

sacrifice to the Omai syndrome. Omai, let us recall,

was a Tahitian native brought to England in 1774

by the notorious Captain Cook, to become the

attraction of London’s high society during the

two years to follow.

By way of comparison, the universal values

of aesthetics may be well and good in explaining

Lavie as an artist, but they are insufficient in

explaining the fatal attraction he cast on his local

peers. When we deal only with the universal, we

are telling half a story. His almost mythological

presence, in the sense that he represented a

quintessence of Israeli culture, inquires into the

nature of that mythogene that responded to the

collective ethos.

During his lifetime, Lavie escaped both the

bitter destiny of being exotic, and the sweeter

fate of being a second among equals, due to

the simple fact that he was only rarely exposed

* For visual references see p. 30.

“In fifty years things will straighten up, and on a sunny Saturday a family will go out and visit the ‘Raffi Lavie Museum’.”

Adam Baruch, “Raffi Lavie. A Bit of Hysteria, Please,”

Haaretz, 19 May 2003 [Hebrew].

-6-

-6-

Raffi Lavie

-7-

-7- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the Father

in a major show abroad, and when foreign

dignitaries came to Israel, he was too much of

an aristocrat to pay them tribute. That is to say,

he did not go out of his way to be discovered.

On the other hand, his fellow Israelis were not

sure he would be understood according to their

own gospels. This deadly combination made him

a hidden treasure up to the present Biennale (or

so we hope).

A dilemma persists though—why is it that,

while being so central to the art scene in Israel, he

never made it abroad; and why, two years after

his death, he is officially sent to the Biennale?

What do his art and persona invoke? What

does his memory imply? We might also ponder

about what we wish to remember, and why this

memory, therapeutic in character, has the taste

of urgency.

Let me first put forth some facts about Lavie’s life:

— Raffi Lavie was born in Ramat Gan, Israel, in

1937; he died in Tel Aviv in 2007.

— He was the central figure in the Israeli art

scene for four decades, starting his activities

in the early 1960s.

— He was a teacher at the Midrasha Art

Teachers’ Training College, later to become

the Art School, Beit Berl Academic College,

one of the two leading art institutes in Israel,

and he revolutionized methods of teaching

art: art was not taught on the practical level,

but rather the outcomes were discussed in

class.

— He curated numerous exhibitions, and was

responsible for the second wave of modernism

in its abstract aspect.

— Most of Lavie’s students became leading

artists in turn, and created around him what

Sarah Breitberg-Semel had termed in her

canonical text the “want of matter” aesthetic.1

According to Breitberg-Semel, it was an art

meager in terms of its materials, which was

not simply Israeli, but rather typically and

essentially Tel Avivian. It expressed a secular

spirit, a pioneering social ethos, an art of the

native-born—the Sabra, who gave up the

Zionist pathos, yet adhered to the anaesthetic

aspect of his Judaism. Lavie, she maintained,

created an art in the spirit of the place, a

native sensuality which he was the first to

articulate, implemented on plywood rather

than on canvas, employing collage, scribbling,

and industrial paint. “The grand old Zionist

experience, replete with pathos and values,

is ultimately diminished to a physical love

for the city. For the ‘Tel Aviv child’ there is

no ‘religion,’ no ‘nation,’ no ‘land,’ there is

only the concrete city. There is no ideology,

but true vitality.”2

— Lavie was a connoisseur of music. He held

1. Sarah Breitberg-Semel, cat. The Want of Matter:

A Quality in Israeli Art, trans. Susann Codish (Tel Aviv

Museum of Art, 1986).

2. Ibid., p. 182.

Still from: Raffi Lavie,

Yona Hanavi (St.), 1979

8 mm film

פריים מתוך: רפי לביא,

, 1979, סרט 8 מ"מ א י ב נ ה ה נ ו י

-8-

-8-

Raffi Lavie

-9-


weekly meetings at home dedicated to

music appreciation, and thereby developed a

comparative system of music comprehension.

— He developed a bartering system whereby he

would exchange his works with other artists.

At the outset of his career, the art market was

almost nonexistent in Israel, and the barter

system was an efficient tool in spreading art

and circulating images.

— He opened his house to anyone seeking his

advice and friendship, thus turning it into the

real place where art in Israel was discussed.

His apartment on Yona Hanavi (Prophet

Jonah) Street acquired a mythological status,

introducing an alternative to the role of

museums as canon-making loci.

— He was an authoritative and charismatic

figure.

PART II in which we air some prejudice and contemplate the possibility of being an Israeli artist

Two facts befall the eye upon observing Raffi

Lavie’s works. First, that he paints as though

he were a child, and second, his obsession with

erasing images through scribbling, etchings, and

generous strokes of paint. These topics were

masterfully addressed in essays by David Ginton3

and Mordechai Geldman4. I find these two

phenomena connected with a deep understanding

of his being an artist in the periphery, and more

so—of his being Jewish and Israeli, and therefore

twice removed from the great womb of Western

aesthetics. Lavie, in recognizing what might be a

disadvantage, took that to be the fundamental

concern of his work, and in employing the act of

erasure and the child-like stand, being blessed by

the euphoria of eternal infantilism, which was

manipulated towards his own needs, reached a

new definition of the outcast. Concerning the

erasure, Geldman writes:”…His erasures have

many forms and nuances—they emerge as color

surfaces, stains, scribbles, tears, and cuts… The

erasure, however, always acquires a presence as

a new reality, replacing or adding to that which

was erased… Lavie’s painting is a catalogue

of all the prohibitions that were cancelled by

modernism, a collection of everything excluded

from classical painting,” going on to connect this

aggressiveness with that of a child: “The erasure

furnishes Lavie with the power to domesticate

the world, to force his own subjectivity on it.”5

Indeed, you may now ask what the big deal

is in those iconoclastic acts. They were enacted

by generations of artists from Dubuffet to Miró

and from Malevich to Duchamp, and did not

3. David Ginton, “Head Birth: Portrait of Raffi as a Young

Painter,” cat. Raffi: The Early Paintings, 1957-1961, trans.

Richard Flantz (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1993).

4. Mordechai Geldman, “The Last Erasure: On Raffi Lavie’s

Retrospective Exhibition at the Israel Museum, February

2003,” The True Self and the Self of Truth: Psychoanalytic

and Others Perspectives (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad,

2006) [Hebrew], pp. 209-15.

5. Ibid.

Cy Twombly and Robert Rauschenberg march

into Rome like the barbarians before them and

harvest all its mythological wealth?

The difference, it seems to me, lies in the

starting point. Those artists, well-immersed in

their cultural heritage, could afford to wave

the banner of iconoclasm without the risk of

appearing ridiculous, being safely tucked in the

arms of their own Western tradition. To wit, it

is not the act, but the performer, who decides

its credibility, and it is here that the difference

is encapsulated as a dilemma inherent in matters

of good taste. Lavie took risks from which those

artists inside their security fence were immune.

This means he had to take into account by-passes

and strategies of camouflage. He had to acquire

certain shrewdness so that his paintings would

feel at home in a hostile surrounding. I may be

exaggerating in matters of hostility, but it was

there, and one had to create ways to avoid or

manipulate it.

Lavie’s understanding of the periphery in its

double role, as an actual place and as a spiritual

dimension, is crucial to his aesthetic. By the

beginning of the 1960s he was in his mid-20s

and already knew himself to be an artist. But

what does it mean to declare oneself an artist

in a place which understands abstract art as a

ticket to the moderna only in its utopian form,

and by means of splendid manipulation succeed

also to harness its zeal to the idea of a new

society. A place which never decided whether its

people are the orphans or the forefathers of the

West, to borrow Michal Na’aman’s words. What

does it mean to be an artist in a place which relies

on reproductions, second-hand knowledge, a

handful of art books, and the stories of those

who were at the center and came back to tell its

glories?

By the end of the 1950s the local art hegemony

belonged to a group called New Horizons which,

in resisting the Paris school and the local style

they identified as pure propaganda, tended

toward what they called Lyrical Abstraction,

which they believed would connect them to the

rest of the world. Lavie took this group as a point

of departure. By forming a cadre of young artists,

the 10+ group, he aired some notions concerning

the avant-garde, injected new tendencies, such

as collage and assemblage, rejuvenated the

scene via a series of exhibitions that had arbitrary

themes, and as such, were under the halo of

the Now which was grasped as both local and

universal.

The 1960s were Lavie’s formative years,

and they were very different from the 1960s in

Europe and the United States. The generation

that rediscovered love in America, or took up

barricades in Paris, was not allowed to interfere

with the New Man being created here. Even the

-10-

-10-

Raffi Lavie

-11-


1957, ink on paper

35.6x49.6, Benno Kalev

Collection, Tel Aviv

1957, ink on paper

35.1x49.5, Benno Kalev

Collection, Tel Aviv

1957, דיו על נייר

49.6”35.6, אוסף בנו כלב

תל אביב

1957, דיו על נייר

49.5”35.1, אוסף בנו כלב

תל אביב

-12-

-12-

Raffi Lavie

-13-


Beatles were prevented from performing in Israel,

lest their music corrupt the Zionist discourse and

its poetic expressions; it was Isser Harel, former

head of Israel’s internal security service, who

years later in an interview said: “We dictated to

you what to think, what to see, what to read. We

did not want revolutions here,”6 and by “you” he

meant Lavie’s generation.

Those were the years in which the myth of

the New Hebrew consolidated into the figure of

the native Israeli called Sabra; a construct made

from the ashes of those who perished in the

Holocaust, who nonetheless went unrecognized

as his legitimate forebears. There was an abyss

between them as Jews and him as a native Israeli.

Not only did he stand at the opposite pole from

the diasporic Jew, but also as the opposite of

the latter’s caricatural image, hence he had no

biological family that could be translated into a

symbolical status. This native—like Athena who

sprang full blown and fully-armed from the head

of her father, Zeus—is a further achievement

in the art of parthenogenesis for his biological

progenitors were replaced by the State, which

becomes a pseudo-biological entity. Thus, the

State is the begetter; the peer groups are the

nuclear family, and the friends are the siblings.

Since he was born as a finished product, the

Sabra is also an eternal youth, which explains

why Israeli grown-ups are still called Bibi and Udi,

Dani and Shuki, thus preserving the eternal state

of the product. By the same token, it is also Raffi,

and not Rafael.

Sarah Breitberg-Semel, in the aforementioned

essay and in connection to Lavie and the group

that formed around him, wrote: “Beyond the

scribbling and the meager materials, Lavie’s

work presents us with a new figure, that of the

‘dispossessed Sabra,’ who identified Judaism

with the ‘doomed diaspora’; who scorns the

Zionist myth and its pathos, as he does all

myths, symbols and rhetoric; who ridicules the

European bourgeois decadence and its ‘worldly

possessions,’ and clings to a mode of behavior

which consists of ‘torn and threadbare rags’ with

which to express his authenticity.”7

By the time Breitberg-Semel wrote her text

in 1986, the myth of the Sabra was nearing its

end. For Lavie, it had already ended in 1956. “As

far as I am concerned,” he said in an interview,

“Israel collapsed in 1956. It started with the Sinai

Campaign... One day I heard Ben Gurion declare

the establishment of ‘the third kingdom of Israel’

on the radio, and that gave me a shock. Since

then I have been feeling the collapse; it’s been

years now that people are saying the situation

cannot get any worse. It turns out it can.”8

Lavie as the mythological native is a thesis

that was repudiated in later time, when the figure

lost its credibility and its banner bearers came to

6. Quoted in Dan Lachman, “The 1960s,”

http://www.e-mago.co.il/Editor/hagut-948.htm [Hebrew].

7. Breitberg-Semel 1986, note 1, p. 181.

8. In an interview with Dalia Karpel, Ha’aretz, 21 December

2005 [Hebrew].

1957 (detail), oil on paper

50x35, courtesy Givon Art Gallery

Tel Aviv (see cat. 41)

1957 )פרט(, שמן על נייר

35”50, באדיבות גבעון

גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב )ר' קט' 41(

-14- -15-


understand that the joke was on them. What had

started as an answer to a caricature, ended thus. A

counter-interpretation of Lavie removed the local

components and wove him into the matrix of the

world by employing postmodern epistemologies

or by negating the appeal of formal explanation

and tending towards the symbolic values in his

art. This approach was already discernible in

David Ginton’s essay in the catalogue of his 1993

exhibition of early paintings, and was further

developed by Sarit Shapira in her essay for Lavie’s

retrospective at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, in

2004.9

Beyond all the attempts to clarify the Raffi

Lavie phenomena and explain his centrality in the

landscape of Israeli culture, there is the fact that

his art, like a mirror, reflects the virtues and values

with which we wish to identify. The aesthetics he

offers encapsulates the quintessence of our being

here. Lavie is the Good Samaritan, the keeper of

a certain dignity which is lost, since that which

is reflected from his paintings, the symbolical

figure they produce, could be summed up as that

of the Good Israeli, and he/she is an embodiment

of those values gone awry. This Good Israeli still

contains the stratified myth and the renunciation

of his nativeness. Lavie, aware of that dream,

being himself its product, understood the nature

of that inner dispossession, which is exteriorized

by dispossessing the other. In other words, Lavie

put the finger on that melancholic aesthetic as

characteristic to the Israeli, and that is why when

Adam Baruch summed up his greatness, he wrote:

“Most of those writing about Lavie, had they

been men of truth, had their spirit been free,

would have possibly said ‘Raffi Lavie reaffirms

my private values and ensures their survival, and

this is his greatness for me,’ and would settle for

that.”10

PART III in which we explore the paintings themselves

If I put forward the claim that Lavie was spawned

by a scopophobic tradition that might have

influenced the very roots of his art, it still does

not negate the very fact of his being an artist

measured by universal standards. What it does is

create a deviation that may help understand his

works in the context of his specific culture. In this

sense, making art for Lavie (and any other Jewish

and Israeli artist) is an act stained by anomaly,

and is not self-evident, axiomatic or natural.

I say stained and not colored because such an

anomaly should be taken in proportion. Consider

it as background noise. Moreover, there is great

beauty inherent in such prerequisites, for they

turn the artist into someone who is forced to act

against the grain, a stand that catapults him into

9. Sarit Shapira, cat. Raffi Lavie: Works from 1950 to 2003

(Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2003).

10. Adam Baruch, How Are Things At Home (Tel Aviv: Kinneret,

Zmora-Bitan, Dvir, 2004), p. 193 [Hebrew].

2004 (detail), acrylic and pencil

on plywood, 122x122

Private collection (see cat. 28)

2004 )פרט(, אקריליק ועיפרון

על דיקט, 122”122

אוסף פרטי )ר' קט' 28(

-16-

-16-

Raffi Lavie

-17-


the traditional role of the romantic artist. One

may trace this pathos of emancipation in Lavie’s

public activities, in his capacities as organizer,

in his charismatic personality which gathered

people around him, but not in his paintings.

In describing his works, several periods are

discernable. The beginning is marked by child-

like figures, objects, and scribbles which remain

constant throughout the years. In the early 1960s

he flirted with abstract white color fields, and

later—especially in the 1970s and 1980s—he used

collage techniques as a major tool of expression.

Also consistent is his use of plywood which

is almost always the support material of the

painting, and which was discussed at length by

Itamar Levy11, Aïm Deüelle Lüski12, Sarit Shapira,

and Sarah Breitberg-Semel.

Plywood was considered an inferior, valueless

material, lacking in decorum, almost a found

object by essence; an artificial product akin to

plastic, its cheapness a defiance of the cultural

notions essential to the history of art. In many

works, the plywood is a major player along with

the brush strokes and the scribbles in organizing

the picture surface into a coherent unit. But its

status does not catch my eye as much as two facts:

the first is the accidental character associated

with it, the contingency of its being. Plywood

as a primary surface implies a stand maintaining

that the scaffolds holding the whole cannot and

should not be given any status, because such a

notion (embedded, for example, in the use of

canvas as a classical painterly surface) would entail

an opinionated, if not prejudiced, attitude which

would, a-priori dictate our relationship with the

visual impact of the picture. Either the work in this

sense cuts off its relations with the world or else

it needs to speak its language. What does it mean

to speak the language of the world? It means

keeping the flow to reality and back; being aware

of the work’s capacity to integrate itself into the

world until it becomes a natural component of

its perception. This is one way to keep relevance,

because the work does not respond to reality, as

much as it is a part of it. Such is Lavie’s procedure

that it allows us to conceive a certain freedom

emanating from the painting being one with

the world. This might explain the significance

attributed to the margins of the picture, as well

as the fact that the images are not terminated,

but rather go beyond the frame.

The other fact concerning plywood almost

negates the first in the sense that it touches

hidden spheres. Under the pretence—or,

according to Moshe Ninio, the mask—of the

plywood’s humility, there lurk a movement and

an afterimage due to the wavy pattern of the

wood grain.13 Indeed poverty has its own tactics

and pleasures when it comes to camouflaging

its real aims. After leaving the land where art

12. Aïm Deüelle Lüski, „The Ways of Plywood,“ Please

Read What Is Painted Here, eds. Efrat Biberman and Deganit

Berest (Hamidrasha School of Art, Beit Berl Academic

College, 2009), pp. 85-100 [Hebrew].

13. Moshe Ninio, in Sarah Breitberg Semel, “Yehudit

Sasportas and Moshe Ninio Talk about Raffi Lavie on

the Occasion of his Retrospective Exhibition at the

Israel Museum,” Studio Art Magazine, no. 141 (March 2003),

p. 34 [Hebrew].

11. Itamar Levy, “Jars, Heads, and White Noise,” cat. Raffi

Lavie (Works, 1985-1990) (Tel Aviv & Berlin: Givon Art

Gallery & and Galerie Asperger, 1991-92).

blooms and tackling the bare reality, such as

the stains and scribbles, there opens the ghost

kingdom with its surface of invocation, and

that which is being invoked oscillates between

histories of art as public domain and your own

private hallucination. How ironic that the same

support which belonged to the world order, is

the one that throws you out.

This reversible game is not just retained to the

plywood; it is enacted through numerous agents.

In the arsenal of Lavie’s motifs, the couple and

the jar appear time and again, sometimes in the

same work and sometimes in different ones. As

in the case of Rubin’s Vase, the negative space

between the couple acquires the form of a jar,

and vice versa; thus the fullness of the jar is the

emptiness of the couple. This means that opposite

forces are at play within the painting and

something must be given up; namely, one image

will not survive. It can be either the rabbit or the

duck, its own iconoclast or its own savior, and it

is here also that Lavie’s work maintains a familial

resemblance to the work of his former student

and subsequently colleague, Michal Na’aman,

who is a master in constructing rebuses as the

cornerstone of her art. Both share a genealogy

which leads them through Marcel Broodthaers

(who was then unknown to both of them) to

Magritte. One more thing: what these two artists

have in common is the use of the emblematic

device, at least the parts of the motto (in Lavie’s

case, the words head and geranium, and in

Na’aman’s case—a collection of linguistic puns

introduced unto the surface of the work) and

the pictura (picture, icon), whereas the subsciptio

(epigram) is avoided, yet forms a third part in

the viewer’s interpretation. Emblems, it is well

known, are related to the Egyptian hieroglyphs

and are considered a secret iconic language, a

riddle by its very nature, and this also resembles

the ideographic character of Lavie’s images.

I would like to go back to the issue of

reversibility, to the state of aporia where choice

between two superimposed realities has to be

made. In this oscillation between what is and

what is not, between the fullness of an image

and its negative space, Lavie seems to have opted

for the latter, and this choice has to do with the

double periphery mentioned above. To produce

a painting which is not there and yet its presence

is mediated through material substance calls for

a set of prohibitions with which Lavie surrounded

himself: not to paint like a mature artist; not to

use a conservative support; not to use traditional

paint; not to paint, but to smear; not to draw, but

to scribble; to create accidental events; and to

declare the act of painting, as he did repeatedly

during his lifetime, as something he hates but is

nevertheless forced to do. In short, he removed

the air of materiality from his art and left it

-18- -19-


almost asthmatic. In this sense he was truly aware

of working both inside and outside a culture

immersed in images, and knew the importance

of applying a strategy of suspicion with respect

to images.

It is in the very act of throwing out almost

all the requisites and scaffolds identified with

art, in the empty spaces of his paintings, in the

folds between child-like images, scratches and

scribbles, and above all—in the act of raising (a

better word will be the German Aufheben) his

art beyond its own image that an entity enters

the surface of the work which I—with all due

respect and a decent portion of irony, and to the

horror of the artist himself—would describe as

the Israeli Sublime. This therapeutic element is

very different from the American Sublime which

was cinemascopic in both scale and intention,

tending toward a certain decorum and pathos.

This Israeli sublime has more of the silence of

John Cage than the oily seraphic voices of John

Tavener, and the very mention of the term

“sublime” suffices to make us blush. Nevertheless,

it is difficult to avoid its presence, and the ways

in which it influences the aesthetics it demands.

In this Hester Panim—the hiding of the face, to

borrow a Jewish theological concept denoting

the absconded God, and in contradistinction to

Lavie’s quintessential secularity—lies, I think, the

rebus-like quality of his art.

If we dare to point at the negative space as

the locus of the sublime, what purpose, then, does

its positive rival serve? What do the contours of

the jar or the couple denote? It would be easy to

associate them with a set of symbols, such as love

in the case of the couple or fertility in the case of

the jar. Lavie himself explained the jar as a sign

in Sarit Shapira’s 2003 essay. The jar, he said, is

“one of the most common images of painting

throughout history, which to this day serves as a

model in amateur painting classes—and therefore

is also an image of painting itself.”14 Shapira also

reminds us of Ingres’s The Source from 1856, a

work well-known to Lavie, where a woman

balances a jar on her shoulders; but it is in another

painting by Ingres, Vénus Anadyomène (‘Venus

Rising from the Sea’), on which he worked from

1808 until 1848, where the woman attains the

very same contrapposto without the jar, the same

posture that Picasso used for the central figure

in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon of 1907, a posture

paradigmatic of the representation of the female

nude going back to Apelles. In the economy of

signs engulfing art, the jar, then, is a metonymy,

a token of the woman’s naked body laying bare

its erotic radiation, and Lavie’s use of it, like a

letter to a distant beloved, is characteristic of the

way in which he borrows from that circulation,

applying it to his own needs. Lavie admitted that

the jar to him was a woman.15

14. In Shapira 2003, note 9, p. 262 n. 288.

15. Ibid., p. 263.

2001 (“Shulkhan Aroch”), (detail)

Acrylic and pencil on plywood

120x120, collection of Oli Alter,

Tel Aviv (see cat. 27)

2001 )"שולחן ארוך"(, )פרט(

אקריליק ועיפרון על דיקט, 120”120

אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב )ר' קט' 27(

-20-

-20-

Raffi Lavie

-21-


The skirting of the erotic iconography, as by

turning the woman into a jar, did not prevent

many from identifying a fullness of erotic

expression in Lavie’s images: in his couples, in the

rounded forms and wavy lines, in the scribbles

taken as an expression of the libidinal, in the

symbolism embedded in the works. There is a

certain truth to such an assertion in so far as it

is difficult to produce a painting lacking in erotic

aura because the very act of putting materials on

a surface, the ductus reassuring us of the artist’s

physical presence, is already a highly sensual fact.

In Lavie’s case, however, the erotic seems

to be systematically avoided, and a legion of

defense mechanisms is put into action to prevent

its appearance, at least on the conscious level.

His art is puritanical; saving on myth and means,

the art of a “priest, poor and bitter,” as he once

ironically commented about himself.16 What does

this lack mean? Is it that once the sublime enters,

the erotic exits, because the horror of the two is

incompatible?

The couple, a recurrent motif in the works,

was described by Lavie as a depiction of himself

and his wife Ilana. He called them “the kissing

couple,” although only seldom are they depicted

in the act of a kiss. They are a far cry from the

erotic passion conveyed by Auguste Rodin’s

lustful couple, Gustav Klimt’s pair in The Kiss of

1907, or Edvard Munch’s woodcut by the same

name from 1902. They are nearing Brancusi’s Kiss,

but more in the way their arms are interlocked,

and less in the way Brancusi’s lovers melt into

one another. Lavie’s couple has its genealogy in

another domain, in a lineage attributed to the

kiss of St. Anne and St. Joachim in The Meeting

at the Golden Gate at the Arena Chapel in Padua

from 1304, in the face-to-face scenes in Piero Della

Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross frescoes in

Arezzo. This lineage leads also to James Barry, in

his Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida (ca. 1800), and

from there to Marc Chagall and his Pair of Lovers

from 1916. This confrontational mode creates a

resemblance to Paris Bordone’s Venetian Lovers

from 1525, and to Palma il Vecchio in his painting

of Jacob and Rachel from 1515-25.

I have mentioned all these examples not

because they show a mutual understanding of

a certain emotive stance between couples, but

because, as in the case of Lavie’s couple, they

address an event that is pointed out by its very

avoidance—a kiss that either never happened

or did happen, not on the surface of the work

but in our imaginations. It is, once again, about

something that is not visualized, yet all its

requisites are there to perplex our notions about

what actually is happening—what we see, and

more importantly, what cannot be visualized. The

couple is a device in art’s arsenal used by Lavie to

enhance his method of a negative appearance,

16. A phrase borrowed from an inscription in Hadas Tamir’s

work hung in his apartment. See: Dana Gilerman, “Priest,

Poor and Bitter,” Ha’aretz, 5 May 2007 [Hebrew].

and as such, it is highly congruent with the rest

of his method. By applying a child-like aesthetics

to the couple, as to all his motifs, they gain

the status of a paradigmatic Adam and Eve.

Through their child-like rendering they become

prelapsarian, devoid of sexual drive, devoid of an

erotic aura. By avoiding this erotic iconography

habitually attached to such a motif, the emphasis

turns toward their ideographic expression.

Discussing the couple, which he designated

heads, Yair Garbuz wrote: “They [the heads

and kiss paintings] are never portraits. They

are simple, yet multi-faceted, and as with other

games invented by Raffi about himself, they have

laws which generate a necessity… Two heads

close together create, as we know, a chalice

which, in Raffi’s case, is transformed into a jar.

Heads without flesh, yet by no means skeletons.

They are road signs—the road that enters, and

the one that exits, and the cul-de-sac, and the

way of a man with a woman.”17

Child-like drawings and the use of ideographic

methods are highly connected. Lavie employs

this aesthetic for very different reasons from

those of Paul Klee, Joan Miró or Jean Dubuffet,

who saw in such aesthetics a way to reconnect

art to the natural world and commune with

it while concurrently breaking with Western

tradition. In short, they thought about a certain

type of authenticity, about children having

an unmediated affinity with the world, an

association unblemished by experience.

Some of these notions were presumably on

Lavie’s mind as well when he started employing

the child-like aesthetics, but I doubt that they

stemmed from the same logic which guided Klee,

Dubuffet, and Miró. Children use ideograms

as their natural way to grasp the world. It is a

shorthand mode where concentration on the

essential compensates for skill limitations, and

this concentration also shortens the distance

between content and sign. That sign equals

content means that a person beyond childhood

must be aware when employing a method that

programmatically annihilates this distance, and

that by this annihilation he will be free of all

the supplements that such a method gives up. In

one of his early works from 1967 Lavie inserted

a note on which he wrote, among other things:

“Please do not read what is written here.” Why

not read? Because the sign and its content are

one, and because no barrier separates the two.

The same logic was at his service when he was

asked the meaning behind the picture, and said

that behind the picture there is a wall, or so the

story goes.

There are many more benefits in using

ideograms as a basic vehicle in keeping the

surface clean of appropriated subjects. Thus, for

example, Lavie uses signs that are part of the

17. Yair Garbuz, “Regarding Raffi: Stain Crown Ketchup

Love,” Regarding Raffi, The Midrasha 2 (Journal of the Art

Teachers’ Training College, Beit Berl Academic College),

ed. Naomi Siman-Tov (May 1999), pp. 66-67 [Hebrew].

-22-

-22-

Raffi Lavie

-23-


national heritage, such as the Star of David, the

Menorah, and later—a bearded man who may

easily be identified with the figure of the Jew. This

led some critics to regard these manifestations as

an illustration of antithetical ideologies battling

on the surface of the picture. Such was the

interpretation given by Shva Salhoov to a group

of works entitled Arab—Violet Moustache from

2004-05, which she regarded as the “dramatic

encounter of the two great histories to which

modernism gave birth: the history of Nationalism

which is also that of Fascism, and the history

of modern art, which is also the history of the

struggle for freedom.”18

I am very much in doubt whether such an

agenda was on Lavie’s mind when he created the

series. He was not that kind of political artist, and

when he did launch a political statement, as in

the case of Rabin’s assassination, he did not need

bypasses to put his opinion on the picture surface,

and was very explicit in putting a blood-like stain

on Rabin’s image. I think he employed the signs

leading Salhoov to her dramatic statement the

same way one collects tribal signs as collective

paraphernalia accompanying one through life,

from childhood to death, and obviously, during

this long journey, these signs are also treated

ironically. It seems to me that he was not a man

of ideologies, but a man of ideas, and these were

consciously limited to his immediate surroundings,

to his home, friends, students. I assume that he

knew what richness is wasted when one does not

concentrate on the essential, and that this kind of

approach is the right one considering his culture

and place. No visual expression other than the

ideographic could be better suited to this kind of

world management.

If the ideographic use in the child-like images

shortened the way between content and sign,

it may be seen independent of interpretation

foreign to the scenarios revealing themselves

on the plywood, thus pushing iconographical

expressions to be of secondary importance. If the

notion of depth as a value was ridiculed by Lavie

time and again long before post-modernism

roamed the earth, to what context, then, could

they be attributed? In avoiding the grand

narratives or the iconoclastic approaches such

as those employed by Klee, Dubuffet, and Miró,

what end did such a strategy serve?

In Lavie’s rhetoric we observe a great irony

and a greater shrewdness, the kind to which Irad

Kimhi alludes when in the closing sentences of

his article about the artist he says that Lavie’s

basic gesture is that of unlimited shrewdness.19

Conscious of all the forces around him, whether

Western tradition or his own Jewish and Israeli

heritage, well-aware of the double peripheries,

or even diasporas, in which he roams, he takes

upon himself the role of the artist, while

19. Irad Kimhi, „A Painter of Modern Life,“ Studio Art

Magazine, no. 141 (March 2003), p. 29 [Hebrew].

18. Shva Salhoov, “Ich bin nicht/ich bin: In den

Fussstapfen Gemäldegruppe ‘Araber—Lila Schnurrbart’

(2004-05),” cat. Raffi Lavie: Gemälde 2003-2005 (Tel Aviv

and Berlin: Givon Art Gallery and Galerie Asperger, 2005),

p. 54 [German].

2005 (detail), acrylic and

pencil on plywood, 122x122



על דיקט, 122”122


-24-

-24-

Raffi Lavie

-25-


concurrently ironicizing it. He paints as if he were

an artist painting as if he were a child, and this

double “if” is also marked by the rebus quality.

Ultimately, we confront beautiful paintings,

seemingly accidental in their success to please the

eye, and as such, they are true treasures having

been destined for other prairies.

Thus, Lavie takes a reverse procedure.

Reality, as it appears on the surface, is already

a symbolized reality, extracted, adapted, and

not in need of interpretation that will unearth

a depth, and therefore a value. The ideographic

grammar, as it appears in Lavie’s works, begs

not to be interpreted but to be imagined. Think

about the grave painting at Paestum, and you will

see a very similar procedure where symbolism is

already given, but imagination only begins.

PART IV in which a change occurs, putting previous notions in great doubt

Between 2003 (or slightly earlier) and his death in

2007, Lavie created a body of works which could

be crudely divided into several series. These are

the “Chagalls,” as he called them, the Arab-Violet

Moustache, and subsequently the white, red, and

black series. In all these works a change occurs,

and visual richness which was highly restricted

theretofore, is given free reign. The paintings

are still ideographic in style, but more condensed

and colorful.

It is difficult to think of an artist farther from

Lavie than Marc Chagall, whose Jewish imagery,

bordering late in his life on clichés, stood in

opposition to all notions of contemporary

aesthetics. Laboring on such imagery has been and

still is considered anachronistic, narrative-oriented,

even obscene in its sentimentality. The last thing

you would want as an Israeli artist is to be buried

under irrelevant longings, thus missing your place

in the beating heart of the Now. Still, it is the

same Chagall to whom Lavie refers, even putting

his name in block Hebrew letters on some of the

painting surfaces as if to be sure that the point

gets across. Lavie the necromancer brings Chagall

back from the dead, forcing his main icons—the

couple, the flowers, the ladder, the Menorah,

and the violin—to breathe again, all this in a

grand mutative manner which, while ironicizing

the source, enacts a process of deconstruction

which explains the choice of the child aesthetic

as an ideographic tool for deconstructing images,

and which, in the case of the “Chagall” group

[cat. 33], is revealed as a didactic measure. Ory

Dessau deemed this evocation a generous act.

“Lavie’s Chagall,” he says, “is the Chagall of the

history of modern art, of the École de Paris, and

not that of the surrealistic kitsch decorating the

Parliament hall.”20 Far from being a tribute to

another artist, Lavie launches an act of cleansing.

It is as if he wants to bring back a primary quality

shared by both, to save Chagall from himself,

to save his colors from their fatal narrative, and

reassert them in the rightful order.

Two works in the “Chagall” series, both from

2003, are mirror images, at least in terms of

colors and motifs [cat. 31, 32]. In both of them

the surface is divided horizontally; in one—the

lower part is painted red, and on the higher plane

the flower signs are green, whereas in the other,

the colors are inversed. This categorical division

echoes the paradigmatic divide exhibited in the

icon of modernity, The Large Glass by Marcel

Duchamp who said that The Glass is not meant

to be looked at, that is, not to be conceived

as a retinal image, but to be accompanied by

a literary text as amorphous as possible, a text

which never takes form, and these two features

were to complement one another. Above all,

each was meant to prevent the other from taking

an aesthetic-plastic or literary solitary meaning.

Duchamp was very keen on emphasizing the third

space created between two modes of perception.

Lavie understood this space as a Jastrowesque

figure—the very space we described as a negative

space, the one between the figures, the one

inside the jar once its contours become irrelevant.

That space between heaven and earth, mediated

through ladders and angels, is the place where

things matter, where they levitate from the

surface of the painting and begin their own

lives; the space where art, or whatever name you

choose to give it, truly becomes autonomous.

The ladders and angels in Lavie’s paintings

are indeed such mediators of that space.

Traditionally, they are religious agents. Along

with the Star of David and Menorah signs, they

create an illusion of a religious vocabulary.

Not only are they well-embedded as narratives

in the history of art, they are also the primary

religious signs used by children (in Israel), and

therefore indoctrinated as signifiers of a vogue

religiosity. If Jacob’s ladder fascinated artists such

as Rembrandt, Johann Weigel, William Blake,

Bartolomé Murillo, and Marc Chagall, and the

depiction of angels—a legion, the same symbols

within Israeli culture have a meaning which

surpasses religiosity, pertaining to a political

ethos as well. Lavie’s choice of these images is

therefore accurate. They are the ideal objects,

culled from the religious paraphernalia, on

which he can perform the act of deconstruction

to make room for that secular sublime, adapted

to different purposes. By deconstruction I do not

refer to the Derridean concept, but rather to a

simpler linguistic use, the act of a craftsman who

takes an object apart in order to improve it. An

insight which has its didactics.

20. Ory Dessau, “Lavie and Gershuni Together Again,”

Globes, 18 November 2003 [Hebrew].

-26-

-26- -27-

-27- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the FatherRaffi Lavie

2003 (detail), acrylic and pencil

on plywood, 122x122



על דיקט, 122”122


I would like to go back to the group

entitled Arab—Violet Moustache. Many of the

paintings portray the image of a man with a

violet moustache and a beard, red or black or

both. Sometimes depicted in profile, he has a

cigarette in his mouth, and is accompanied by

other previously known motifs—the couple, the

jar, the smoke, and the flowers. An Arab with a

cigarette and a moustache is a figure of great

temptation, and Lavie, in preparing this narrative

trap, is well-aware of this, being experienced in

the interpretative mode of his public. What could

be more politically incorrect, more endearing,

than a self-portrait cum the great Other via a

discourse steeped in post-colonial desires?

David Ginton, following comprehensive

research, rejected such interpretations.21 I concur

with him on this point. The title is indeed a trap

and a caprice. The figure, reduced to its basic

ideographic characteristic, is expressionless, save

the moustache which is pulled down, lending the

face a melancholic air. There are lines extending

from his eyes, triangles which are remnants of

the Star of David, metamorphosed into a net of

coordinates and vanishing points [cat. 15, 23, 28,

29]. We are in the land of painting, not theory.

We are forced to contemplate the exact tools

required by our eyes to organize the space, and

make it coherent. The lines running from his eyes

lead directly to a group of stains whose role as

flowers is secondary to their color scheme in the

painting sphere—they are more maculae than

stains or clots, to borrow Roland Barthes’s terms

in his description of Cy Twombly’s paintings.22 In

other words, they are events restricted in their

coherence to the language of painting, and not

the language of symbols. This is a lesson Lavie is

careful to repeat throughout his oeuvre. This is

not to say that Lavie did not have his pleasures

in hearing interpretative explanations, but they

were secondary and negligible to him. In this

sense, presenting the painting with its own tools

was also an introduction of an ethical value,

political even.

That the figure is about painting rather than

an illustration to a grand narrative critique is

also conveyed by its design, when, en face, its

ideographic character often collapses and its

features disintegrate into strokes, stains, lines,

and scribbles. In profile, he looks bored enough

and indifferent to something not in the picture.

In both cases, his eyes are at the center, where

the vanishing point, once a Star of David,

converges. He might be the end product of the

act of looking, enacted by a viewer other than us,

or the source of looking at something denied us.

This means that there is always an event taking

place, but it is well-hidden from our perception,

and although Lavie would offer us all the tools

leading to it, it still evades our eye. This is what I

22. See: Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms:

Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation,

trans.: Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1991), p. 179.

21. David Ginton, “The Unsaid Name: What is Arab—Violet

Moustache?,” Please Read What Is Painted Here, (Hamidrasha

School of Art, Beit Berl Academic College, 2009), op. cit.,

note 12, pp. 45-66 [Hebrew].

-28-

-28- -29-

-29- Raffi Lavie: In the Name of the FatherRaffi Lavie

mean when I say that Lavie’s paintings are about

a presence, painterly at that, which is not in

the paintings, and that is why, risking ridicule, I

named it the Israeli Sublime.

If the “Arab” series was still faithful in parts to

the ascetic procedure, the final three groups, the

red, black, and white series, are saturated in color,

rich and enriching in their effect. In comparison

to earlier works, they are almost Baroque in

character. It is not clear whether at this point Lavie

knew he was terminally ill, and how it might have

influenced his paintings. But such knowledge

surely affects the viewers’ understanding,

who tend to identify in the paintings signs of

departures and the fear of death; to comprehend

them as a requiem. Indeed, the figure of the

angel, the couple, and the ladder mutate toward

such an understanding, for they are frequent and

develop close relations among themselves. In two

works, one belonging to the red series, the other

to the white, the angel hovers horizontally at the

top of the picture, while a ladder leads to him,

with the couple at its foot [cat. 8].

This angel, who was and maybe is a cadaver

(per Lavie’s own description) and has its roots

in Arie Aroch’s images, reminds me of the most

famous cadaver in the history of art, and I am

referring to Hans Holbein the Younger’s 1521

painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the

Tomb, now at the Basel Museum. Both images are

strikingly horizontal. While in Lavie’s work the

disintegration is almost immaterial and his angel-

cadaver is about to be dissolved into the plywood,

the body of Holbein’s Christ, in its realistic state of

rigor mortis, disintegrates according to the laws of

nature. Holbein’s Christ and Lavie’s cadaver, two

extreme poles, are two grand gestures echoing

each other. They are also two great examples of

secularizing symbols and harnessing them in the

service and terms of the painting.

There is another famous angel in the history

of art, Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus, created in

1920. Starting as an almost jovial figure, child-like

and innocent, he turns, once Walter Benjamin

supplied him with an auratic text, into one of

the most tragic figures in modern consciousness.

Benjamin, designating him the ‘angel of history’,

matures him through a process of catastrophes,

but both angels, Klee’s and Lavie’s, start from

a very similar source which is ideographic in

character.

Why does the angel look down at the

couple? What are the relations denoted by this

secular trinity (there is a ladder as well)? The

couple, always representing the artist and his

wife Ilana in the paintings, is hugging, but the

presentiment produced by our knowledge of

impending death sees the hug as a farewell and

departure. In this configuration, the angel is part

of a rebus, or so I would like to think. It reminds

me of Emanuel Swedenborg , who wrote in his

1768 book Conjugal Love, that the soul of a

man and the soul of a woman who are (happily)

united by marriage enter heaven and become

an angel. Thus, the angel above and the couple

below, connected by the ladder, are two aspects

of one apparition. Not that Lavie necessarily read

that book, but such a story is ever so consoling.

There are many topics, motifs, periods, and

paintings left out of this short article due to the

want of space. I am still at loss for words which

could not only enact the right ekphrasis, but

also explain what was in him that made his art

so crucial and true to the way we understand

our world, by which I mean the one surrounding

us in its immediacy, under the burning sun of

the Middle East. Any text concerning Lavie will

inevitably re-tell the histories of the clan, and will

have to deal with matters of ascetic approaches,

cultural restrictions, and the act of going against

the grain—all these chained to the histories of art.

Adam Baruch once wrote a sentence concerning

Lavie that puts things in the proper perspective.

He said: “In a hundred years things will straighten

up, and on a sunny Saturday a family will go out

and visit the ‘Raffi Lavie Museum’.” Four years

later he changed the number of years to fifty.23

This tells you something about hope and wishful

thinking.

23. Adam Baruch, “Starless Night”, Regarding Raffi,

The Midrasha 2, note 17, p. 25 [Hebrew]. The second version

appeared in: Adam Baruch, “Raffi Lavie. A Bit of Hysteria,

Please,” Ha’aretz, 19 May 2003 [Hebrew].

-30-

-30-

-31-

-31-

Raffi Lavie: Visual References

Palma il Vecchio, Jacob and Rachel, c. 1520-25

ב ק ע פלמה איל וקיו, י

, 1520-25 בקירוב ל ח ר ו

James Barry, Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida c. 1800

ר ט י פ ו ג'יימס ברי, י

ה ד י א ר ה ל ע ו נ ו ' ג ו

1800 בקירוב

Paris Bordone, The Venetian Lovers, 1500-71

ם י ב ה ו א פריס בורדונה, ה

1500-71 , ה י צ נ ו ו מ

Giotto, The Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305

ה ש י ג פ ג'וטו, ה

1305 , ב ה ז ה ר ע ש ב

Gustav KlimtThe Kiss, 1907-8גוסטב קלימט

1907-8 , ה ק י ש נ ה

Auguste RodinThe Kiss, 1901-4אוגוסט רודן

1901-4 , ה ק י ש נ ה

Constantin BrancusiThe Kiss, 1908קונסטנטין ברנקוזי

1908 , ה ק י ש נ ה

Hans Holbein, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, 15211521 , ת מ ה ו ש הנס הולביין, י

Jean Auguste Dominique IngresVénus Anadyomène1848 ז'אן אוגוסט דומיניק

ן מ ה ל ו ע ה ס ו נ אנגר, ו

הים, 1848

Jean Auguste Dominique IngresThe Source, 1856 ז'אן אוגוסט דומיניק אנגר

1856 , ע ו ב מ ה

Marc ChagallPair of Lovers, 1916מארק שאגאל

1916 , ם י ב ה ו א ג ו ז

Pablo PicassoLes Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907ת ו מ ל ע פאבלו פיקאסו, ה

1907 , ן ו י נ י ב א מ

Edvard MunchThe Kiss IV, 1902אדוארד מונק

1902 , ה ק י ש נ ה

Marcel DuchampThe Large Glass, 1915-23ת י כ ו כ ז מרסל דושאן, ה

1915-23 , ה ל ו ד ג ה

Arieh Aroch, Red House (How Are Things at Home?), 1960ם ו ד א ה ת י ב אריה ארוך, ה

1960 , ) ת י ב ב ע מ ש נ ה מ (

Paul Klee Angelus Novus, 1920 פול קליי,

1920 ,Angelus Novus

Biographical Notes

Born in Ramat Gan, Israel, 1937;

lived and worked in Tel Aviv; died in Tel Aviv, 2007

1954-55 Studied drawing with Ludwig Moss

1959-60 Studied at the Midrasha – State Art Teachers’

Training College, Tel Aviv (with Kosso Eloul, Dan

Hoffner, and Abba Fenichel)

1960s Was among the founders of the 10+ group

1966-99 Taught at the Midrasha – State Art Teachers’ Training

College, Tel Aviv-Herzliya-Ramat Hasharon, and

subsequently—The School of Art, Beit Berl Academic

College

1972-74 Taught at the Art Department, Bezalel Academy

of Art and Design, Jerusalem

1978 Dizengoff Prize for Painting and Sculpture (with

Eliyahu Gat), Tel Aviv Municipality

One-Person Exhibitions—Selection

1960 Rina Gallery, Jerusalem

1961 Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv; curator: Yona Fischer

1965 Katz Gallery, Tel Aviv

1966 Collages – 65, Oil Paintings – 66, Massada Gallery,

Tel Aviv

1967 Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1970 Experiments in Sculpture & Objects, Sketch for a Film

(20 minutes), Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Paintings 1970, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1973 21 Paintings, 1962-1972, The Israel Museum,

Jerusalem; curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)

— Recent Works, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1974 Works on Paper, 1961-69, Debel Gallery, Jerusalem

1975 Paintings, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem

— Recent Works, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1977 Recent Works: Oil Paintings and Mixed Media,

Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Raffi Lavie, 1975-77, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem

1978 Early Works, Oil Paintings, and Drawings, 1960-61,

Debel Gallery, Jerusalem

1979 A Selection of Paintings, The Tel Aviv Museum;

curator: Sara Breitberg (cat.; texts: Sara Breitberg,

Hanoch Ron)

1985 New Works, Noemi Givon Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv

1986 New Works, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

1987 Uri and Rami Nehushtan Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot

Yaacov Meuchad, Israel; curator: Dorit Keidar

— The Art Gallery, Kibbutz Cabri, Israel

1988 Raffi Lavie: A Retrospective, The Museum of Israeli

Art, Ramat Gan, Israel; curator: Meir Ahronson

(cat.; text: Meir Ahronson)

1991 Heads & Jars, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Works, 1985-1990, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv;

W. Asperger Gallery, Knittlingen and Strasbourg

(cat.; texts: Adam Baruch, Itamar Levy)

1992 New Works, Mary Faouzi Gallery, Jaffa, Israel

— Beyond Drawing, Galerie Marie-Louise Wirth, Zurich

1993 Raffi: The Early Paintings, 1957-61, Tel Aviv

Museum of Art; curator: David Ginton (cat.; text:

David Ginton)

1994 Paintings and Drawings, 1993-94, Givon Art Gallery,

Tel Aviv

2000 Recent Paintings and Mini-Retrospective of Works

on Paper, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

2003 Raffi Lavie: Works from 1950 to 2003, The Israel

Museum, Jerusalem; curator: Sarit Shapira (cat.; texts:

Yona Fischer, Sarit Shapira)

2005 Arab—Violet Moustache, Paintings 2003-05, Givon

Art Gallery, Tel Aviv and Galerie Asperger, Berlin (cat.;

texts: Ory Dessau, Shva Salhoov)

2008 The Last, Not Least, Heavenly Paintings, Givon Art

Gallery, Tel Aviv

Two-Person Exhibitions—Selection

1978 Raffi Lavie, Yudith Levin, Sara Gilat Gallery, Jerusalem

2001 New Paintings and Shulkhan Aroch, Givon Art Gallery,

Tel Aviv (with Yair Garbuz)

— Raffi Lavie and Yoav Efrati, Chelouche Gallery, Tel Aviv

2003 New Works: Paintings, Video, Givon Art Gallery, Tel

Aviv (with Moshe Gershuni)

2006 New Works: Raffi Lavie, Simcha Shirman, Gordon

Gallery, Tel Aviv

-32-

-32-

Raffi Lavie -33-

-33-

Group Exhibitions—Selection

1960 Three Young Artists, Rina Gallery, Jerusalem

1961 Recent Acquisitions, Bezalel Museum, Jerusalem

— 61: Exhibition of Modern Art, Helena Rubinstein

Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum

1962 Trends 1, The Levant Fair, Exhibition Grounds, Tel Aviv;

curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)

1963 Today’s Form—Young Israeli Artists, Bezalel Museum,

Jerusalem (cat.)

— New Horizons, Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel;

curator: Yona Fischer

— Calligraphy and Paint, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam;

curator: Ad Peterson

— Young Artists Biennial, Paris; curator: Haim Gamzu

1964 Art Israel: 23 Painters and Sculptors, Bezalel Museum,

Jerusalem; Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv

Museum; Museum of Modern Art, Haifa; The Negev

Museum, Beersheba; Museum of Art, Ein Harod, Israel;

curator: William C. Seitz

— Tazpit: Exhibition of Israel Painters and Sculptors,

Helena Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)

— Art Israel: 26 Painters and Sculptors, travelling

exhibition in Israel, the United States and Canada,

organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York;

curator: William C. Seitz (cat.)

1965 Beersheba Museum, Israel

— Ramat Gan Artists, Immanuel House, Ramat Gan, Israel

— Trends in Israeli Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;

curator: Yona Fischer (cat.)

— Exhibition of Young Israeli Artists, Helena Rubinstein

Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)

— The Autumn Exhibition: Israeli Artists, Helena

Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)

— Artists Painting Fashion: 10+ on Textile, Maskit Gallery,

Tel Aviv

1966 10+: Large Works, Artists Pavilion (Painters and

Sculptors Association), Tel Aviv (cat.)

— Collage, Artists Pavilion (Painters and Sculptors

Association), Tel Aviv

— Dizengoff House, Tel Aviv

— The Autumn Exhibition: Israeli Artists, Helena

Rubinstein Pavilion, The Tel Aviv Museum (cat.)

— The Smallest Works of the 10+ Artists and Others,

Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

— 10+: Flower Exhibition, Massada Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Prints, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1967 10+: Exhibition in Red, Katz Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Animals, The Artists Pavilion (Painters and Sculptors

Association), Tel Aviv

— 10+: The Nude, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

1968 10+: For and Against, 220 Gallery, Tel Aviv

1969 10+ in Round, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

— Young Artists Biennial, Paris; curator: Reuven Berman

1970 10+: 10+ on Venus, Gordon Gallery, Tel Aviv

— 10+ (The Mattresses), Dugit Gallery, Tel Aviv

1971 Original Graphics by Rudulf Lehmann, Moshe Mokady,

Yohanan Simon, Igael Tumarkin, Raffi Lavie,

Yehuda Wallersteiner, The Jerusalem International

Book Fair, Jerusalem

1977 10 Artists from Israel, Louisiana Museum,

Humlebaek, Denmark; curators: Hugo Arne Buch

and Yona Fischer (cat.)

1978 Artist and Society in Israeli Art, 1948-1978, The

Tel Aviv Museum; curator: Sara Breitberg (cat.)

1984 Collection C. Majorkas: Contemporary Israeli Art,

The Tel Aviv Museum

— Two Years, 1983-1984: Israeli Art, Qualities

Accumulated, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for

Contemporary Art, The Tel Aviv Museum; curator:

Sara Breitberg-Semel (cat.)

1985 Milestones in Israel Art, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;

curator: Yigal Zalmona (cat.)

— Kunst in Israel 1906-1985, Koninklijk Museum

voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp; curator: Yigal

Zalmona (cat.)

1986 John Byle, Lea Nikel, Raffi Lavie, Shlomo Vitkin,

Ephraim Lifschitz, Pinchas Zinovich,

Yehezkel Streichman, Uri and Rami Nehushtan

Museum, Kibbutz Ashdot Yaacov Meuchad, Israel;

curator: Ilana Teicher (cat.)

— The Want of Matter: A Quality in Israeli Art, The

Tel Aviv Museum; curator: Sara Breitberg-Semel (cat.)

— Art a Israel: Mostra De Pintura Conemporania, Centro

de la Ciudad, Madrid; Palau Robert, Barcelona;

curator: Yigal Zalmona

1993 Eye Contact, The Artists’ Studios, Tel Aviv; curator:

Yair Garbuz (cat.)

1998 Perspectives on Israeli Art of the Seventies: The

Boundaries of Language, Tel Aviv Museum of Art;

curator: Mordechai Omer (cat.)

— Good Kids, Bad Kids: Childliness in Israeli Art,

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; curators: Yigal Zalmona

and Nirit Nelson (cat.)

1999 Not to be Looked At: Unseen Sites in Israel Today, The

Israel Museum, Jerusalem; curator: Sarit Shapira (cat.)

2002 The Return to Zion: Beyond the Place Principle,

Time for Art – Center for Art, Tel Aviv; curator:

Gideon Ofrat (cat.)

2004 Towards Cinema: The First Generation of Projected

Images, Haifa Museum of Art; curator: Ilana

Tenenbaum (cat.)

— Yona at Bezalel, Bezalel Gallery, Tel Aviv; curators:

Sarit Shapira, Sandra Weil (cat.)

2005 Hazeret, Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv; curator:

Ory Dessau

— Die Neuen Hebräer: A Century of Art in Israel, Martin-

Grupius-Bau, Berlin; curators: Doreet LeVitte Harten

and Yigal Zalmona (cat.)

2008 10+: The Ten Plus Group—Myth and Reality, Tel Aviv

Museum of Art; curator: Benno Kalev (cat.)

— The Birth of ‘Now’: Art in Israel in the 1960s, Ashdod

Art Museum / Monart Center, Ashdod, Israel; curators:

Yona Fischer, Tamar Manor-Friedman (cat.)

— Near and Apparent—Connections and Contexts:

A Selection from the Benno Kalev Collection, The

Open Museum, Tefen Industrial Park, Israel; curator:

Benno Kalev (cat.)

— Van Gogh in Tel Aviv, Rubin Museum, Tel Aviv;

curators: Carmela Rubin, Edna Erde, Shira Naftali (cat.)

Filmography

— Mitz (Petel) [(Raspberry) Juice], 1970, 4 min,

soundtrack: Karlheinz Stockhausen

— Sheets, 1970, 20 min

— Candies, 1970, 4:30 min, soundtrack: Karlheinz

Stockhausen, Momenta (1965 version)

— Sky, 1972, 8 min

— Lawn, 1972, 8 min

— The Other Side of the Street, 1973, 12 min

— Geranium, 1973, 8 min, soundtrack: John Cage,

Niccolò Paganini, Raffi’s voice discussing sculpture in a

radio program

— Walking, 1974, 9 min

— Balcony, 1975, 11 min, soundtrack: Steve Reich

— Yonah Hanavi (St.), 1979, 12 min, soundtrack:

Philip Glass

— Sunset, 1981, 17 min, soundtrack: Vito Acconci, Niccolò

Paganini, Steve Reich, the voices of Yair Garbuz, Siona

Shimshi, and Igael Tumarkin (DVD version: 14 min)

— Home Movie, 2003, 5:12 min, soundtrack: John Cage,

Laurie Anderson

— Balcony Movie, 2003, 3:22 min, soundtrack: David

Avidan reading his poem “Sanction” (1962)

— To t h e D i s t a n t B e l o v e d , Beethoven, or An Open

Letter to H a a r e t z Editorial Board, 2005, 4:20 min

Biographical Notes

-34- -35-

-36- -37-

2006, acrylic and pencil

on plywood, 122x122

Private collection, Tel Aviv

prev. pages:


on reproduction, 37x28

Benno Kalev Collection, Tel Aviv

3

2006, אקריליק

ועיפרון על דיקט, 122”122

אוסף פרטי, תל אביב

1+2

בעמודים הקודמים:


ועיפרון על רפרודוקציה, 28”37

אוסף בנו כלב, תל אביב

-38- -39-


on plywood, 122x122

Private collection


on plywood, 122x122

Shibolet & Co. Law Firm Collection

5



אוסף פרטי

4



אוסף שבלת ושות' עו"ד

-40- -41-


on plywood, 122x122, courtesy

Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv




7

2007, אקריליק ועיפרון

על דיקט, 122”122, באדיבות

גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב

6




-42- -43-


on plywood, 122x122

collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv


on plywood, 122x122


9



אוסף אולי אלתר, תל אביב

8




-44- -45-







11




10




-46- -47-


on plywood, 122x122

Collection of Timna Rosenheimer

12



אוסף תמנע רוזנהיימר

-48- -49-


on plywood, 122x122, collection

of Hagit and Ofer Shapira

14



אוסף חגית ועופר שפירא




13




-50- -51-





on plywood, 104x104

Private collection

16




15



אוסף פרטי

-52- -53-

2005, acrylic and pencil on formica

coated fiberboard, 47.5x47.5

Courtesy Givon Art Gallery, Tel Aviv

17

2005, אקריליק ועיפרון על סיבית

מצופה פורמיקה, 47.5”47.5

באדיבות גבעון גלריה לאמנות, תל אביב

-54- -55-


on plywood, 122x122

Collection of Ora and Tamir Agmon

18


על דיקט, 122”122

אוסף אורה ותמיר אגמון

-56- -57-


on plywood, 122x122


19


על דיקט, 122”122


-58- -59-





on plywood, 122x122

Collection of Oli alter, Tel Aviv

21




20




-60- -61-




22




-62- -63-


on plywood, 122x122

Collection of Hillela Tal


on plywood, 122x122

Raved collection

24


על דיקט, 122”122

אוסף הללה טל

23



אוסף ראב"ד

-64- -65-


on plywood, 122x122


25


על דיקט, 122”122


-66- -67-

2005, acrylic and pencil on veneer

coated fiberboard, 41.5x38

Collection of Edna Kowarsky

26

2005, אקריליק ועיפרון על

סיבית מצופה פורניר, 38”41.5

אוסף עדנה קוברסקי

-68- -69-

2001, (“Shulkhan Aroch”), acrylic

and pencil on plywood, 120x120

Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv

27

2001 )"שולחן ארוך"(, אקריליק



-70- -71-





on plywood, 122x122

Private collection

29




28



אוסף פרטי

-72- -73-


on plywood, 122x122


30


על דיקט, 122”122


-74- -75-


on plywood, 122x122

Collection of Oli Alter, Tel Aviv

32


על דיקט, 122”122



on plywood, 122x122

Private collection

31



אוסף פרטי

-76- -77-


on plywood, 122x122

Private collection

33


על דיקט, 122”122

אוסף פרטי

-78- -79-


on plywood, 124x122


35


על דיקט, 122”124


2005, acrylic and

pencil on plywood, 122x122

Private collection

34



אוסף פרטי

-80- -81-




37





on plywood, 122x122


36




-82- -83-




38




-84-

2004, acrylic on veneer coated

fiberboard, 47.5x54, collection of

Hagit and Ofer Shapira

39

2004, אקריליק על

סיבית מצופה פורניר, 54”47.5

אוסף חגית ועופר שפירא

raffi lavie catalog for the israel pavilion at the 53rd venice biennale

Documents

michal heiman

michal naaman

raffi laviefragments

tel avivirit

tel avivon

michal sahar

tel avivphotographs

fatherdoreet levitte