For Raya Bruckenthal (born 1975), the past two years summoned an almost primal experimentation with the printmaking technique. Immediately after October 7, she began an artist residency program at the Jerusalem Print Workshop, and between the plates of the printing press she created a series of works that look like angel wings or cherubim made of knives. What appears from a distance to be a spectacular Native American feather headdress is revealed up close as parts of a mythical creature, “Angel of Hysteria,” echoing the famous verse in Genesis: “He drove the human out and caused to dwell, east of the garden of Eden, the winged-sphinxes and the flashing, ever-turning sword to watch over the way to the Tree of Life” (3:24). Another version of knives appears in a cut drawing dedicated to the circumcision knife – a sacred tool that marks Jewish males as members of the tribe.
In a large print work Oculus (“eye” in Latin), Bruckenthal presents her own version of the circle at the top of the dome in magnificent architectural structures: the oculus is an open aperture in the ceiling directed at the sky, resembling a divine eye that raises questions about providence and guardianship in light of the war. This work can also be seen as circles of thorns, the face of the moon, a broken fossil, the pupil of the eye, or an ouroboros – a serpent that winds its body into a circle and bites its tail, a symbol of infinite cyclicality between war and peace.
An existence of thorns
Beside it appears a drawing of a crown of thorns, in the style characteristic of Bruckenthal’s pencil works, which even in the new printmaking technique, as in her drawings, maintains her typical monochromatic aesthetic.
The works, which do not refer explicitly to reality, prompt different contemplations of it through images from the Jewish collective subconscious. The various thorns recall the unforgettable ending of “From Here and There,” the foundational story written by Yosef Haim Brenner (1881–1921) about the pioneers in the Land of Israel at the beginning of the XX century whose existence Brenner described as an “existence of thorns.”
Working with images of danger
Bruckenthal recalls where she was in her art when October 7 happened. “In recent years I’ve been working differently than before. There’s some kind of constant action I’m performing, and then everything that happens integrates into that. For me this is a really interesting situation, because the material develops. As I work, a new idea can appear, some text, for example, and also what happened on October 7 can suddenly occur. Before that kicked in, I couldn’t do anything – I was in some kind of shock and mainly preoccupied with thinking about what I needed to do as a mother, as a neighbor, as a family member – I was in survival mode. On October 8, I was supposed to start a residency at the print workshop, we finally started it about a month later. That forced me to begin thinking about things. Already at home I was making all kinds of semi-automatic drawings, out of a feeling that this is what I know and this is our resilience – that each person will do what they know how to do. I can’t fight, so I'll do what I know, at most I’ll leave behind something of what I knew how to do best.
“At the print workshop, my ability to think returned, because you leave the house, see other things, hear other people. I also learned a new technique. Then I started thinking much more about how representations of challenging years are created, I returned to contemplating the poetics of action, the need to work with images of danger. You never think that as an artist you’ll need to represent a period, and suddenly I returned to all kinds of post-World War I works, I was interested in art’s relationship to time, the realism of the soul and of a society in a particular period.”
In general, is your response to major events silence or increased creativity?
“Things are always material for creating. Because in my mode of operation, there’s a lot of time to draw, to work on the plates, there’s a therapeutic dimension to it. But the difficult moments themselves are chaotic, and even if the drawing eventually receives a layer that represents them, there must be distance and sanity and the ability to just be a human being for a moment, because for me at least, the chaotic and painful moments were too painful, and I don’t think creation takes place there.”
Do you think art is better when it’s created after gaining some perspective on the events that occurred – or when it’s created in real time?
“You always need perspective, and we have perspective. There’s a difference between the actual moment in which events are unfolding and our response. But even when war is unfolding we have some kind of perspective. And as creators we have perspective because we’re already creating within a framework. Often the seeds have already been sown and we understand something about the new situation that touches on things we already knew before. Sometimes an event in the present actually summarizes something we’ve already known for a while. Wars don’t sprout from nowhere, we’re part of the fabric of events, even in previous layers.
“That’s why I oppose discourse that wants to wait. When they make these kinds of divisions for us, I feel it’s almost political, it’s a very external division. Artists, and perhaps all people, always have perspective.”
Do you think that we are facing a depressing era in museums and galleries? Are we facing a decade of sad and dark post-war art?
“No, because it really has nothing to do with that. If you look at art or cinema in the 1940s in the United States, you’ll see cheerfulness and light. When life is hard, art has the potential to provide escape. I also don’t think that art that correctly reflects things must be depressing art. Depressing art is usually related to the private state, not the collective state.
“But ultimately it depends on how much the art institutions will agree not to be obedient or even cowardly. I think people have much more courage to see all kinds of things. It simply depends on who decides what’s displayed – how fearful they’ll be to show works full of life, how much they’ll manage not to be moralistic.”
What in your view is the role of art? For whom and for what are you doing this?
“It took me a long time to understand that for me it’s something therapeutic in the broad sense. I do it for myself, because that’s how I need to interpret things and understand reality, but I also develop a language. I sit down to draw because it’s already my profession and my role in the world.
“I think ultimately, it’s mainly a cultural and spiritual role, art contributes to the interpretation of a period, of a people, of an identity, of an era. What I felt at the beginning of the war was most necessary to do right now is to preserve what we have to say and express and think, even the poetic things, not just the national ones. That seems terribly important to me.”
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Main Photo: Existence of Thorns.\ Raya Bruckenthal