The Beauty of Sanctity: The Israel Museum

“Holy, holy, holy.” That is all we dare to intone approaching the sacred. We share this with many other cultures. It is the heart and soul of all theology. In the West that which is divine (and therefore sacred) is distant, ultimately unknowable and frighteningly uncontrollable. It is from this perspective that human beings have attempted to approach, appease and perhaps even influence the very forces that seem to control our mundane universe. When we entered the modern world all that changed. The march of modernity caused the sacred to fade from consciousness as secular ideology asserted that nothing is sacred, uprooting mankind's theological roots. In the modern world many things are cherished, feared and prized to be sure, yet ultimately nothing is sacred.

The centerpiece of the Israel Museum's 40th anniversary is “The Beauty of Sanctity: Masterworks from Every Age.” These 75 works emphasize the “diversity of cultures” in the Land of Israel and assert that “the masterpieces on view achieve sacred standing on account of their uniqueness and their distinction from the ordinary continuity of cultural material.” This contradicts the very notion of a theological sanctity, expanding the definition to include that which the secular prizes; simple uniqueness.

The curators assert that sanctity, which implies separation and distinction, is not “foreign to the secular outlook...ancient myths are frequently concealed within modern ideas and the structures of religious rites underlie many secular ceremonies.” This thesis is accomplished by extinguishing the fear and terror that the sacred ultimately engenders and reducing it to a mundane phenomenon.

To this end the curators establish four categories to guide the selection of artworks: Representations of the Sacred; Prayer; Angel mediators and Gold. The highly effective technique of placing artworks in unusual juxtapositions casts many of them in a new and revealing light.

As we enter the exhibition a beautiful gold repousse kiddush cup is prominently displayed. The workmanship is awesome and the text panel explains that the object is used to mark the temporal transition from the weekday into the sacred Shabbos. While this explanation is of course correct, what is strangely overlooked is that in the heart of the ornate design is a figural representation of the Sacrifice of Isaac...sanctity at its most fearsome.

In close proximity is the primitive and pagan, yet intensely sacred “Venus of Beersheba” from 4500-3500 BCE. It is contrasted with a distinctly unsacred “Nimrod” by the 20th century Israeli artist Itzhak Danziger. Freely mixing his symbols, Caananite, Egyptian and totemic, the artist celebrates the biblical inventor of paganism, Nimrod, in a clarion call for the de-sacralization of Israeli youth. Rejecting the faith of their fathers indeed became a ‘sacred duty.'

Continuing with contrasting images, a Mexican god arrayed in the flayed skin of a worshiper returns the visitor to genuine pagan sacredness. The juxtaposition of the bloodthirsty ritual of human sacrifice with a 17th century Italian Torah mantle could not be more poignant. The gentle care in fashioning the silk cover, lovingly embroidered with gilt silver thread is a cultural contrast in the extreme. Nonetheless the Torah cover is not sacred in itself. Rather it is only its proximity to the sacred, i.e. the Torah, which itself is only venerated as a manifestation of the Divine will. The Divine itself is of course uniquely impossible to depict. The mantle's beauty is but a humble adornment to the truly sacred.

Tel Beersheba Altar

Courtesy the Israel Museum

The exhibition continues with a second century bronze of the “wicked Caesar” Hadrian. Puzzlingly it depicts a rather pacific official portrait of the infamous Roman emperor known for prohibiting circumcision and his brutal suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt. The relationship of this handsome but disturbing sculpture to the notion of sanctity is distant at best.

Rothschild Miscellany (1470)
Courtesy the Israel Museum

The exhibition turns the corner into a full exploration of contemporary depictions of what the curators define as the sacred. Daniel Enkaous's “Self Portrait: 1992” contrasts dramatically with an 8 – 9th century BCE domestic shrine. The convincing shrine, a sacred space surely placed in a home as a sanctuary for the divine, bears no relationship with the facile self-absorption of a contemporary artist. As well painted as the Enkaoua is, its attempt at a deification of the individual is spurious at best. It doesn't hold a candle to Venus.

The next section, “Prayer,” explores the attempt at communication with the divine and fittingly presents the only stone altar for burnt offerings ever found in Israel, the Tel Beersheba Altar. Its monumental scale expressed in a chest high platform reflects the gravity of the task of assigning an animal's life to replace that of a human in the expiation of sin. In a pathetic contrast Israel Hershberg's “Cow Tongue” from 1987 cannot manage to elevate itself beyond dinner. Banality is the enemy of both the beautiful and the sacred.

Trembling Time (2001) DVD by Yael Bartana
Courtesy the Israel Museum

Further along in the exhibition many of the works veer into deeply conceptual territory. An uninspired example is juxtaposition of the large display case of 18th and 19th century spice holders contrasted with a somber bronze age sarcophagi. Perhaps the passage from the sacred to the weekday of Havdalah is meant to evoke the ultimate passage from this life to the next evoked by a burial vessel.

The exhibition ends, somewhat predictability, with the theme of death as a unique way to perceive the holy. Unfortunately none of the works in this section is really convincing either in concept or execution. The shroud of Turin is displayed in an early 19th century photograph. Surprisingly the text panel seems to accept the notion that this object is authentic when in fact it has been disproved by many scholars and subject to extensive debate within the Church itself. Perhaps because of the large number of works the exhibition's end is less convincing than the strong, if controversial works that were featured in the first half.

An exception to the paucity of convincing contemporary artworks is Yael Bartana's, six minute DVD projection, “Trembling Time” (2000). In an a easy to miss side room the projection concentrates on one view from above the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv. It was taken on the eve of Remembrance Day for Israel's Fallen Soldiers (Erev Yom Hazikaron Le'Halaley Zahal), on which there is a siren throughout the country at 8 pm. The siren and traffic noise are the only sound as the cars and trucks slow to a halt in a hallucinatory slow motion image of traffic achingly frozen, seen over the ghosts of other cars. People are stepping out of their vehicles to observe a minute of silence and then slowly, oh so slowly, moving on, returning to the fabric of their lives. This simple and yet highly imaginative set of images evokes complex themes of history, pain, remembrance and indeed the sanctity of life itself in the most convincing manner. Ordinary Israelis simply pausing to honor those who gave their lives so that there could be a nation of Israel for Jews to live in. The sacred Land is fittingly honored with holy souls. This is the beauty of sanctity.    

Richard McBee

July 6, 2005