Art has to move us or, at the very least, prompt some kind of cerebral reaction. Chana Goldberg’s new exhibition at the Social Space in the former President Hotel in Rehavia patently pertains to the former side of the response tracks.
Much has been said and written about the output of artists across all disciplines in the wake of Oct. 7 and the ongoing, seemingly endless war. Putting it delicately, not all has been particularly commendable fare. Some of it strayed deep into the realms of tugging over-enthusiastically on our already frayed heartstrings and was, let’s face it, crass.
Given the still very palpable national and individual trauma, perhaps that is understandable. But when you come across offerings such as Goldberg’s stirring paintings, the gaping quality chasm is there in plain sight.
That said, there is drama everywhere you look in the spacious gallery hall. But it is of a more subtle nature rather than the in-your-face kind. Yes, there is no missing the air of tension, the almost tangible palls of gloom, the sense of foreboding, and basic sadness.
However, Goldberg manages to walk the tightrope and leave the viewers to meet her at least halfway in gleaning the full weight of the spirit she evokes in the works, many of which are of imposing dimensions.
The exhibition’s background material opens with a quote from the Book of Job: “Thick clouds veil him so that he does not see.” That’s pretty tough biblical talking, courtesy of Elifaz, who accuses his friend Job of casting doubt on God’s deeds, of suggesting that God is blind to Job’s travails.
Divine cataclysm: October 7, the Holocaust, and art
That immediately put me in mind of the Holocaust and the many people who queried, and continue to ask, about the divine perspective on the cataclysmic event in Jewish history. In the vein of Elifaz’s observation, where indeed was God when millions were tortured, tormented, and murdered? The artist, like me, is the offspring of Holocaust survivors, and, as such, that notion unavoidably pervades the current exhibition.
But Goldberg’s feeling that all was not well with us predates our current woes. That is evident, front and center, in a captivating, large self-portrait.
The somewhat elongated figure in the picture, which stirs stylistic associations with Modiglianiesque form, is in a state of extreme distress. Anguish seeps out of her facial expression, her hands dropped languidly in her lap, and her shoulders seem to wilt under some invisible burden. “I did that before Oct. 7,” Goldberg springs on me. “That’s the only one [painting] that predates the war.”
That is not the only reason why the painting sticks out from the rest. “It is the only portrait here,” she says. “You remember my previous exhibition [at the Jerusalem Artists’ House].” I do, indeed. “That was all portraits. That is my forte. Since Oct. 7, I have been unable to do portraits,” she explains.
THAT BROUGHT us back to the flurry of artistic activity that eventually ensued following the bestial attack down South 18 long months ago. “It feels too direct [to paint people]. They got so many artists to paint figures of hostages. It was as if a portrait just had to be of a hostage. It was all over the place.”
Goldberg says she did not make a conscious decision to steer clear of human figures. It was a subliminal development. “It was only later that I noticed I wasn’t painting portraits. It all felt cheap, like people were jumping at the opportunity to paint faces and get their name out there. It just didn’t feel right.”
The works in the exhibition certainly convey a sense of depth and of a well-ruminated-on topical backdrop. There are oceans of expression right across the board. There are vast skyscapes densely populated by towering clouds of all shapes and hues. The latter are generally of the darker ilk. Some clearly indicate recognizable forms – human, animal, and mythical.
Getting closer to the self-portrait, the (my) Holocaust reflections resurface. The figure of the lamenting red-haired woman sits amid a sea of skeletal human shapes, suggesting ghosts of a trying yesteryear passage of time. “Where are all these people going?” Goldberg poses. “I don’t know.”
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Surely, that is integral to the creative process. If a painter, for example, knew exactly what he or she was going to end up with on the canvas, it would all be a mechanical, soulless process rather than the transient gestation of a work of art.
Goldberg cites various sparks for her current output. Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker Francisco Goya is certainly heavily in the inspirational mix. There are quotations from several of his better-known works, such as The Colossus, which depicts a towering giant striding across the sky above a battlefield scene during the early 19th-century Peninsular War. Considering our current circumstances, that fits the national zeitgeist bill to an all-too-snug T.
That tumultuous period in Iberian history features elsewhere in Goya’s portfolio, most famously in The Third of May 1808 in Madrid, which depicts a resistance fighter being executed by a Napoleonic firing squad.
Goldberg infers the dramatic scene by nuancing spectral figures, hands aloft, alongside a winding road. There are patches of red in the vegetation and the sky, in one of numerous references in the collection to the fires that ravaged forests up and down the country during the course of the war here, up North and in the South.
Cloud shapes make a telling appearance here, too, with a nod to an aquatint by Goya called The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, part of a series of caricatures that the artist used to let off some steam over the political shenanigans of the time.
Goldberg follows suit, although her emotional release is of a more personal, heartfelt nature. She dips into the Goya oeuvre yet again, with her rendition of the Spanish artist’s The Dog, replacing the forlorn-looking canine staring up from the slanting horizon with a similarly desolate tank.
“I just saw the tank [on TV], and you can see it is exactly the same composition.” There is additional subtext here. “You look at this, and you wonder who the victim is here – who is suffering more?” It didn’t take overly perceptive acumen to get the nod to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the never-ending squabble over the aggressor-victim balancing act. “The tank looked miserable,” Goldberg notes with a wry smile.
THERE IS an expansiveness to the exhibition that is both seductive and not a little scary. Fire is a recurring theme, either by depiction of the charred remains of forests – yet another thinly veiled allusion to the ravaged houses in Kibbutz Be’eri and other Gaza envelope communities – or all those ominous towering clouds.
Again, other than the powerfully emotive self-portrait, there are no direct visual links to the regional violence. Goldberg attributes that largely to the information overload that she, like many of us, endured during the first weeks and months of the war. “For the first couple of weeks or so, I couldn’t tear myself away from the TV screen. It was horrific! Unbelievable!”
Like many of her co-professionals, she felt paralyzed by the scale of the unfolding tragedy and, for a while, simply couldn’t get her creative juices going. “After a while, I went back into my studio, but I can’t really tell you I did much to begin with.”
Slowly but surely, some of the images she had witnessed secondhand – in the interminable news reports she had been glued to – began to surface. “It is the first time I took my inspiration from the television,” she chuckles.
But not just from the TV. There were spots dotted around the country, locations she is particularly fond of, that made their way through her consciousness strata and out onto her canvases.
One scene of Lake Kinneret shows the creamy, gently lapping waters of our largest natural reservoir with the image of a sacrificial lamb hovering in a celestial vortex above. The poor creature in question feeds off a work by Baroque Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán, noted for his religious-themed paintings.
Goldberg also got to work with the Colossus figure out of that trip. It came to her as she was wending her way up back home to Jerusalem from the Jordan Valley. The canvas has just a solitary vehicle on the road in fading light, and incorporates a rich palette of shades and textures. Interestingly, the giant in the sky is seen moving away from the car, possibly turning its back on the driver.
In truth, Goldberg, who comes from an observant religious background, has several issues with the way things are panning out, as well as with how her craft can help us navigate our way through life’s trials and tribulations.
“Why do you think God created the world?” she lobs my way. “Ego?” I mischievously parry, tongue firmly planted in cheek. “He was afraid of the chaos. He needed a little order,” she laughs.
Not exactly competing with the Divine Being on that score, Goldberg believes art plays a similar role. “Art is like a fence we can grab onto in the face of this fear. I find myself incapable of dealing with the chaos inside me, so I need something to hold onto, something to anchor me.”
That implies some kind of healing process for all concerned, which is borne out by the remedial transition she experienced while she applied brush and charcoal to canvas. The exhibition is not all doom and gloom. There are several oxymoronic settings in there, such as a powerful seething – possibly Divine – sky with a definitively mundane urban rooftop complete with water heaters and solar panels.
Goldberg nimbly straddles the quotidian-lofty divide as she addresses universal themes of humanity in the face of terrifying existential challenges.
The almost complete absence of corporeal drama and the portrayal of the banal, such as a nondescript concrete block topped by a truncated pole, add depth and breadth to the gallery spread.
Toward the end of our lap of the hall, one painting catches my eye, which has a different feel to it. “That’s the last one I did before the exhibition,” Goldberg tells me.
I posit that the scene of still greenish pre-summer hill slopes and fields, albeit beneath a heavy sky, has something a little more positive and upbeat about it. That suggests that the artist came out of the end of the prolonged creative process having offloaded, or at least filtered, some of her weighty post-Oct. 7 baggage and worked through her trauma and emotions as she worked her magic.
Perhaps, then, the members of the viewing public might gain a similarly optimistically leaning perspective on our seemingly unremitting depressing state of affairs.
There will be a gallery talk on May 13 at 7 p.m. The exhibition closes June 5. For more information: www.chanagoldberg.com
