Obj. ID: 33194
Modern Jewish Art Moshe Gershuni, Homage to Bialik's poem "On Slaughter",1988
The following description was written by the researcher Alec Mishory.
In 1988, Israeli artist Moshe Gershuni exhibited a series of prints at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Next to each print he placed Bialik's poems, which were made as silk-screen prints, photographed from Joseph Budko's design for the Bialik's book Jubilee Edition of Works (Berlin, 1923).
The artist's visual homage to Bialik's On Slaughter comprises a wheel or a spiral next to which he depicted shapes that resemble the Hebrew letter Reysh (ר). Juxtaposed with the wheel they form a shape that resembles a swastika. Six pointed stars float in the background, joined by the mathematical sign of infinity. The bottom of the print shows a palm tree, to its left a silhouette of a cypress tree. Next to the six-pointed star (on the right), the artist added a question mark (?). In between the various shapes the artist added, in his individual handwriting, seven words (in Hebrew, top to bottom, right to left): "אל" (El=God); "בכם" (bachem= in you); "יש" (yesh=there is); "אם" (eem=if); "אני" (anee=I, me); "לא" (lo=did not); "מצאתיו" (metzativ= find it [Him]).
The print is full of illusionary motion; the wheel creates an illusion that it is turning on its axis counterclockwise. The cypress tree bends to the left, as if pushed by wind currents. Due to the sense of movement, most shapes look as if swept in its currents. So do the words. They cannot be read in a natural way, from right to left since they are arranged around a circular shape. The words are quotes from a verse in Bialik's poem: "אם יש בכם אל ולאל בכם נתיב – ואני לא מצאתיו" (If there is a God among you, and this God has a way – I did not find it [the way, or God]). The artist did not include the words "and this God has a way" and discarded the letter "ו" ('and' in Hebrew). Since the first four words of the verse are not arranged on a straight line. Hebrew readers would reverse the direction of reading and go from left to right. Bialik's words in Gershuni's print make therefore a modular text that can be read from end to beginning or from the middle to the end – in endless configurations. The single answer to the question "If there is a God among you" is "I haven’t found Him" (at the print's bottom).
Gershuni's print not only conveys the poem's expressive power; moreover, it is turning it, rummages through it, thus endowing the words with visual formal aspects. Words become symbols as they are detached from their original context and become 'independent'. The circular movement in which they exist turns them into a 'mantra' that repeats itself infinitely.