| |
|
|
|
| |
Four of us went to Basel – Yirmi Pinkus, David Polonsky, Kobi Franco, and I – as guests of Cartoon Museum Basel for the CultureScapes Israel Festival in Switzerland. Traces of the Swiss autumn were still evident on the gold-red trees (it was even more magnificent before we came, we were told, but I didn’t stop collecting leaves). The city was bustling with parents and children celebrating the autumn festivals in a strange mix of huge amusement park rides, redolent with aromas of spice cookies, baked cheese, and roasted chestnuts.
On the face of it, nothing in this festive atmosphere give away the grating voices that had for months attended the opening of the CultureScapes Israel Festival. Anyone who followed the media coverage witnessed how the decision of the founder and artistic director of the festival, Jurriaan Cooiman, to devote 2011 to Israeli culture (and even expand activities and cooperation and hold a Swiss Season in Israel), provoked protests, pressure, and calls to join the boycott against Israel.
We arrived after the uproar had died down, two months after the festive opening events of the festival and the protests in the streets, but echoes of the confrontations could be heard in the speeches and between the lines of the written and spoken words. The intense desire to present the other face of life in Israel (“beyond the clichés of the Middle East”, as museum director and curator Anette Gehrig stated), of everyday life, what unites rather than divides us, swept up even us.
|
|
|
| |
The festive opening night of How to Love in Basel was attended by a large audience of about two hundred people, some of whom were quite naturally regular museum patrons, but most of whom, Anette told us, were new, different visitors who came especially to see this particular exhibition. The speeches by director and curator Anette Gehrig, CultureScapes Festival director Jurriaan Cooiman, and myself, spoke about the cultural cooperation between the two countries in general and between the two museums in particular (as part of the exhibition exchanges, an exhibition of Chinese comics will be coming to Israel later this year). The atmosphere was wonderful and the reactions enthusiastic. The couscous and salad refreshments were swiftly snatched up (as they are at openings anywhere else), and the artistic program was concluded with a performance by internationally renowned oud musician Wisam Gibran from Nazareth. |
|
 |
| |
The renewed encounter with the exhibition itself was surprising. The museum building in Basel and a different curatorship created a new exhibition, different to the one shown in Israel, like a sister possessing similar genes but in a different body.
The museum in Basel is located in two magnificent buildings connected by a transparent, glass-walled atrium. The old, original building, through which the museum is entered, is a historical heritage building dating from the late Gothic period, and the second is a new, three-story building erected in the 1990s and designed by renowned architects Herzog and de Meuron. |
|
|
| |
The foyer, shop, and several small exhibition spaces are housed in the old building with its wood floors, creaking spiral staircases and decorated wood lintels, while the new, three-story building is of a more simple design. The two buildings stand on either side of a small courtyard, the façade of the new building is made of glass, and glass enclosed bridges serve as walkways between the two buildings, providing beautiful angles over the space. |
|
|
| |
Unlike the exhibition in Holon that was shown in a single large space divided by portable walls, in Basel the exhibition spreads over three stories and a series of large and small spaces. To the original exhibition that was adapted to the specific space and comprised prints only (rather than the originals the museum in Basel is accustomed to showing), curator Anette Gehrig added another exhibition comprising solo exhibitions of works by Yirmi Pinkus, Rutu Modan, and David Polonsky (originals and books), and screenings of Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir in a dimmed room. |
|
|
| |
It was surprising to discover how enjoyable this new encounter was with an exhibition that had traveled overseas. I stood before the inspiration boxes, discovered in them details I had forgotten, listened again and again to the funny-clever-surprising answers of the group members on the screens set into the wall, and I was happy they were there, continuing to represent us after we leave.
How to Love was exhibited at the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Autumn 2009
Curated by Maya Dvash
Actus Group: Batia Kolton, Mira Friedmann, Itzik Rennert, Rutu Modan, Yirmi Pinkus.
Illustrator and animator David Polonsky is a guest in their book, How to Love.
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|