Art, Nationalism and Public Relations: The Myth of Betzalel

Abstract

According to a commonly perceived notion, Israeli art was born at a specific moment in history: the founding of the Betzalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem in 1906, by Boris Schatz. Paradoxically, this notion was accompanied for a long time by the view that Betzalel was in effect a failure, particularly with regards to later artistic developments in Jewish Palestine. The newly arrived artists in the 1920s – known as the Modernists – were then thought of as representing the ‘true’ beginning of Israeli art. The historical campaign to crown Betzalel as the origin of Israeli art emerged in the 1980s, in the context of a new and relatively short-lived attention allocated to the history of Israeli art, and of a wider concern with issues of identity in Israeli society and culture. This interest was exhibited across several studies, books and historical exhibitions, all of which aiming through different arguments and by focusing on various artists, to point at the ‘real father’ of Israeli art.

Despite being credited as representing the origin of Israel’s modern art, Betzalel and its set of workshops, which produced decorative objects and Holy Land souvenirs, was well rooted in 19th century ideas about Jewish national art and the need to cultivate it, and in the concept of productivization of the Jews and of the need to supply trade education and jobs to the poor Jewish community of Jerusalem in order to relieve them from charity. An important concept behind the financial management of Betzalel was the low wages paid to the artisans, especially the Oriental Jews, who were considered cheap labor. The clash between these ideas in their realization caused constant problems that finally brought Betzalel to its closure in 1929. In 2006 the centenary of Betzalel was grandly celebrated by the two institutions, which declare themselves its descendents, the Israel Museum and the Betzalel Academy of Art and Design. Once again the focus was on Boris Schatz as the legendary ‘father of Israeli art’, overlooking the ‘New Betzalel’ and many decades of creative developments in Israeli art and design that have fallen into oblivion.