This post first appeared as “West Bank Banksy Paintings Reappear in the Hamptons” on The Arty Semite blog of the Forward.
"Stop and Search" by Banksy, Bethlehem 2007
You know those images the street artist known as Banksy painted on walls in the West Bank in 2007, and displayed in his recent film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”? Well, they’re not there anymore. Instead, they are on display at an art gallery in the Hamptons, and on sale for very high prices.
The owner of the Keszler Gallery, Stephan Keszler, claimed that he bought the artworks from Palestinian entrepreneurs who removed them — huge chunks of wall and all — from the Bethlehem structures on which they were painted. Keszler reportedly said this was all done legally, and that the excevators paid the owners of the structures Banksy had decorated. They had then planned to sell the art on eBay, but got cold feet when they realized how difficult it would be to move such massive pieces of concrete over international borders.
This article was first published as “An Alternative Side of the City” in the San Diego Jewish Journal.
"Extensions" performance on the roof above Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda market at the Balabasta festival (photo by Adi Lagaziel)
People dream of visiting Jerusalem to put a note inside the cracks of the Western Wall, seeing the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and watching the sun set over the city’s ancient, golden stones. But if these are the only things you do once you get here, then you are missing out on what the more contemporary and secular side of Jerusalem has to offer.
Rabbinic literature has for millennia referred to the Jewish people’s eternal spiritual capital as having a dual nature. There is Jerusalem on High (Yerushalayim shel malah), but also Jerusalem on Earth (Yerushalayim shel matah). And there is no better time than the summer months to discover the city’s contemporary cultural gems that fly below the radar of the usual Jewish tourist itinerary. Summer may be coming to an end this month, but it’s never too soon to start planning for next year’s vacations.
The news of recent years has been about the exodus of secular Jews from Jerusalem for Tel Aviv and its environs.
“This very important city…became irrelevant. It became irrelevant to me and my friends who left it. It became irrelevant to my parents and their friends who left it. It became irrelevant to Israeli society, and in many ways it became irrelevant to many parts of the world, because all they heard about it was the political narrative and the religious narrative,” said Itay Mautner, artistic director of the Jerusalem Season of Culture (JSOC), a new annual showcase of Jerusalem-focused arts and culture running from mid-May through the end of July. “Those narratives do, of course, exist in the city, but alongside those two big narratives throughout 3,000 years has been a cultural narrative…this cultural narrative in Jerusalem is way different than any other cultural narrative that you see anywhere else in the world. It’s different for thousands of reasons. It has a lot to do with the religion, with the historical layers, with the complexity.”
Jerusalem has always been a key producer of major Israeli artists and cultural figures, but most have left the city after completing art school or early in their careers in search of more work and a more robust mainstream artistic environment. However, since the election of secular Mayor Nir Barkat in 2008 (thanks, in large part, to support from newly active grassroots liberal political movements founded by the city’s young people), things have begun to change. Contemporary artists are now starting to live and work more in Jerusalem, and they are being increasingly backed by governmental institutions, private sponsors and nonprofit organizations.
Daniel Pink's latest book is about what motivates us.
Once again, the Sages of the Mishna give sound advice (Pirkei Avot 4:1): “Who is rich? The person who is content with his lot.” What we are coming to realize post-economic meltdown, is that that lot doesn’t necessary have to be a lot. Our acquisitiveness, greed, and over-consumption of cheap goods in the last decades has made us forget what is important in life. No one, including the Rabbis, is going to begrudge a person for being financially successful, but it is starting to finally dawn on American society that being rich beyond being able to pay for a comfortable (and by comfortable, I do not mean multiple manorial homes, a yacht and monthly jaunts to St. Barts) life, a good education for your kids, and high quality healthcare is not necessarily a virtue.
It is not surprising, then, that as the Obama administration struggles to get the country back on course, as this realization about what is important in life has begun to finally sink in, people are producing books and films that reflect this ostensibly newfound insight. Daniel Pink, author of the popular book on why right-brainers rule, A Whole New Mind, has just come out with a new work called Drive(a one-word title surely inspired by Malcolm Gladwell ). This tome, subtitled ”The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” debunks the long and widely held theory that workers are motivated by extrinsic rewards like raises and bonuses. In other words, by money. Instead, he posits after researching the subject, that people in today’s world are far more motivated by intrinsic things like mastery, autonomy and purpose. People want to make a difference, for their contributions to have an impact on others and not only serve to enrich themselves.
William Damon's message is similar to Pink's, but he writes about teenagers rather than adults workers.
Dr. William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford University, has written a book recently with a similar thesis, but in relation to adolescents, rather than employed adults. He had originally wanted to call this book, “The Age of Purpose”, but his publisher went with The Path to Purpose, to more accurately reflect that it is about helping children find their calling in life. Damon liked his own suggestion better, with its dual meaning referring both to adolescence as the time of identity and outlook formation and the post-what’s-in-it-for-me era we are entering. The book summarizes Damon’s research into what makes exceptionally successful adolescents tick, which turns out not to be the drive for a 4.0 GPA and admission to Harvard with a direct pipeline to Wall Street, but instead a desire to make a difference in the world and help others.
The Value of Nothing by Raj Patel
Writer, activist and academic, Raj Patel, has borrowed part of a quote from Oscar Wilde for the title of his latest book. Wilde said, “Nowadays, people know the price of everything but the value of nothing,” and Patel uses the final four words here to convey his thesis – that to our detriment, we have allowed market prices to set the value for everything in our world, and that to save our global system and collective sanity, we will need to make fundamental philosophical and political changes to our economies and financial systems. This book is meant to be a wake up call to the billions of us who have never really considered the true costs to our popular cultures and materialistic societies – and even our humanity – of the cheap goods that have enabled us to live so high off the hog for so long. (Click here to view the British version of the promotional film for The Value of Nothing, which is predictably more in-depth and less slick than the American version. If you are more in the mood for something slick, click here.)
If we are considering the question of who is really rich, then filmmaker Megumi Sasaki’s 2008 documentary on Herb and Dorothy Vogel provides an answer. Unless you are a New York art world aficionado, then you likely have not heard of this elderly Jewish couple living in a rent controlled apartment in Manhattan. Herb & Dorothy tells the story of how these two art lovers managed to amass a huge and very significant collection (more than 4000 pieces) of contemporary art on their public librarian and postal worker salaries. It is undeniable that the Vogels were acquisitive, and that they were supreme hoarders, which in and of themselves are arguably not the most laudable of traits. But what makes this forgivable, let alone fascinating, is that they collected all this minimalist and conceptual art simply for the love of it and to support the efforts of those who were making it.
Continuing to live simply in their old age with their pets, in their tiny, crowded apartment, the Vogels are very happy. The feel they are rich, because they have been enriched by the art and the relationships and experiences that have gone along with it. Herb and Dorothy never sold a single acquisition. They never made a penny off their collection. Instead, they donated it to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and to the American people and the world.
Whether it was the the art itself or the fortune they could have made by selling it, the Vogels, as wise as the Sages, knew they would not be able, as they say, to take it with them. Or, perhaps they were more familiar with the Yiddish maxim, “Burial shrouds have no pockets,” which means the very same thing.
