A New Exhibition by Yosl Bergner,October 2009 (15/10/2009 - 4/11/2009)

The Exhibition by Yosl Bergner,October 2009 //

Danny Kerman 

Two series of paintings are shown in this exhibition: "Bottles" and "Kings and Angels". Yosl Bergner worked on both series at the same time.

When a bottle or another object comes to life at the stroke of his brush, Yosl looks at it and wonders: "What does it think?"

What does the bottle think? What does the grater wonder about? And perhaps even what goes on in the brain of the half apple which is not quite so fresh anymore? So Yosl stands wondering before the grey paintings.

But when he looks at the paintings of the kings and the angels, the colourful paintings which present the simple viewer with a feeling of happy carnival, Yosl does not seek to know what they are thinking. Here he says – as a kind of confession – " I  paint these paintings when I am sad."

Yosl is a man of contradictions. He feels most at home between the "yes" and the "no".For that reason, this exhibition has a special interest for us: an exhibition by a veteran painter-a painter whose visual language is an integral part   of  our culture.

Anyone who follows the language of Yosl, will find a straight clear line from the theatre of Nissim Aloni to the Kings and the Angels in these paintings. Nissim, dead, still influences Yosl, alive.

And when Nissim was alive, Yosl's paintings found their way into Nissim's plays.

Yosl painted bottles as early as the 1950's -   perhaps under the influence of Giorgio Morandi. But those bottles were upright and symmetric and the suffering had not yet reached the neck. In the new paintings the neck is the human element in the bottle. In contrast to the graters and the other objects which Yosl brings to life, the bottles have no mouths and no eyes, and only the neck makes them what they are: every bottle and its neck -very neck and its crookedness. And the way it relates to the crookedness of the necks of the other bottles is different from bottle to bottle – "family", says Yosl. And at the end of the neck, of course, is the black Bergner hole, the "eye" or the "soul's window" - for he who seeks high words…

These eyes are to be found also in the series "Kings and Angels", and in many instances they are the one way for the viewer to find the hidden figures to which the eyes belong.

In contrast to the bottles, the presentation of the figures in this more colourful series is sketchy and fluttering. Are the figures dancing?  Could it be that Yosl was thinking about his sister Ruth, dancer and  choreographer?  Yosl anyway does not deny it.

Do the bottles also dance? Can one sometimes liken the movement of their necks to a flock of flamingoes dancing? Perhaps it is better to consider the moving necks as "flirtation", or simply as "greeting".

They are empty, the bottles. One may enlarge with ease on biographical and artistic interpretations about that emptiness. Is this a reference to the general emptiness, or perhaps to the many empty bottles which were once full until they fell into Yosl's hands?

In the past, when one asked Yosl why he paints so many kitchen utensils,   he would tell about his childhood: "I had no toys, so I was drawn to the kitchen and played with the pots and pans." And then he would think for a minute and add: "And perhaps it was because of the housemaid that I was drawn to the kitchen…."

Yosl sometimes puts another object among the bottles which stands out as a contrast. The strange one is a director, a neighbour or some far relation to whom Yosl gives a mouth with which to laugh at, or even to ridicule the family of bottles.

The bottles are the "subject", or the  hook on which Yosl  hangs the basic symbols that we, the many Bergner followers, know very well: half apples, graters, birds which fly heavily -  which in the Bergner dictionary are called "troubles" -  and of course the windows which Yosl has used for  many years.

Just lately, while he was working on these two series in his studio -  a mere few hundred metres from the "Habima" theatre, which is being renovated -  Yosl dreamt that he put his head into one of the small windows of the new building, and could not get it out again.  The windows also are very often "eyes" - a thing which gives to some of Bergner's works the symmetry of a human face.

Symmetry is very noticeable in all the compositions of these two series. Perhaps it is because Bergner almost never makes preliminary sketches to his paintings:  he paints a king in the middle of the canvas, and around him he embroiders all the other colourful figures. Or perhaps he decides on the first bottle, the head of the future family, and builds around him the rest of the composition.

The necessary exactness of the paintings of bottles leads Yosl to use dark  colours in tones of grey.

"You understand," Yosl explains, "In that way I find it easier to bring out their brightness and their shine."  From this it is clear that the Kings and Angels have almost no plastic being, and they draw their existence from the strength of the brushstroke.

And how is it possible not to think of Giorgio Morandi?

I look through a book of Morandi's work with Yosl and I arrive at a clear decision: Morandi's bottles proceed from an architectural landscape, and Yosl thinks of his works as a family album.

Standing before these two faces which Yosl shows in this exhibition, one is tempted to ask: "Is it not difficult for you to work in two such different styles?" 

"That's how I am," says Yosl, "In writing I'm dyslectic, and in painting I'm eclectic."