Cultural Zionism
Religion can be expressed through many forms of media. Some people express their religion through praying three time days. Some people also eat shrimp on the beach.
In Tel Aviv, we saw Judaism expressed through street art. Street artist come from all sects
of Israeli society and express their political, religious, and/or artistic point of view.
Every piece, from a number to a wall, has a backstory.
“269”: This is a common tag that is used after a cow was sent free and, since animals
in the meat industry have numbers, the cow was tagged with this number. A lot of vegan
street artist use this tag and, among the Israeli vegan population, some even get a
tattoo of this number. 5% of the Israeli population is vegan and Israel has the
highest number per capita of vegans in the world.
“Even santa Deserves a Toy”: While this piece was my least favorite, it was the
first time I saw something from Christian culture expressed in Israeli society.
Even though I hated the message from this piece, I thought
all the comments were interesting.
The Jewish piece: The piece below was painted by a religious
Jew and was one of the only Jewish pieces I saw.
The Peter Pan Piece: This is one of the most famous piece,
which shows an artist chasing another. The artist is expressed as
Peter Pan and you can see the other artists’ legs in the corner.
The chasing is believed to represent that the artist
will always be in the other’s shadow.
The Blue Girl: This piece is one of the most beautiful pieces, in my opinion.
The woman has long black hair with dark blue streaks.
Her face is covered with graffiti. In her hand, she is a bright green frog who
she is about to kiss. I believe this piece represents women
meeting the unrealistic expectations of men.The woman looks
powerful, but she constantly is faced with messages from men,
or the frog. The frog in her palm, which signifies that women
have half the opportunities of men because they are in women’s
hands. Likewise, the frog is not facing the woman because
it does not need to because, unfortunately, has the upper-hand
in society.
The People: Around Tel Aviv, we kept seeing black and white
sketches of people with vibrant red lips.
The Two Brothers: This is a famous piece signifying that there
should be peace between the Israelis and the Arabs.
The Girl with the Earring: This piece is my favorite because the piece is
very simple, being black and white, but the earring adds so much
detail and perspective. The women looks very human, at first,
until you notice her distorted neck. I think this piece represents that,
while everything might look black and white, life is very complex
and does not go the way you planned.
“Passion is like the movies, it has a
beginning and an end-but love on the other hand…”: This piece is the most
interesting to me because it is kind of a mystery. At a first glance, I thought
it was a piece for LGBT equality because of the rainbow hearts.
Likewise, I thought that the quote meant that love is unstoppable.
When analyzing it more, I am now unsure at the meaning.
What do you think this piece means? How does it tie in with Cultural Zionism?
I am not a very artistic person and hence I am not good at decoding artwork. I would infer this piece of art to mean the following: that love is very complicated and made up of many ingredients. People devote themselves to the complx idea of finding love just like people devote themselves to cultural zionism. Cultural zionism values creating a Jewsih state with its own secular Jewish culture and history. Painting meaniful graffit on the walls of Tel Aviv is an exmaple of living the cultural zionism dream
ReplyDeleteI believe what we see in the movies is all a fake interpretation of love and hence it is described as only passion. Because I do not know the true meaning of love I believe it can be expressed as passion. Love is different for everyone but passion is a strong feeling for something. By looking at something or people you can tell when something is passionate but you can never see love. People who support Zionism have a strong passion for Israel. Some would even call it love for the land. I believe however that one cannot love the land until you have lived or experienced it. That is why you can be passionate about something. Being passionate about coming to Israel shows a belief and a caring feeling. Loving Israel is more of an indescribable feeling.
ReplyDeleteI’m the movies passion is clear and simple. You are either passionate about something or not. However love is not just simply as portrayed in the movies. Love is complicated and has many dimensions. Love is personal and only the people in love understand it’s dynamic.
ReplyDeleteTo me the message of this drawing is plain and simple: passion and lust are nice for the time being but love is forever, passion and lust only last long in movies not in reality. You can look at this peice through a personal view or I guess through the culturistic zionest view. If you look at it through the eyes of cultural zionism I think the peice could be about loving Israel. America would be the passion that "is in the movies" because it seems so perfect but it will come to an endlike every empire does. However, Israel is forever
ReplyDeleteThe meaning of the art for me is that lust is temporary, but love is forever. This can be compared with cultural zionism because thinking you want to go to the land of Israel is not the same as living there, serving in the army, and working to help make it great. You can go and be a tourist in Israel and be in lust, but to be in love is to truly experience the culture.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the meaning of the artwork, and it connection to cultural zionism is that behind Zionism, there were passionate people who had lust for the State of Israel to be created. However, like love, there are complications no matter how big or small. Zionism and love have no clear path, but there is an underlying passion to make it work. Most movies are no where realistic to how the way the world truly works, so there's no real beginning and end to love or zionism due to the other factors and conflicts that play major or minor roles.
ReplyDeleteThis piece can be interpreted many ways. On one hand it could be representative of the Jewish or Israeli LGBTQIA community, beause of the pride flag within the hearts. On the other hand it could be about love and general, saying it is powerful and knows no bounds. I am relatively sure that there are a man and a woman in the artwork, but the quote gives an even deeper insight to the perspectives and characteristics of love itself. This relates to cultural Zionism because of the graffiti culture that is popular in Tel Aviv. This city is one where secular Judaism is strong, and there is less influence of the Rabbinut here. It relates because it’s not about just being Jewish in Israel, but the Jewish people and our unique takes on our culture and the modern blend of where we are and when.
ReplyDeleteThe meaning of the art is that a crush is temporary but love is forever. Once you truly love someone that never goes away. I don’t think it’s necessarily lgbtq related. Just cause there is a rainbow doesn’t make it lgbtq, some people just like rainbows.
ReplyDeleteTo me this piece means that even after passion has started and ended, love will remain. This holds true with many couples today, people start off their relationship with immense passion, but have no real love behind it. In real love, you move beyond passion and become a true part of each other's life. I don't know if the LGBT community has anything to do with it...
ReplyDeleteFor me, this piece represents how love and passion differ. Passion is a fleeting moment. One day you care nothing for something, the next you start to like it, then the next you loose interest. There is a beginning, a struggle, but the end is where you want to be. With love, you are born feeling entangled in something. Like something you can never figure out, but you don't give it a rest. Like a cat tugging at a knotted ball of yarn, love is frustrating at times but in the end, the struggle is what you like most, not the end result.
ReplyDeleteI think it's trying to say that love is unending. Passion is just a passing feeling; it has a beginning and end. When you truly love someone or something, nothing can take that away. Whether or not you're consciously thinking about it, that love is there and always will be.
ReplyDeleteAbout lgbt, I'm not even sure if the rainbow hearts are a part of the same piece or if they were just extra pieces added to the wall that happened to be placed in that spot. I think the message of the artwork is applicable to everyone, so who knows.
DeleteI really loved this art because of my love for movies. I think that it might have been geared for the LGBT community, but applicable to all the lovers of the world. Because of my love for movies, I often get caught up in the difference between movie love and real life passion, and I thought that this art summed that up perfectly, making it one of my favorite pieces of art that I’ve ever seen.
ReplyDelete*geared towards
DeleteI think that the piece does have articles to support LGBT equality, but it also talks about how love works in Israeli culture. It speaks to the idea of love ending and beginning, just as life and other events end and begin. This may be an attempt to explain Israeli culture or generally accepted social ideas to others through an art expressing love.
ReplyDeleteI think that the piece is meant to show the difference between physical attraction and emotional connection. This is because your attraction to someone can always change and end like a movie, while your emotional connection will not end if it is strong enough. It could specifically try and portray modern relationships that are solely focused around physical aspects. This commentary could be trying to say that our society is to focused on physical beauty and not focused enough on truly loving somebody.
ReplyDeleteLove is complicated. I think that people question the idea that it can't last forever. I think that this piece relates to cultural zionism in the sense that we have to love the land. We heard about this a bunch in the last unit that we need to work and love our own land. If we run out of love we may end up losing Eretz Israel All over agin.
ReplyDeleteLove is complicated. I think that people question the idea that it can't last forever. I think that this piece relates to cultural zionism in the sense that we have to love the land. We heard about this a bunch in the last unit that we need to work and love our own land. If we run out of love we may end up losing Eretz Israel All over agin.
ReplyDeleteI think that this mural is showing that this idea we have of generic love is false and that it is more complicated and can take more forms then we typically think. The fact that this exist and in a city like Tel Aviv is the dream of cultural zionists
ReplyDelete