Catalog text from the Exhibition In the Body of the Text which took place in 1999 at the Janco-Dada Museum in Ein Hod. Curator: Haim Maor

The Image of the Words

Between Art and Religion in the Work of Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov

Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov calls her recent series of work “In the Body of the Text,” a title that hints at a meeting between paintings of the human body and text-bodies. The texts that the artist quotes are drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the Mishna, the Talmud, the Aggada, from Hebrew as well as Western literature.  The painted images in her work are highly realistic, and include self-portraits, still life, fragments of Judaica, and more.  The encounter of bodies and words, by way of comparison or opposition, one next to the other, constitutes a fascinating attempt to bring together the Western painting tradition and the Jewish tradition.

For a number of years Ben-Dov’s work has been a sort of medium for intellectual discussion and analysis, an intimate stage for personal expression, and a space for pondering the relationship between religion and art; the connections between matter and spirit, body and text and the body of the text; questioning how the religious and the artistic experience conform and differ, and what her place is in all of this (as a woman, an artist, a person both committed to the tradition and critical of it).

Signal and Sign: Speak to me through Scripture

The painter Rene Magritte juxtaposed words and images to consider but also undermine the existence of absolute truths in human and visual perception.  A painted image of a pipe and a verbal negation “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”(“This is not a pipe”) were placed on the same surface, the canvas, as representations of a world-view.  According to Magritte, the reality sensed and articulated by human beings is always internal, even when it purports to be external.  (“Which is how we see the world, namely, outside us, though having only one representation of it within us”).[i]

Ben-Dov uses the same method in order to reflect on the possibility of uniting the contradictory aspects of art and Jewish culture.  The former is often treated as the world of word and spirit, the latter the world of image and matter; Orthodox Judaism is considered a sphere of legal limitation and art a sphere of endless freedom.   Ben-Dov’s work undermines this cliche-ridden dichotomy, while dealing, perhaps, with the contradictions in her own life as a woman within the framework of Orthodox Judaism and a woman artist in the field of Israeli art.

At the foundation of Ben-Dov’s painted diptychs and polytychs is a challenging call for a new order, a new age, in which religion and faith may walk hand in hand with the canvas and with art, despite their differences. Her works ask: are not art and faith intertwined?  Is there an art that is not religious or an authentic religious experience that is not a creative experience of the soul?

Ben-Dov believes in art that grows out of post-modern emptiness and doubt, and provides the pictures for the words that have renewed faith in their ability to enjoin  sign and signified and link them both to a chain of meaning.  This sort of art creates paintings that demand study and words that demand observation.

As Magritte proclaimed that his painted pipe is not a pipe, so Ben-Dov’s painted canvasses testify that they are lies, pictures that are not true fragments of reality.  The small images of the body, plants and objects almost always appear hazy, fleeting, in soft pastel tones, seen and unseen, looking like images conjured up by a sorcerer, ghosts or otherworldly beings. In all of Ben-Dov’s paintings the body of the painting , the canvas texture, layers of paint and brushstrokes are all laid bare and probed in order to reveal the illusion, fraud, and trickery of the act of painting.  This complicated and complex battle of paper and word vs. canvas and image proclaims that there is beauty in this lie, and that the line made by writing and drawing, the line of the word and the line of the face, is the same line, neither one superior to the other.[ii]

People like Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov who study Jewish sources and search for the hidden within the revealed text, may be surprised by their own questions.  In an article in progress, “Cherubim and Empty Chairs: Thoughts on Flesh and Spirit in Theology and Art,” Ben-Dov questions the contradictory and complex relationship of Judaism to art.  She quotes the Second Commandment (“You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness..” Exodus 20:3-4, New JPS translation) and the instructions for the preparation of the Ark of the Covenant (“Make two cherubim of gold…at two ends of the cover…Place the cover on top of the Ark, after depositing inside the Ark the Pact that I will give you.”Exodus 25:18,21) and asks: “what is the Pact inside the Ark on which are placed the sculptures of the Cherubim?  The Ten Commandments, with the prohibition against creating sculptures.  In other words, on the Ark containing the tablets with the commandment not to create sculptures, there is a commandment to place a sculpture.  This is a deliberate double message”.  Ben-Dov later quotes the passage “There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you – from  above the cover, from between the two Cherubim…”(Exodus 25:22) and explains: “the voice of God does not come out of the sculpture itself (as in the Greek Oracle), but rather the place in which God and Man meet is the empty space between the two Cherubim.  According to this interpretation, the visible and concrete are only a seat for the essence, which is the invisible voice.”  Again and again, in her writing and in her paintings, Ben-Dov juxtaposes the voice, the word, the obeying and hearing ear with the seeing and knowing eye.  But what seems at first glance to be an acceptance of this opposition reveals itself subsequently as an attempt to subvert it.

In her work Ben-Dov points at language as the source of her Jewish, artistic, and feminine identity.  To be precise, she grabs the pole of language from both ends: the language of art (image, eye) and the language of Judaism (word, ear).  While being drawn to these two languages, these two texts, she attempts to preserve the wholeness of the striped woven fabric (the source of the word ‘text’ being the Latin ‘textum,’ meaning weave), in order to weave an interdisciplinary “coat of many colors.”  This coat may be transformed into a wedding canopy that will renew and sanctify the egalitarian encounter between the black stripes (of the words) and white stripes (of the images), just as tones together with the silences between them create a musical composition. In her attempt to “make ends meet,” she chooses to step on this striped crosswalk, not skipping from one black stripe to another (in adherence to Jewish law), but walking at a measured pace, thoughtful and intimate, including the white stripes that alternate with them.

In the painting “Shema” (1997), she paints her own face covered by her hand. “Shema – ‘Hear O Israel’ – hearing vs. seeing.  Seeing is considered inferior to hearing, an interference or contradiction to spirituality.  That is why it is customary to cover one’s eyes while saying this prayer, in order to concentrate.  But the painting of this act is all about seeing and the visible,” she says. In another painting “Reading Faces” (1998), a painting of Ben-Dov’s face is juxtaposed with a page of Talmud including the source of the prohibition of portraying the human face: “All faces are permitted except for the human  face”(the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Avoda Zara 42B).  Ben-Dov’s eyes are peeking/looking at the text.  A strong visual dialogue and connection are created between the eyes and the text, as between the structure and texture of the text and that of the painted canvas.  This dialogue denies the relationship of absolute negation, the prohibition of any contact between the two.

In other works, “Untitled” (1999) [later entitled “Forbidden Faces”], “If/ AndNot” (1999), and “Blind Faith or Seeing is Believing” (1999), the issue of the representation of the face is further examined.

If/ Not, 1999, oil on canvas , 50 X 79 cm

If/ Not, 1999, oil on canvas , 50 X 79 cm

The first painting is made up of four panels, two of images and two of words.  On one side the paint from the realistic self-portrait “invades” the territory of the text that describes painting as “mere colors bearing no reality.”  One the other side, next to a text that says “Permission to paint a head without a body referred to an indiscreet head with no recognizable face,” appears a white face, with unclear features.  The “legitimate” painting, adhering to the strictest legal instructions, creates an unsettling, threatening portrait.

The second painting is based on the “Birds’ Head Haggada”, a Passover Haggada from the 13^th century.  In order to avoid violating the prohibition of portraying the human face, the illuminator of the Haggada chose to paint the heads of the Jews as birds’ heads.  Ben-Dov took the page from the Haggada with the song “Dayenu,” and painted it twice, with significant changes.  The painting bears the illusion of an open book.  On the right-hand page, next to the Hebrew word “If,” appears a painted copy of the original illumination, depicting the Passover sacrifice and the giving of the Torah. The hybrid man-birds sacrifice the Passover lamb, and stand one on top of the other until the highest among them (Moses) can reach out his hands to receive the Tablets from the hand of God.  On the left-hand side, next to the repeated words  “And Not,” appears a distorted version of the original illumination.  A man with a human face, wearing heavy black boots, holds a leash leading a dog which he is  setting on the group of bird-headed Jews.  As in the original , the hands of the Jews are extended upwards, but now, in the different context, they look despairing, calling for help from the flames, facing empty heavens that have cut off contact.  Man is granted a cruel human face, choosing negation (“And Not”), a negation of rights that leads to a negation of life.

Blind Faith or Seeing is Believing, 1999, oil on canvas and text on wood, 40 X 45 cm

The third painting is made up of six panels, sharpening the complex relationship between vision and faith: a text from the book of Exodus (33:17-23) that includes God’s warning that “…for man may not see me and live” and the stipulation that God may be seen from the back.  The text appears twice (legible and clear – from the front, and pale and fading – in mirror image, as if from the other side of the page).

Three paintings present three states of vision: a portrait of the artist with closed eyes (in black and white), with wide opened eyes (in color), and with blind or dead eyes (in faded white and gray).  The middle upper panel shows the “back” of the painting, an inverted canvas, abstaining from portraying a prohibited image, “for man may not see me and live.” It may be understood that the various modes of painting demonstrate and make present the states of vision and blindness of a believing and knowing consciousness.

Reading Trees, 1998, oil on canvas and text on wood, 19 X 30 cm

In other paintings, vision and visual pleasure may bring not only blindness but even death.  In “Untitled” (1998) [later entitled “Reading Trees”], Ben-Dov quotes a passage from Ethics of the Fathers that denies any sort of visual pleasure: “He who travels on the road while reviewing what he has learned, and interrupts his study and says:  ‘How fine is that tree, how fair is   that field!’, Scripture regards him as if he has forfeited his life.” The text is printed in gold, making it “fine” and “fair.” Next to it, she paints a realistic image of a withered dead leaf, hinting at the death sentence for those who look at trees, and also relating to the “Vanitas” and “trompe l’oeil” tradition in Western painting.

Badim, 1999, oil on canvas (with text from the Talmud, Tractate Avoda Zara), 53.5 X 162 cm

In “Badim”(1999), a page of Talmud describes the staves or poles that bore the Ark of the Covenant in the temple, on which stood the sculptures of the Cherubim.  The Cherubim were usually hidden from sight by a curtain.  The text describes certain days on which the curtain was drawn and the Ark and the Cherubim were revealed: “[The staves] probed and protruded outside [the curtain] like a woman’s breasts…When Israel made pilgrimage to the temple they would roll up the curtain and show them the Cherubim that were intertwined with each other, and they would say to them: ‘Look at the love of God for you, like the love of man and woman’” (Tractate Yoma 54a).  In Ben-Dov’s work, the canvas, the staves, the curtain, and fabrication – various meanings of the Hebrew word “badim” – create rich visual and linguistic layers of meaning that seem to contradict each other. The Talmudic text quoted here emphasizes the visibility and erotic physicality of the Cherubim, in contrast to the invisible voice emanating from between them.

The work is comprised of four parts.  If the painting is “read” from right to left, the canvas is gradually covered, primed white in preparation for painting, while the text disappears.  In the fourth canvas a faint image of a woman’s body appears.  On her belly traces of the text reappear, in flesh and canvas tones.  One can almost sense her body pushing through the text, a text written by men; pushing through the curtain, as the text imagines; and pushing through the canvas of the painting.  The woman’s body seems to be seeking escape as well as inclusion.

In this as in other works by Ben-Dov, the text gradually disappears, becomes blinded or dead. Is the “death of the text” reminiscent of Jacques Derrida and his “death of the author” (not to mention her method of citation, drawing on her Jewish and post-modernist sources)?  In any event, the cloth of the curtain and the screen hiding the blank canvas, blind the eye with their whiteness, deadening any visual pleasure that could distract the believer from the voice calling him from inside himself (or from outside him), and from the expected response:  “Here am I”. [iii]

From all that has been said it may be understood that Ben-Dov’s work is a receptacle into which she pours her knowledge and critical structures, her modes of reading and understanding, her efforts to bond with and appropriate the sources of Judaism and art.  In her modest way she walks the path trodden by rebels and innovators of   various religions or avant-garde art movements, they who were first and foremost scholars who had mastered the secrets of the authoritative sources that they chose to abandon, change, or “repair.”[iv]  From Ben-Dov’s perspective, “The Guide to the Perplexed” by Maimonides can and should be on her bookshelf next to Kandinsky’s “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” a facsimile of “The Birds’Head Haggada” may be next to a collection of reproductions by Arieh Aroch, a creative interpretation from the book of Midrash Rabba next to a tale by Pliny about the Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius competing over their mimetic abilities.   Study, repetition and practice are her ways of taking possession and internalizing these languages.

The direction of the language of art for her is both outward and inward; observation of the object “out there” and a translation of it to an inward observation and painting, into her soul and faith, and the translation of this inner world to the language of external forms.

In the same spirit, verbal language as well is a double language, a divided one, even when it is deemed the language of truth.  On the one hand, the written words are the graphic embodiment of the deepest and most abstract ideas of truth. On the other hand, they only touch at language, at the edge of this truth.  Despite their pretensions, they remain only an external, partial formulation.  A letter is forever a line, a mark, a graphic sign, a translation and nothing more.  For one who exchanged one homeland (the U.S.) for another (Israel), one language (English) for another (Hebrew), and left one (American) nationality for a new (Israeli) one, Ben-Dov is conscious of the meaning of translation.  If you will, translation as a metaphor for her existence.

There’s More than One Way to Fight Death (three versions), 1999, mixed media (with texts from Midrash Kohelet Rabbah and Pliny), each part 19 X 60 cm

The three units that make up the work “There is More Than One Way to Fight Death (Three Versions)”(1999) are a clear example of her interest in the issue of translation. A Greek story is told in Latin by the Roman historian Pliny in his book “Natural History.”  In the first version of the work, the Latin version appears in small, yet clear black letters. In the second version, the text reappears in English, in larger letters, yet hidden by light color, whitened.  Even though the English translation enabled the artist, for whom English is a mother tongue, to understand the Latin text, at the same time the translation becomes a “kiss through a curtain,” a screen, a distancing from the source. Ben-Dov deals with sources and sources of knowledge, and these disappear and vanish in the increasing haze. In the third version, Ben-Dov brings the Hebrew translation, this time in very large letters that get “closer” to us in size yet “further away” from us by hiding behind a screen of white on white.  Is this the nature of human knowledge?  Is it like a particle, that the closer we get to it, to understanding the world, the more it slips away from us?  Are we doomed to admit that “We merely make a temporary invention which covers that part of the world that is accessible to us at the moment”[v]?

The white screen is like the white fabric covering Parrhasius’ painting, like the  shroud covering the face of the artist’s mother at her death, like the fabric covering the pictures and mirrors in the house of mourning (as told in the Aramaic and Hebrew text that appears opposite the Pliny text in this work).  They all are the barrier to absolute knowledge.  Are Ben-Dov’s works saying that the man or woman of faith cannot approach knowledge, that he or she is doomed to walk blindly, groping forward or upward to avoid falling into the abyss of the age of uncertainty in which we live?  It is difficult to say.  As in her paintings, she chooses to remain silent, covering herself in screens, curtains and shrouds or hiding her face with her hand.

Text-Body-Ritual

A hand shielding her face is but one example of Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov’s ongoing interest in the subject of her face and body and their portrayal while performing religious ritual acts (prayer, immersion).  One can sense the tension inherent in painting the human body, moreover the female body viewed from up close.  The female body described in these paintings bears no signs of its religious or national identity, and it exudes a femininity that is soft, pure, and even erotic.   Ben-Dov depicts herself at the most intimate moments of religious experience.

From the artist’s viewpoint, Judaism is bound, perhaps more that any other religion, to the body.  She writes “The performance of the mitzvot (commandments) grants religious meaning and status to bodily acts”; yet “in a world that has become secular,  these laws came to be viewed not as legitimizing the body, but as limiting  and negating it.  The centrality of text, of Torah study, also was seen as distancing man from physical activity.”

For Ben-Dov, however, working with text is a physical activity, and it – the body of the text, is treated with sensuality and tactility.  Conscious of the tradition of language and art (from the “picture-poems” of the Golden Age of Spain up to conceptual art of the seventies), Ben-Dov emphasizes the shape and structure of the traditional text-bodies (as designed differently on the printed page of the Bible, the Mishna, or Talmud).  The letters and words become a figurative, bodily element, even like a picture of a woman.

A Cultural Center

Ruth Kestenbaum Ben-Dov’s exhibition is a stage in a persistent, uncompromising process in which she attempts to build a bridge between her religious and artistic worlds; between the attitude of Orthodox Judaism toward women and a feminist  consiousness of women’s rights and equality[vi].  Her artistic effort offers and creates changed standards for an Israeli intellectual art[vii] preferring that which brings together and opens up over that which separates and shuts out others.  Thus, without intending, her work bears a relevant political element.  She works with the consciousness that the blossoming of the spirit of Jewish-Israeli culture includes Jewish “cement” that will bind together the building blocks of this cultural center.

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