Bezalel-Levy's exhibit "Dying of Romanticism" will be on display in the Lincoln Theatre Art Bar from June 1 through July 31, 2010.
A reception for the artists will be held on Friday, July 9th from 5:30 to 7:30 with a screening of their short film immediately prior to our regular film screening.
"Dying of Romanticism" was first exhibited at the Jerusalem Theater for the Jerusalem Film Festival in July, 1996. The inspiration struck one day, several years earlier, when atmospheric changes, brought on by a heat wave, caused our local television reception in Israel to fade out and Egyptian TV from Cairo was received instead. Chaim grabbed his camera and started photographing the television screen. This began a process of searching for Arabic movies, at first between stations on the dial of an old black and white t.v. Later these images were enlarged , often editing them into montages on sheets of rice paper. Yonnah then painted the black and white images with oil pastels, sometimes adding gold foil.
The roots of Romanticism possibly hark back to Arabic culture. Orientalism has been a hallmark of the Romantic movement. Painters such as Delacroix, Ingres, and even Matisse, composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov and Grieg, have all been highly influence by Arabic themes, but it is not unlikely that even the earlier roots, going all the way back to the troubadours, were influenced by Arabic love poetry that Europeans may have encountered during the Crusades.
The word "romanticism" has as its root "roman" which is French for story or novel. Our expectations of love and romance are highly influenced by books, and more recently movies. Sometimes it is hard for us even to define what love is, we have been so under the influence of Hollywood and other tinsel-towns from Bollywood to Cairo. Some of the images behind these paintings were Hollywood's take on the allure of the East. Dorothy Lamour and Rita Hayworth both make appearances in this series. The images from Egyptian movies are just the full circle, East to West and then back to the Middle East.
A short film about "Dying of Romanticism" can be viewed here.