The Herd
Iris KritzmanMenashe Kadishman's paintings of sheep are a handwriting, and form an integral part of his vocabulary of images, to the point of becoming an icon. Kadishman uses the sheep as a means of exploring two aspects of his art language, that of painting in color, and that of idea.
The outstanding characteristic of Kadishman's painting is his natural talent for producing an inexhaustible richness. The idea, in his art, is the thread that leads to the wealth of forms, hues
and sensuality.
Kadishman works in series (groups) in all the branches of his art-drawing, sculpture and painting as in the heads cut out of iron, or the rams` heads, or the telephone-directory pages from the seventies, the sculpture in glass, or the actual painting-over of things in nature trees, rocks and earth.
The sheep, in Kadishman's work, symbolizes the sacrificial victim in the binding of Isaac. In his paintings, he translates the obedience to God in the biblical myth to our own times, alluding to the ruling power which sends its youths to die in wars. Except that in the biblical story the ram is sacrificed instead of Isaac, while in Kadishman's version there is no ram to substitute for Isaac. His paintings accord human qualities to the sheep, which become symbols for the souls of the youths who fell in Israel's wars.
The five hundred paintings of sheep's heads have been taken down from their historical place on the walls and placed on the floor, inviting the visitor to wonder what the additional layer that the artist wishes to express might be. The positioning of the paintings on the floor in an order that is not an order creates a mixed impression, of what might be a herd, or tombstones. Each one of them is a painting, but as a whole they are a sculpture. The visitor is free to choose his own way through the "herd", and with each step he discovers further details, additional sheep, new thoughts about man's fate.
Kadishman's sheep have come a long way, from the herd in the kibbutz, and through the 1978 Venice Biennale, where he introduced a herd of live sheep into the Israeli pavilion (nature as art). The artist has managed to isolate each anonymous sheep from the herd and to make it unique and special. The sheep's return to the herd in this exhibition closes a circle. Kadishman's sheep have emerged from the herd and returned back to him.
Iris Kritzman
Curator, Israel