Acts and Words
In the early seventies, Michail Grobman immigrated to Jerusalem
from Moscow. In his homeland, in the sixties, he was among the
active members of the Second Russian Avant-Garde,1 and in the
mid seventies he founded and led the Leviathan group in
Jerusalem. The “rectification” [Heb. tikkuri] power of man in
general and of the artist in particular was emphasized in the
introduction he wrote to one of the Leviathan group catalogues:
“Cockroach, butterfly, rhinoceros, tree – perfect works of art.
“Landscape – an environment with perfect aesthetic values.
The composition of these works may be limited or endless. It is
the work of God.
“He who copies these works – a thief, a plagiarist, a poor
imitator, whose sense of freedom has been extinguished.
“We were created in the image of God, which means we are,
potentially, capable of creating new worlds. Such an act of
creation is the supreme sphere of human deeds: to resemble GodL
“Image, letter, a white plain — these comprise the way of
refusal. It is the way of liberation and transcendence, the way to
the perception of and adherence to the spiritual.
“White paper, letter, image – means of memory passed from
one generation to the next, of knowing the world, a way to release
energy and purify the soul.
“Magical symbolism is a method that enables intuitive
attainment of the world through visual means.
1 See The Beautiful Sixties in Moscow: Ilya Kabakov – Michail Grobman, esh- caL, cd.
Mordechai Omer (Tel Aviv: The Genia Schreiber University An Gafleiy, Td A»
University, 1989).
“An object that meets the standards of magical symbolism
appears in a visual-static form. The interpretation and attainment
of that object is tantamount to attaining the world. Observing a
symbolic-magical object leads man into the sphere of Kabbalistic
concepts, into a religious-mystical experience of the soul, and
from there to wisdom and love – namely, to happiness. The word
of Kabbalah is directed to Kabbalists.
“Magical symbolism regards the form as a rare opportunity to
convey mystical knowledge to wide circles without violating that
knowledge”.2
Grobman’s plastic language during these years can be divided
into two practical areas, which were at times complementary and
at others, independent of each other. On the one hand, he
continued painting figurative images, which constituted points of
departure for the intimate language of his symbols: hands, eyes,
heads, human figures, plants, animals, birds, fish, etc.; on the
other hand, his use of the living human body and of graphical,
typographical and textual images – all figments of his conceptual
thought – gradually increased.
Works such as Jerusalem Construction (1978) or Aleph —Earth3
(1978) are dominated by monochrome colors that almost
completely fill the surface of the painting; only the textual writing
– sometimes in Hebrew, sometimes in Russian – interferes with
the monochromatic perfection, disquieting the viewer. The beam
of light bisecting Jerusalem Construction lengthwise conceals the
biblical Creation command of the First Day – “And God said, ‘Let
there be light’: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was good: and God divided the light from the darkness” — as if the
2 The Leviathan group pamphlet (Kibbutz Ashdot Ya’acov Meuchad: Beit Uri and
Kami Nechushtan, 1978).
3 Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet; it is also the first letter of the word
Adama – earth.
‘zip’, Barnett Newman’s shaky string, has been replaced by the act
of a scribe, a copyist of the Scriptures who believes that by the
power of his actions he can reconstruct the primeval act of
Creation. In the upper right-hand side of Construction, Grobman
inscribed in Russian excerpts from his poems: