When my wife and I visited Israel in September, she was amazed by how lousy the public sculpture was, and began taking pictures of it. I posted some of those pictures here. No doubt there’s some great architecture in Israel, the bridge near the central bus station in Jerusalem and the earthen vessel that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum leap to mind, but there’s a lot of mediocre public sculpture (and the art in the Israel Museum leaves something to be desired, and let’s not talk about the literature…). I have now made the sculpture a subclause in my critique of Zionism. My theory: a, young country needs to express its identity, inevitably embarrassing; b, if you’re Jewish you get to plop down anything anywhere, just about, to wild applause, and as a Jewish prince with entitlement issues I know whereof I speak (in fact my mother had even read a Piaget book on childrearing before I was born and learned that since excrement was the first thing a child made and he was very proud of it, mother must not do anything to shame the child let alone flush the glorious product when he was in earshot); c, Jews flourish as artists in a relationship with a majority culture.
Anyway, a reader sent in the shot above from the illegal Israeli colony, Ma’ale Adumim, in the West Bank. Gosh. The object in the middle is a globe, I believe.
Also notice the verdant surround. They’ve stolen a lot of Palestine’s water for that effect.
