The secret of art in Israel

The "Fresh Paint" exhibition, which opened yesterday, is Israel's first commercial arts fair. Anyone who goes to see it will observe that except for the fact that the signs are in Hebrew, it is being run in the same professional spirit as the best overseas fairs, from London to New York. The artwork is well-packaged; the selection is wide and ranges from fair to excellent. The gallery area is polished, and the public is flocking to it, to see and to buy.

This fair reflects an unprecedented boom in the status of Israeli visual arts, both in Israel and worldwide. This month, Sigalit Landau will open an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York; three Israeli artists are currently on display at the Pompidou Center's National Museum of Modern Art in Paris; a new work by Zadok Ben-David has been installed in central London; and many Israeli artists either are currently exhibiting or will be exhibiting in the coming months in important galleries throughout the world. And here in Israel, 80,000 people came to Dani Karavan's exhibit at the Tel Aviv Museum, which has since moved on, and will open in another two weeks in Berlin.

This is no longer a matter of a few individual artists; it is a flood of interest in art created in Israel, just a few years after the local art world decided to use that term rather than "Israeli art." The art that is being created here encompasses the entire spectrum of Israeli society. It is primarily a reflection of individualism, of internal journeys, but sometimes also of the complex Israeli reality in which the artists live.

Some 20 guests from abroad - gallery owners, collectors and, for the first time, also auction house representatives - came here for "Fresh Paint." In the coming week, four collections from the next Istanbul Biennial will visit here. There is nothing new in the phenomenon of visitors from abroad, but there is a sense that more and more professionals want to come here - as if that well-kept secret, the quality of art in this country, had suddenly been discovered.

Israeli art no longer needs to be political in the sloganeering sense, nor need it engage in self-flagellation, as many artists did in the past. Art lovers are no longer interested in Israel as exotica, but as some place that is part of a broader discourse. This change has occurred thanks to a welcome combination of an exceptional mass of artistic talent; efforts by private bodies, especially galleries that have been exhibiting intensively at international fairs in recent years; the museum establishment; and sometimes even help, albeit slight, from government agencies.

Greater assistance to the visual arts would produce a huge dividend for Israel's international image. The growing number of people worldwide who are interested in art guarantees it. One could have exhaustive discussions about the quality of the art created here, as is true everywhere. There are things to be said about its transformation into a commodity, about the narrowing of its spiritual meaning and about the fact that it has sometimes become part of the celebrity culture. But its growth, fecundity, interest and success are elating, and generate new opportunities for the creation of serious works of art.