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1 See: Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman, Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2009); Detlef Mertins, Modernity Unbound: Other Histories of Archi-tectural Modernity (London: AA Publications, 2011); see also Alan Colquhoun, “Criticism and Self-Criticism in German Modernism,” in the AA Files no. 28, (Autumn 1994): 26–33; Colquhoun, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1985), 46–47; Hilde Heynen, Archi-tecture and Modernity: A Critique, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999), 43; Anthony Vidler, Histories of the Immediate Past: Inventing Architectural Modernism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008).

2 Suzanne Landau, preface to Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways, by Batsheva Goldman Ida (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2012), 123.

3 Colin Rowe, The Architecture of Good Intentions: Toward a Possible Retrospect (London: Academy Editions, 1994); Mitchell Schwarzer, German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Harry Fran-cis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, ed. and trans., Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2014 IMAGES DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340024

Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways. Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, October 26, 2012–April 20, 2013. Cata-logue by Batsheva Goldman Ida, (Tel-Aviv, 2012). Paperback, 123 pp., 96 ill., (57 color), Hebrew/English. NIS 60.

Forging Ahead: Wolpert and Gumbel, Israeli Silversmiths for the Modern Age. Israel Museum, Jeru-salem, November 23, 2012–April 6, 201. Catalogue by Sharon Weiser-Ferguson, (Jerusalem, 2012). Hardback, 193 pp., Hebrew/English.

Common Roots. Design Map of Central Europe. Design Museum Holon, November 15–February 23, 2013. Catalogue edited by Agnieszka Jacobson and Galit Gaon (Holon, 2012). Hardback, 176 pp., Hebrew/English. NIS 80.

New Narratives and Legacies of Israeli Modernisms

Three exhibitions at Israeli museums this year, each accompanied by a catalog, could prove to be milestones in the study of Israeli design. By viewing the contribu-tions of Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert, David Heinz Gumbel and Friedrich Adler to the development of a local visual language, we learn not only about the founding fathers of Israeli design, but also about how their work reflects the process of forging a national identity during the creative height of the modernist movement. While it would be incorrect to call the visual language that they constructed original, their choice of particular elements from within the International repertoire, and the way they adapted theoretical principles to the Israeli con-text, laid the groundwork for a design language whose influence can still be felt today.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, held an exhibition of the works of Wolpert and Gumbel, who taught at the New Bezalel school (as it was then known) and in the 1930s laid the foundations of modern Israeli metalwork. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art showed the work of Friedrich Adler, who was active in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century, the period of the most important revolution in the history of mod-ernism. Common Roots at Design Museum Holon, added another dimension to the works of these three German-educated designers. This exhibition revealed

the connections between Israeli design and the design produced in the ten Central and Eastern European countries between Russia and Germany since World War II, during and after Communist rule.

Taken together, the exhibition catalogs offer a reevaluation of the key period during which the “Zion-ist revolution” adopted modern design, by showing how modernism was fundamentally linked to the process of national renewal. At first glance there seems to be a contradiction between the universal, “mechanistic” identity attributed to modernism, and the idea of being rooted in the land that characterizes Jewish national-ism. But in the past several years an increasing number of studies have appeared challenging most of the myths associated with modernism, including those attached to the Bauhaus school.1 As a result, any analysis of these three designers, and any reevaluation of the principles that the New Bezalel School bequeathed to Israeli design, must adopt an “alternative to the Bau-haus narrative of modernism,” as Suzanne Landau, the chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, notes in the preface to the Adler exhibition.2

As scholars have come to recognize, the theoretical basis of modern design language was laid already in the nineteenth century.3 The theories that were devel-oped long before the Bauhaus opened its doors, or Le Corbusier published his books, faithfully reflected the mood of that century: on the one hand, they showed

2 Ziva Sternhell | DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340024

4 Friedrich Adler, “About Imagination,” cited in: Batsheva

enthusiasm for scientific and technological advance-ment and the freedom embodied in the revolt against the “Old World”; on the other hand, they expressed apprehension toward the “New World,” which was increasingly perceived as intellectually bankrupt, mechanistic and alienating. The flowering of nationalist movements, as well as the desire for a renewed con-nection to nature and/or the archaic world, stemmed from the various attempts to turn design into a tool for forging a new union of matter and spirit. Awareness of the important role of Romanticism in formulating the theory of modern design also helps to deconstruct the enlightened, universalist and rational image that has usually been associated with the abstract language created in the early twentieth century in Europe and the United States.

It is in this intellectual context that the develop-ment of Israeli design can be understood. Boris Schatz founded Bezalel in 1906 with the aim of contributing to Jewish national revival. Schatz may have fancied himself the Jewish William Morris, adopting the ideals of the English Arts and Crafts movement, but his world-view embodied the Romantic tradition of Central and Eastern Europe. A combination of ideals characterizes Adler’s art; he could have joined Bezalel as an instruc-tor immediately after the school’s establishment. But unlike Schatz, Adler was capable of adapting to changes in the zeitgeist: his shift from Jugendstil to Expression-ism and his joining of the Deutscher Werkbund gave him standing in progressive design circles in Germany even as their styles changed, and may have granted him entrée to the New Bezalel.

The exhibition’s curator, Batsheva Goldman Ida, hails Adler as a pioneering industrial designer of the modern age. Born in Germany in 1878, he was active in an era that saw the flowering of German industry at the turn of the twentieth century, when awareness of the importance of the design of industrial goods fomented a genuine revolution in the field. Adler studied in Munich, an important center of the Jugendstil and the Expressionist movements, and taught in schools that applied the principles of Arts and Crafts; meanwhile, he continued designing decorative objects (fig. 1). In her catalog, Goldman Ida situates Adler in relation to contemporary trends, while also documenting, in words and images, his stylistic shift from the curving, flowing lines of Art Nouveau that characterized his

early works, to the angular forms of Expressionism. But this was not a complete reversal. Adler never abandoned decoration, and his fundamental design principles never changed: he treated nature as a source of inspiration and sought to give the objects he designed a spiritual dimension that reflected “the great, simple and eternal form.” As an artist, he served (in his words) “as a medium and means of continuously creative divine intent in the world, in which we have been placed.”4

Goldman Ida describes Adler’s joining of the Werk-bund in 1910 as an important step in his career. Indeed, it was the establishment of the Werkbund, more than that of the Bauhaus, that marked the real revolution in the history of modern design. Founded in Germany by government initiative in 1907 as an association of designers, architects, intellectuals and industrialists, the organization’s members managed to combine the functional principles of Arts and Crafts (chief among which were “truth to material” and an empha-sis on functionalist construction) with the demands of industrial manufacturing. This elite group, which quickly saw the need to adapt design to the economic circumstances, contributed significantly to Germany’s status as the cradle of the “modernist Revolution” and to its becoming a pioneer of minimalist serial design adapted for a mass society.

At first glance it is difficult to find a link between Adler’s style and the standardized, industrial character attributed to the Werkbund. Similarly, the essays by Adler included in the exhibition catalog do not seem to match the materialistic and utilitarian myth that is associated with German modernism. The transition to a geometric language, however compatible with making industrial-type objects, did not eliminate the influence of the Romantic tradition. It is enough to look at Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion, designed for the 1914 Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, or his 1913 Monument of Iron—works that featured the most representative construction materials of the modern age—to recognize the extent to which the central figures of the Werkbund embraced both Romantic ideals and Expressionist design. Even an examination of the minutes of Werkbund meetings upends many assumptions about the modernist revolution of the early twentieth century, not merely the famous rift between proponents of standard prototypes suitable

Goldman Ida, Friedrich Adler: Ways and Byways, p. 112.

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5 John V. Maciuika, Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics and the German State, 1890–1919 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2005), 23; Francesco Dal Co, Figures of Architecture and Thought: German Architecture Culture 1880–1920 (New York:

for mass production and those who sought to preserve the individualistic nature of design. (Adler of course supported the latter camp, which for years was thought to be the loser in this battle.) The universalist ideal usually associated with German modernism is also subject to doubt when one discovers the nationalis-tic worldviews held by a number of members of the Werkbund, including Hermann Muthesius, Friedrich Naumann and Emil Rathenau. These men viewed the Werkbund as a means for advancing not only German industry and its international and imperialist policy imperatives, but also the power and the image of the German Volk, a central element of German culture since the turn of the nineteenth century.5

Acknowledgment of the complex intellectual context that characterized Germany during what is

considered modernism’s golden age also has implica-tions for an analysis of the heritage of the New Bezalel. The Wolpert and Gumbel exhibition represents not only the “modernist” principles taught by the Israeli design institution, but also the contribution of the Jerusalem school, which was born during the same period, when artists and intellectuals from Central Europe came to the city, bringing the tradition of German Romanticism with them (figs. 2–3). As with the Werkbund, the move to simple geometric forms did not eliminate the desire to impart materials with a spiritual dimension in order to create a new union between humanity and the modern world. As stud-ies and exhibitions from the past few decades have shown, this spiritual longing for a reunification that can solve the problem of alienation in the modern

Fig. 1. Friedrich Adler, Etrog box, Heilbronn, 1913–14. Manufactured by Peter Bruckmann & Sons, Heilbronn. Silver, repoussé; ivory, 11.7×16.8×14 cm. Hebrew inscription: “And ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees” (Leviticus 23:40). Courtesy Spertus Institute, Chicago.

Rizzoli, 1990), 171–260. See also: Frederic J. Schwartz, The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

4 Ziva Sternhell | DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340024

style from the “new Bezalel” (reopened in 1935). But as we can clearly see in the exhibition and the texts of instructors at Bezalel—especially by Josef Budko and Mordechai Ardon—the basic ideals were not very different from those promoted by Boris Schatz: art was called upon to participate in the national revolution, but now, in the 30s, modern design was intended to represent the spiritual aspects of an advanced nation. The curator Sharon Weiser-Ferguson, who emphasizes the difference between the artistic approaches of the new and the old Bezalel schools, writes that the sense of a national mission characterized both periods.

Fig. 2. Ludwig Y. Wolpert, Torah crown, 1932, silver, collection of Gilad Gat, Israel. © Chava Wolpert Richard. © Photo: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem by Elie Posner.

world was also common in the Bauhaus, not only in its early years when mystical-expressionist trends domi-nated, but also in the period when the New Objectivity was adopted and the main focus of the school became the integration of design and industry.6

The emphasis on spiritual life and the desire to merge universalism and nationalism that character-ized the Jerusalem school was also apparent at Bezalel. The shift to the abstract language and the adoption of industrial production created the impression of an abyss separating the “old Bezalel” (1906–1929) with its utopian Messianism and its decorative and nostalgic

6  Stanford Anderson has written in his book on Peter Behrens, one of the fathers of the modern architecture and design and the central figure in the Werkbund, that in the 1920s Behrens’s intent was, “the evocation of a romantic spiritual movement opposed to what was now seen as the materialism and one-sided rationalism

of a lost time,” in: Stanford Anderson Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 2000), 231. See also the catalog of an exhibition at the MOMA: Terrence Riley and Barry Bergdoll, eds. Mies in Berlin (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2001).

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Fig. 3. David H. Gumbel, three-branched candlestick, ca. 1930, silver and ivory, private collection, Germany. © Malka Cohavi. © Photo: Thomas Goldschmidt, Badisches Landesmuseum.

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7 Cited in: Sharon Weiser-Ferguson, Forging Ahead: Wolpert and Gumbel, Israeli Silversmiths for the Modern Age (Jerusalem: Israel

Museum, 2012), 175.8 Cited in ibid., 176, 187.

objects, but also in their influence on their students. The fundamental principles taught by the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, which were accepted by all three of these artists, and above all the emphasis on construction and loyalty to the materials and work methods, became part of the tradition of Israeli design through the generations. The problem is that there has never been a comprehensive study of this tradition of Israeli design until the present. Even the work of designers who have earned international recognition have not been subject to theoretical or historical analysis that goes beyond the “local story.”

In that respect, the exhibition in Holon could be considered an important step toward examining Israeli design in a broader perspective. The exhibition was prompted by a visit by the museum’s chief curator, Galit Gaon, to Design Week in Poland. She discovered a surprising similarity between the works on display and Israeli design. Together with the Polish curator Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, Gaon turned Design Museum Holon into a platform for exhibiting design from ten former Soviet-bloc Central European coun-tries (fig. 4). The similarity is indeed obvious, and not by coincidence. The exhibition catalog, which treats each country separately, describes the genesis of rigid modernist design in the context of difficult economic conditions and socialist ideals, which dictated frugality, modesty and functionality. The conditions were similar in Israel until the 1960s. The fact that the influence of this heritage continued into the post-Communist era also has a parallel in Israeli design, which has been reluctant to embrace postmodern trends until recently. However, it is crucial to add that Romanticism had a decisive influence on the way modernism developed in Central Europe and in Israel. It is from this perspective that one can understand the significance attributed to values such as authenticity, honesty, simplicity, and even functionality, ideas that modernist theories treated as laws of nature. Modernist design in Israel and in Central and Eastern Europe also shared a sense of longing for the traditional world of local handicrafts that forged a national identity.

Among other things, she notes that the practical graphics department was defined from the start as “propagandistic.” Using letters of the Hebrew alphabet instead of traditional ornamentation (Adler preceded Wolpert and Gumbel in this practice, as Goldman Ida points out) was an excellent means for giving objects a modernist character and for accentuating the nation-alistic aspect of the design.

A comparison with the use of the Gothic script in Germany long after the demise of the neo-Gothic style makes it clear that the modernism developed in Jerusalem was grounded in Central Europe. Even the differences between Wolpert and Gumbel that Weiser-Ferguson describes are more than a little reminiscent of the disputes in the Werkbund. Wolpert believed in embracing the demands of mechanization and “bridg-ing the gap with industry,” as he put it. By contrast, Gumbel remained loyal to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and the principle of handcraft: “With us, every student destined to become an artist and craftsman designs his work from beginning to end, and experiences the joy of creation.”7 Both men specialized in designing Judaica in response to market demands. The fact that Wolpert came from a religiously observant family and had also studied design in Frankfurt came through in his work, both in his ability to integrate biblical verses and in the expressive shapes he gave to the ritual objects he made. Weiser-Ferguson points out that Wolpert, in contrast to others, understood the significance of the texts and as a sculptor he was aware of the importance of the empty space between letters and between words. He even went so far as to claim that “the fate of the nation was marked” in the letters.8 His upbringing prepared Wolpert to understand the connection between nationalism and religion funda-mental to the Israeli experience.

In both catalogs the curators have provided detailed explanations of the works, making a significant con-tribution to study of the field. As the curators point out, the contributions of Adler, Wolpert and Gumbel lie not only in the beautiful objects they left us, and in adapting the modern language to traditional religious

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Recognition of these “common roots,” as the exhibi-tion is called, already lends an additional dimension to the work and writings of Adler, Wolpert and Gumbel. Hopefully these important exhibitions will spur studies that shed new light on contemporary designers as well. That would make it possible to evaluate the influence of the ideas that blossomed in the first half of the twen-tieth century on designers in later periods, including those who are active today in what Jacobson-Cielecka calls the global “cultural supermarket.” Fundamentally, even when such values as “universal” and “local” are examined from critical standpoints and take on new meanings, one can still see how contemporary design-ers such as Yaacov Kaufman, Vered Kaminski, Galya

Rosenfeld, and to a large extent Ron Arad, broke into the international scene while preserving principles that were inculcated in early twentieth-century Jerusalem. In a broader sense, these artists and their forbearers epito-mize the full complexity of the modernist movement.

Ziva Sternhell teaches theory of modern architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem and is a regular contributor to Haaretz on art, design, and culture. She has published book chapters and articles on the German-Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn and the history of architecture in Israel.

Ziva Sternhell

Fig. 4. Maciej Gasienica Giewont, untitled. 2009. Wood-turned bowl. Poland. (Photo Maciej Gasienica Giewont).