MICHAEL ROGATCHI’S WORKS ARE PRESENTED IN LONDON, the UK
Some of Michael Rogatchi’s known works from his LIBERTANGO series were presented in London. In particular, Without Ending, and The Light of the Songs were among the works presented. After the special presentation, the works will be staying in London becoming the parts of notable art collections.
Art Works: Michael Rogatchi (C), Inna Rogatchi ©.
This year, 5779, or 2019 for the rest of the world, on August 9th, a very special Shabbat is coming, the one that gets straight into Tisha b’Av, 9th Av, ‘a marker’ in our Jewish annual calendar resonating with so many tragedies throughout our long and unique history.
The tragedies ancient and so very fresh and recent ones, all essentially painful, with the present ones are getting into one’s heart with no anesthesia, with one more scar added to our common Jewish heart. Sometimes, one can think that our common Jewish heart made of scars, that those scars are the very tissue of it. Having survived all those scars and living with them, Jewish nation is unique in its endurance.
What’s the secret of this endurance? In my view, it is our dialogue with the Creator, very personal one for every single Jew, even not religious one, and often shared and collective one for those who are members of the religious communities. It is our Torah, the source of wisdom, fairness and kindness. It is our heritage, our traditions, our values, our fundamental humanism based on it all, and originated from those sources of life for Jewish people. It is our heart learned in generations. The heart made of scars. And our memory lives it its own landscape, for almost six thousand years by now.
It is a common place in a Jewish studies to refer to all those numerous and major calamities that did occur on 9th Av throughout the history. And it is registered in our mind, as a part of our general knowledge. But when an artist reflects on this chain of solemnity, it gets into another dimension. Our neutral knowledge being visualised all of the sudden gets the volume. Importantly, it is not a volume of an amplified selfishness of an artist, but it is a volume of shared emotions, shared memory, and shared experience of our people. This is what a real, non-egoistic, even anti-egoistic art brings to us.
The art reflections on the theme of the 9th Av in this review gets us to the destroyed for many decades Hurva Synagogue with its standing lonely Arc so vulnerable and so memorable that it has become a part of our love to Jerusalem, even after Hurva has been restored in all its splendor. It is a rare case when a ruin can command all-consuming love, but in Jerusalem, it is natural thing to happen. The work is part of the Permanent Art Collection of the Municipality of Jerusalem.
It also gets us to the formatting Jewish history – and Jewish character to large extent too – expulsion from Spain, this art study speaks on Toledo, the origin place of my paternal family. The expulsion of Jews from Spain back in 1492 formed not only our history and character substantially. It did affect the history of Europe, the history of the world, the entire route and impulse of mankind’s development in many respects. One can feel the void of Jews, our culture, tradition and our heritage in Spain till this very day. It is palpable there, and still be deeply sad, five centuries on.
Gush Katif in 2005 had happened the next day after Tisha b’Av, and the hearts of many people bled then. Not all of them, clearly, and maybe it was even a minority. But the tragedy it was for Jewish people on the Jewish land, and there is the art that reflects on it, as well, on this fresh Tisha B’Av wound.
What’s left of the Beit Hamikdash, both of which had been destroyed on Tish b’Av is the priceless corn-stone of Judaism, the Kotel. The feeling of the Kotel is absolutely individual, and if some editor could come with a special anthology in which the reflections of many talented and special people on the Kotel would be collected, it would be one of the great readings ever, in my opinion. And the memory accumulated in the Kotel’s stones is the guarantee of our survival.
What the Kotel does to us? In my perception and experience, it settles setbacks, all of it, of whatever character, and it as if cleans oneself from inside. Why it is? Because most of the innumerous number of people visiting it day and night are coming there with their best intentions. Human energy does not disappear. Especially from such unique people as the Kotel. This is to speak only on the tangible aspect of the Kotel.
The stones of the Kotel, and the spirit hovering there is always there for us, it always ready to listen to every one of us.
On the eve of the 9th Av, Tisha b’Av, I am just thinking: are we ready to in-tune ourselves to the Presence of the Kotel in our lives? Hope so.
Michael Rogatchi’s artworks were featured in Inna Rogatchi’s essay Heart Made of Scars: Tisha B’Av and Art. The essays analyses the impact of emotional spiritual art on the process of understanding of history and spiritual legacy. Among the Michael’s works featured are The Memories of the Kotel, Jerusalem. My Stones, and Spiral of Faith diptych. The essay in full can be read here.
By MICHAEL ROGATCHI (C).
Presentation at the ART & HUMANISM INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM, TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY, TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL ( Excerpts)
June 15, 2019
Dear friends and colleagues,
I would like to invite you to imagine a picture and situation about 100 years ago – when talented Jewish artists, mostly from the Eastern Europe, wanted and tried to express themselves in the world beyond a shtetl.
The centre of freedom, possibilities, opportunities and new world for them was Paris. Paris was and has become a cosmos for them.
As we know, the name Ecole de Paris, was given to the group of the most talented artists by the French anti-Semitic art critics with a twist of irony. They wanted to make a joke at the expense of those defenseless bunch of foreign Jews in a tightening atmosphere of Paris in the second part of the 1930s.
In fact, the irony should be directed in the opposite direction, towards those critics. The group of the artists to which Marc Chagall, Chaim Soutine and the others belonged, it was a group of brilliant artists, very well educated and trained, very well prepared, real masters.
In my modest view, the true name of this group should be not Ecole de Paris, but Ecole de Vitebsk – because they all stayed loyal to their heart, their origin, our national history and our tradition which does have its miraculous quality: it is going on unbreakable for all these thousands of years, till today.
In this tradition, certain images are essential and irreplaceable.
When I saw Chagall’s works for the first time, his hens jumped into my mind.
My first reaction was: I saw these hens before. Where did I see them? – I thought. And then I realised that I saw them in my own house. The very same hens were drawn by my grand-mother.
Many years later, I saw these hens again. Those were drawn by the grand-mother of my wife.
To me, these Chagall and our both grand-mothers’ hens are real symbols of our life, our home, whenever we are: in Tel-Aviv, in New York, or in Paris.
When I saw the works of 18 Jewish artists at the remarkable exhibition on the returned to public art of the murdered artists from the Ecole de Paris, the exhibition in Haifa in the second part of 2018, resulting from a focused several years of effort, research and discoveries, I saw these hens again, in a symbolic way.
I saw our Jewish way of telling about our life and our people with love, gentleness, and unbounded humanism, does not matter what.
As far, as our devotion to the Jewish soul will be continued and will be present in our works, the works of the contemporary artists, our silver thread, both in artistic and in spiritual meaning, will be preserved. To me, it is the only way to create, to feel that thread un-thorn.
The ARTIST ON HIS ITALIAN COLLECTION
The Artist On His Blue Collection
By Michael Rogatchi (C)
2011
The feature of The Life of Two of Us collection that binds it all together is the idea that I should ‘write a book’, create a collection of visual novelettes. Each painting in the collection is a story, with its plot, its beginning, its unfolding, and its end. To get this right, the reason-and-consequence linkages had to be addressed in this form as well; visually I tried to do this in such a way that details on the canvas are drawn each from the other, literally, and for sure many of them are interconnected.
But before depicting a story on the canvas, you have to create it. The starting point for me for that was the work on C’est Fini: Black Trombone, which is my favourite painting from the collection, and a rather special one for me. It was this work that prompted me to make my own story after Serge Gainsbourg’s Black Trombone piece. The experience was so engaging that I constructed the entire collection that followed my Homage to Serge Gainsbourg on the same principle.
Black Trombone by Serge Gainsbourg is such a powerful and absorbing piece that at some stage I somehow started to see it simply. So, I tried both to follow the Gainsbourg story, and at the same time, to create my own. On the canvas, it is not the whole story though, but the essence of it. Looking at the woman’s figure there, it is not quite clear whether she has left definitely, or still would like to stay. At the same time, the man does realise that she is leaving, and he certainly does not wish it to happen; he is in anguish, but some part of him is getting distanced from her already, he has transported himself into his trombone, to be there alone. As for her, she realises that it is time for her to go, but deep inside she just doesn’t fully understand why. The drama here lies in the fact that both of them still feel for each other, but in parallel, not in harmony, any more; the bond is about to break. C’est Fini…
There is more behind the Black Trombone painting than one song of Serge Gainsbourg, of course. I just love this person dearly. And also feel it a pity somehow that I had not enough time to bring to The Life of Two of Us works devoted to Leonard Cohen, inspired by him. Those two men are quite different as personalities, but the quality of their extraordinary talent, and the impact that it has had, is similarly significant to me.
To say a little more about how I see some other works from the collection, Longing is another dear work for me; somehow I do feel particularly sorry for lonely women, and this story is all about that. Black Diamond is a special work, conceptually and technically, and it was prompted by those special Italian nights, unparalleled in their beauty – and their rich complexity. Cappuccino for Two is a story about hopeless love; but personally, I still want to give it some hope, too. Crystal of Love is speaking of the degree of love that unleashes an all-consuming mutual connection. Blue Night’s Ballad is a story of the forgotten memories of two people. This might be not that conventional a concept but I can imagine that it is not only we, but our memories too, that can depart each from the other, sadly. Tuscan Wind is drawn from my understanding of Tuscany, one of my very favourite places. Tuscany for me evokes a quite essential tenderness. Arno Blues is the most characteristic Florentine work in the collection for me. The Florentine evenings, the Florentine nights are a phenomenon in their own right. This painting projects my understanding and perception of Florence – its supreme tenderness, its elegant passion, and that special Florentine charm, indescribable in words.
When completing the collection of those 22 novelettes, I was thinking that my aim in the work of that collection is to stimulate people looking at the paintings to get their own stories out of the canvases. One’s own story is a personal thing, and in my understanding, it must always be treated this way. But if in looking at my canvases from The Life of Two of Us my audience does start to pick up something from there, to understand a story of their own, maybe, something important for them, then this collection of novelettes will have served its purpose, I think.
SPECIAL PRESENTATION OF MUSIC IN CAPTIVITY PROJECT IN SENATE OF ITALIAN REPUBLIC
Michael Rogatchi was invited to participate in special presentation of important project, Music in Captivity, in the Senate of Italian Republic in Rome. The project that focuses on construction of arts & music multi-complex in Bari, Italy, is the brain-child of Italian maestro Francesco Lotoro, close associate of Michael and Inna Rogatchi. Michael Rogatchi supports the project and participates in its progress. Some of Michael’s art will be exhibited in the art museum of Music in Captivity complex, as well.
Michael Rogatchi’s Amadeus. Ultimo Credo art work has been successfully presented at the special art event by Taylor & Graham art gallery in New York. Michael’s work had been featured at the special charitable art auction celebrating the 10th anniversary of the well-known Centre for Art Law. The work has caused high interest and has been sold at the price twice higher of its estimate.
Michael Rogatchi have had a long and productive collegial meeting with prolific Israeli-American artist Yoram Raanan. Michael and Inna Rogatchi and The Rogatchi Foundation did support Raanan in a world-wide campaign after Raanan’s studio had catch a massive fire which destroyed most of the artist’s work created by him during 40 years, back in the end of 2016 and after that. Two masters have had a good and productive day together full of professional exchange and fruitful friendly discussion.
MICHAEL ROGATCHI PARTICIPATES IN ART, HOLOCAUST AND HUMANISM SYMPOSIUM AT TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY
Michael Rogatchi participated in international Art, Holocaust and Humanism symposium in Tel-Aviv. The symposium was co-organised by the Tel-Aviv University and The Rogatchi Foundation. Michael Rogatchi was presenting his Ecole de Vitebsk and Its Long Echo paper at the symposium. More detail about it can be read in Project section of this site.
At the special meeting with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Michael Rogatchi have discussed prospects of public art in Jerusalem. The artist has presented some of his ideas which were perceived with enthusiasm and gracefully. The sides has agreed to continue fruitful and friendly cooperation on several directions and projects.
