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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/31725/full/31725/israel-off-the-wall/ <br /><br /> <b>Israel, off the wall</b> <br /> Friday, March 2, 2007 | by <p>joe eskenazi </p> <br /><br /><p>Utter the word “poster” and the most likely mental pictures that come to mind are inexpensive prints of “Starry Night” or, of course, the young adult staples of Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver,” Al Pacino in “Scarface” and John Belushi wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “college” from “Animal House.” <br /><br /> Odds are, you didn’t think of modern-art renderings of a camel toting two huge cans of Israeli olive oil or beaming, kerchief-wearing young women of the kibbutz enthusiastically brandishing their Hebrew-lettered cleaning powder and impressively white sheets. But, starting this month, maybe you will. <br /><br /> “Made in Israel,” an exhibition of more than 100 Israeli commercial posters from the nation’s pre-state days to the 1990s, opens at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s Katz Snyder Gallery starting Sunday, March 4 and is free to anyone who walks through the front door. <br /><br /> Here at j., we were lucky enough to be sent a preview booklet containing all the posters that will be on exhibit. Once one picks up the booklet, it is nearly impossible to put it down. The colorful illustrations of snarling members of the Jewish Brigade charging into action, or kibbutzniks waving from sturdy tractors in their lush fields as Air France Bréguet Deux-Ponts four-engine propeller cruisers lumber overhead, are simply arresting. <br /><br /> <img src=""http://www.jweekly.com/images/baposter1.jpg"><br" /><br /> Not that JCC arts director Lenore Naxon is surprised. After all, catching your eye is what these posters were designed to do, she notes. And many of them were designed so well they still pack a wallop 75 years later.<br /><br /> “They’re totally accessible. It’s commercial art and it’s really about life, everyday life. It’s not about politics, it’s about buying a loaf of bread or planting a tree,” said Naxon, director of the JCC’s Eugene and Elinor Friend Center for the Arts. <br /><br /> “It’s a step back in time, the same way people here are fascinated by the covers of Life or the Saturday Evening Post,” she said. “It’s a way of looking at the history of a country through the eyes of a consumer.” <br /><br /> The exhibit, which runs until May, is co-sponsored by the JCC, the Consulate General of Israel and Israel’s Farkash Gallery, which specializes in collecting posters and other artifacts of Israeli life. <br /><br /> The posters launch viewers on a sentimental journey, even for those of us too young to remember when more doctors smoked Camels and who never went to Jaffa to sample their oranges. As an aside, one of those ubiquitous citrus fruits serves as the sun in a kitschy 1960s tourism poster featuring a raven-haired beauty in what can only be described as a lavender sari posing like a “Price is Right” model outside the Port of Jaffa. <br /><br /> <img src=""http://www.jweekly.com/images/bapsoter2.jpg"><br" /><br /> From the 1930s to the 1990s, the posters serve as reminders of the type of art that appealed to the Israeli general public of the day. Visages of square-jawed sailors gazing resolutely skyward above steaming destroyers of the wartime years gave way to the day-glo representations of young people toting shovels, picks and rifles during the Jewish state’s infancy. From there, hyper-realistic representations of brandy or vermouth tempt the viewer, and Semitic Israeli housewives happily display bars of margarine with the same pose Karl Malden used to flaunt his American Express Card, and groovy Sephardic beauties urge travelers to jump ship to Israel, “Le pays de la bible.” <br /><br /> Incidentally, all the posters on the JCC’s walls are for sale. So if you have between $900 and $3,600 and the wall space, perhaps “Le pays de la bible” can be in your very own living room.<br /><br /> <br><b><br /><br /> “Made in Israel”</b> opens Sunday, March 4 at the JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F. Information: <a href="http://www.farkash-gallery.com/exhibitions.aspx">www.farkash-gallery.com/exhibitions.aspx</a> or call (415) 292-1200. </p> <p> </p>

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