From Illusion in Literature to the Age of Nature Exploration or From the

Grimm Brothers to Lewis Carroll fantasies with the Garden of Utopia.

BLACKFIELD

"That was a narrow escape!" said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden
change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; "and now for the garden!"
and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but alas ! the little door was
shut again, and the little golden key was lying on the glass table as before, "and
things are worse than ever," thought the poor child, " for I never was so small as
this before, never! And I declare it's too bad, that it is!"
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll

Ben David has transformed the gallery space of VERSO into a site-specific
installation, which draws the audience into an orderly/chaotic and illusionistic
world of botanical culture, featuring images of well known plants and trees which
have been historically reproduced to an incredibly accurate resolution using the
crafts of etching, painting and drawing on stainless steel.

Like a wizard with his spells Ben David’s installation Blackfield is an encounter
with fables of nature and the illusion of a garden growing in a gallery spacei. It is
a voyage with the artist; an installation work which is rich in meaning offering us
links to aesthetic appreciation, nature, and evolution. We also find an artist who
is capable of bringing his own dreams to fruition in an art installation that is
awesome, exciting and inspirational.

The field of botanical illustration comes to life in the gallery space. This
exhibition takes advantage of the unique space at Verso and will immerse
visitors in a single large-scale panoramic image wrapping the length of the
gallery.

First in line of research was Ben David’s idea of a home-grown Botanica. Next up
was the image design representation: an entirely new ground of display. The
work promises a utopian city. Ben David is no longer content to give us just
plants; he is teaming up with museums, galleries, libraries and many other
elements to create the architect’s paradise; entering the city of knowledge. His
plans are to eventually roll out a new forest; the installation is the beginning. His
template is the spirit of the great explorers and the scientific approach to
discovery reviving the tradition of botanical illustration into a tangible future.

He provides a unique opportunity to create an ideal forest, working on a concept

of transferring a situation of reality into the magical world of a fantasy. More
than simply installing a sculpture he plays with a dichotomy of presence or non-
existence and switches into something unpredictable. Today, he continues
producing this forest, this encyclopaedic botanical world and he plants every
square inch with foliage, flowers and trees running along the streets and
branching through every wall and fixture as if to invade our world with nature: a
magical illustration. Like islands that are modelled as self contained gardens of
nature representation: wild elements and dreams that we always imagine
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visiting.

The introduction in scientific literature of large quantities of botanical

illustrations helps us to understand Ben David’s work. There have been a great
many famous illustrators who have contributed to the visual wealth of knowledge
about plants and nature in general. One of the most celebrated is Pierre Joseph
Redouté (1759-1840). This Belgian illustrator is credited with developing the
technique of hand coloured stipule engraving, which has since been widely used
in botanical illustrations. Renderings of botanical subjects date back to ancient
times with identifiable plants appearing in Egyptian tombs, on Greek vases, and
in Roman mosaics. In early medieval times collections of plant drawings called
herbariums appeared. These collections of woodcuts were used to catalogue
plants of medicinal interest. Live plants were seldom used as subjects, and in
fact, many of the woodcuts were redrawn from earlier works. To modern eyes
the drawings appear stiff, and accuracy is often approximate at best, although
some are quite charming.

Ben David’s work certainly challenges viewers to play with vision thus diverging
dramatically from the existentialist position to a magic world something
celebratory, galvanizing that inherent inventiveness that seeks constantly to
interpret a system for inscribing meaning in what might otherwise be a
meaningless worldii.

Ben David’s installation is an encounter with a dream, an illusion, the subjectivity

of nature and a well achieved metaphor. With this installation work, the artist
gives us an inductive strategy on abstract epistemological in order to confer
stability and continuity to the explorative practices of contemporary natural
history. The valleys, the forests, the lacunas and the country side, have become
tamed parks that would eventually become known in this century as centres of
recreation.

The work is an instant visual reference on colours and shapes of a fragile Eden.
Zadok Ben David calls this an opportunity, based not only on the installation of
the plants but its evolution into a kind of a digital infrastructure wired to a direct
view. He sketches a naturalist vision, a field of space. As the artist en plein air
sees the evolution of his installations and its response to different places and
situations.

The imbedded impression of nature

The method that he proposes in establishing ‘natural’ definitions is not

deductive, but it is an inductive, bottom-up procedure of comparing concrete
specimens at random to give us a general impression of nature. Today the
debate of tougher leaves, genetically hardened crops are in contraposition with
the work of Zadok Ben David who with this installation typifies a grand eco-
scheme that we can observe at close range without any danger of seeing genetic
changes in the system of plants.

Nature, in the real world, gives us delight but is contrary to the orderly illusion
that takes place in the display of Blackfield. With this work Ben David doesn’t
intend to comment on climate change or environmental issues. When viewing
this vast installation there is an absence of the urban necessities of water,
electric power and traffic etc; elements that run parallel with the failure of the
world to respond to the depleting trend of nature resources.

There is a multiplicity of interconnections to be found between the various issues

that arise under the broad subjects he represents. The plants are descriptive and
polytypic; the basic entities that we can expect the botanical world to consist of,
the problem of generation, the science aspects, the discoveries, the laws,
scientific methods, the natural classification and its status.

Yet that sui generis of elements represented doesn’t bear close scientific
analysis to the earthly paradise he proposes. The contemporary green revival is
the umbrella term we could apply to his work to produce a quick reference to the
beauty of plants and flowers. In the history of temporary installations related to
nature there are few examples in galleries and museums. The work of Ben David
goes beyond sculpture and has an immediate impact as an artistic event in a
magical project of nature representation.

The Dream Reality

The installation of his work is a contest between a dream and reality and is a
study in euphemistic creativity. Ben David plays in a subtle system in which the
design is conceived as a naturalistic botanical expedition and the objective is the
voyage of exploration to become a display of a famously redesigned plantarium
without losing the metaphor of new discoveries in the Blackfield.

The source of his ideas is nature which inspires his sketches of figures,
landscapes, creatures, and birds. Sometimes he employs a mischievous
experience of a botanical world that involves fantasy. There's something
essential in the construction of his aesthetic ideas and in the insistence of the
human body representation. Our hand is the perfect illustration of the
architecture of nature, there is a symbolic code of concept and engineering
which he tries to resolve by the construction of a fiction and image
representation of an ideal garden in the natural world.

Illustration as Art and Science - Sculpture as a Magical Illusion

My first encounter with Ben David’s work was at the Venice Biennale a few years
ago. Like Blackfield one was immediately struck by its biomorphic
suggestiveness. There is always the symbolic and the magical illusion in his
work; his imagination seems limitless. He has produced columns that look like
palm trees, fish that fly in the air and trees that are transformed into figures.
What's inherent in Ben David's work is the infrastructure which reveals his
tremendous insight into the natural processes. He creates vast arguments
within his work and sometimes consciously displays an extravagant and overly
expressive element, but the idea behind it is always profound. Nature and
evolution are taken further to their most elegant form with the use of no more
material than is absolutely necessary. He builds in every work a lesson in colour
and shape which subsists with the idea of a magical world.
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The point of departure is the reaction and acted construction of a forest like
display. He works on an interpretative artistic transformation of the botanical
world and its evolution; the best example of nature taken as inspiration for the
best design.

ZADOK BEN DAVID’S magic understanding of the laws of mother natura, has
allowed him to build radically innovative sculptures, some of which seem to
confront nature itself. His best-known work is a project called Evolution and
Theory, with the central theme of a reflective research on elements that have
contributed to the evolution of man and the sciences, a kind of encyclopaedia, a
digest of the new world of discovery. Ben David’s work jumps onto a stairway to
heaven, to a world of illusion, dreams and fantasies, without falling victim of any
label in his pursuit of aesthetic representation.

Coming of Age: the Transformation of Reality

ZADOK BEN DAVID’S initial designs for his present work are inspired by the idea
of a childhood, the act of releasing energy and the idea of entering into hidden
spaces: the dream.

It was Antonio Gramsci who expressed the idea that “... the scientific ideas
clashed with the magical conception of the world and nature that the child
absorbs from an environment imbued with folklore.”

When his first sculptures were made public, critics compared them to other
artists of that period who had certain affinities and resemblances to Ben David’s
work, though it is appropriate to reveal that he made his work out of necessity
and economical constraints, building with the necessary elements freely
available to him. When Ben David first arrived in London he created sculptures
from odd artefacts discharged near his studio in South London: wood, planks,
leaves, etc. He was making drawings for his work and noting the perfection of
those elements which would serve for the inspiration and the design of his first
and later sculptures.

This new project has since become knotted in an encounter with the town
environment, played out in the city's galleries, in the middle of an urban
environment, with a stoicism born of a long experience involved with nature.
After nearly three decades of working on his projects, he knows that part of
doing the installation project means it must be accessible to the viewer.

ZADOK BEN DAVID’s new projects have an international presence and great
critical success. A recent spectacular installation in a Los Angeles gallery was
also seen by thousands on Twitter; the spectator interacted in real time inviting
their friends to come and see his exhibition as a new discovery. Similarly, in Tel
Aviv large crowds attended the exhibition.

He has unveiled a master plan for the work; he has put the finishing touches to a
massive idea of botanical sciences, a complex interpretative idea: architecture of
nature. He has created a body of work that is among the most lyrical and
inspiring of any working contemporary sculptor today.
We appear to believe that the structure and meaning of the sculpture should be
inherent and that we can ignore the thinking behind it. We find symbolic and
expressive meaning as the ideas and dream-concepts are made into objects.
Indeed, in the current installation the sculptor enhances a joyful mood for nature
and its symbolic elements. ZADOK BEN DAVID manages to liberate those forces
of creation and, at the same time, relaxes our methodical consciousness about
our ideas of the real world enabling us to enjoy a fantasy world. He doesn’t
create a reductive work and the amount of pieces that are carefully displayed
together shows that fact. His installation projections are surprisingly functional
and up-to-date with the science of cognoscitive representation. The work raises
hope that beyond projects like this we could be inspired in our fight to prevent a
shameful decline in nature.

The structure of the installation is a conversation piece about the ages of

evolution; fragility of Mother Nature and ecosystems in extinction; current and
contemporary ideas regarding our involvement and respect for the global
ecosystem. Goethe mentions that “NATURE! We are surrounded and embraced
by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate
beyond her. Without asking, or warning, she snatches us up into her circling
dance, and whirls us on until we are tired, and drop from her arms. She is ever
shaping new forms: what is has never yet been; what has been comes not
again.”

Zadok Ben David installation puts nature as a dream landscape, in perfect

balance and in contrast to reality of the appalling suburban strip with nature
being replaced by concrete and tall buildings giving us a portrayal of nature in
decay. You see how the artist can be both useful and expressive in a work of art.
It's wonderful for the artist to build and complete the elucidation to a problem,
with the representation of the dream of a Promised Land.

ZADOK BEN DAVID’s exhibition offers us a great opportunity to reflect and learn
from nature’s great works. He points out and leads us to the development of the
dream as an act of growth and to learn from the surroundings including the
theme of the development of a city. He is a true believer in the power of the
dream to define a place, pointing to nature as an example. His fondness for the
spiritual, the ancestral primitive, the myth of the bon sauvage, is thoroughly
reflected in the adventurous idea of fostering a world plantarium. Seeing the
experience of nature as paradise is perhaps a surprising fulfilment of his artistic
dreams. In addition is the open span of creating a symbol with the perception of
nature as image (of the plant) reincarnated in an installation work.

The compelling rationale for this sculpture is the adventure of building illusions
and utopias which allow us to vanish in contemplation, to resolve the structural
constraints of space in our real world, without separating the artist elucidation
and the magic experience of seeing. This sculpture installation is a tour de force;
it is beautiful, peaceful, ordered, and we enjoy and reflect between the forces of
bad and evil.

ZADOK BEN DAVID encounters the audacity of building his dream, not only
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designing it simply as a platform to serve as sculpture, but also to transform its
content, by connecting it to the real world and the contemporary idea of
sculpture. Climate change has perhaps been a motivation for contemporary
artist’s projects. Ben David considers this avenues but he doesn’t get pinned
down to a singular view. As often happens to an artist, he was plagued with
problems in its topic representation but the artist’s responsibility, in many cases,
makes clear the strict surveillance of the illusion and the space that the course
the installation takes. It’s relatively easy in structural terms to create a dazzling
installation work taking form over the embodiment of his personally and most
passionately held views but it is another is to create a magical world where the
spectator can recognise these views.

ZADOK BEN DAVID is motivated to design a place, or erect his installation, by

bridging a link with the past, with explorations, with nature, with theory and
evolution (his previous work) and giving us a scheme representation of a major
art display, rather than producing a simple mock-up of a model of nature. He
opts for various points of departure and shows how he could transform a forest
and plants into something beautiful to represent and capture the hearts and
dreams of the spectator. His work is about the potential to rehabilitate and bring
an advantaged artistic perspective into nature. He uses his previously
researched sculptural work as a catalysis without destroying or diminishing the
priceless aesthetic resources he uses for his present artistic inspirationiii.

A philosophical Analysis of Nature and Representation in the Work of

Zadok Ben David (HEGEL, SPINOZAiv, ADORNO, the Concept of Space,
Nature and illusion Explained)

As with many of the public projects ZADOK BEN DAVID has a very restless mind
and has the passion to explore the place, making dreams and utopias, rather
than be involved in environmental statements and manifestos.

Perhaps we have to see the other side of the idea of meaning and representation
of nature which, [Theodor W. Adorno’s] and Max Horkheimer explain in the
concept of the disenchantment of nature in their essay Dialectic of
Enlightenment in which they proposed as a historical process whereby we have
come to find natural things meaningless and completely intelligible by the
repetition and the influx of information. However, Adorno and Horkheimer
believe that modernity not only rests on disenchantment but also tends to re-
enchant nature, because it encourages us to think that its institutions derive
from, and are anticipated and prefigured by, nature and artworks which generate
an alternative form of enchantment which is critical of modernity and its
domination of nature. This form of re-enchantment finds natural beings to be
mysteriously meaningful because they embody histories of immeasurable
suffering. This experience engenders guilt and antipathy to human domination
over nature. v

We recall the scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster in history -April 1986 at
Chernobyl nuclear power facility in the Ukraine - which, we expected would have
become a barren wasteland for many years to come but it seems that trees,
bushes, and vines have overtaken abandoned streets and surroundings. If plants
survive there despite chronic radiation exposure it can help to understand why
Ben David optimistically has engineered a plantation and botanical exhibition
inside a gallery space. Here we have an example of the idea that reality
watches over fiction

The cluster of clouds of radioactive material in the countryside surrounding

Chernobyl today has shown radioactive substances. There are deformities in
local wildlife and plants that are officially off-limits, although despite the
devastation, local flora flourishes. It seems as if the plants are protecting
themselves from Chernobyl's low-level radiation, but no one knows how the
protein changes translate into survival, or if they have been passed on to the
plants' offspring. Perhaps Adorno knowing these elements of consideration will
have had the opportunity to reconsider his theory as a radical example of reality
that could give us some future.

We are in the era of technology and computers science where young people can
see nature on TV programs or with 3D technology but nature itself is more
beautiful. Craftsmanship in representation helps to unravel how emotions
compare and how a small flowering plant could be a model for a wild
appreciation. We have both increased and suppressed our capacity to react and
socialize with the wild, accelerating the loss of touch with nature.

The spectacle of leaves changing colour and falling to the ground has long
inspired poets and have entranced children. The mechanism of our relationship
with nature is still very close to our animal nature and our architecture. The
ground breaking experience of scientific discoveries and the voyages of
exploration into the unknown are similar to the idea of Einstein and the concept
presented in the relativity principle when he enunciated that gravity bends time
and space. Ben David is planting 188 thousand trees in a space that is as narrow
as a house. It is a tangible concept that has more to do with illusion than reality
as is the case of the illusion and magical reality in the work of Ben David.

He puts miniature sculptures in a gallery; he paints trees with different colours;

he puts every thing in order and displays many plants. He loves plants and we do
too, but also we see it as art. This idea of representation of nature and the
aesthetic mechanism Ben David visually controls is equal to the admiration for
plants and their act of survival. Ben David’s goal, aside from improving our
understanding of nature, is to alert the spectator to the uneasiness, beauty,
aesthetics of representation, and the misguided concept of order regardless of
whether we are scientists of ordinary spectators.

In the work of Ben David ‘s Blackfield the plants are 5 centimetres high, a giant
sycamore that should be 35 meters tall is here next to a buttercup that in nature
is 25 centimetres tall. A plant is not a plant but still there is a plant
representation that we can see in front of us. Within a species, plants show a
surprising amount a variation in shape or form and colour and also in behaviour
7
when it relates to the world around them. These findings sort out some pleasing
inconsistencies in how species interacts in this installation work.

Anyone looking at this installation would see mutualism and how the structure of
the display makes a difference to an ideal model of nature. It is an example of a
fictitious garden appraising and utilising the gallery space.

Ben David becomes the naturalist as his work researches new worlds and
themes, suggesting and going beyond the normal installation. He has an
interest in manipulating the idea of plants, their use and their capacity to attract
our attention and much more. His installation, Blackfield, makes sense as an
example of splendour, arrangement and “order” in nature.

Ben David doesn’t classify the plants, he arranges them and puts them in the
space; sometimes the plant is the same 100 times repeated only changing in
colour or in size by 1 cm. You can enjoy nature even if you don’t know the
names of the plants or trees. He goes for the plant family serialisation without
making individual differences between them opposite to the realm were plants
are actually in control of the long-studied mutualism within themselves. The
installation makes a general assessment of the principle of accumulation,
repetition, sequence, and their interconnection, which adds clarity to nature
representation.

The first analysis of the installation reveals a surprisingly complex idea of

primitive plants on display, how they relate or diverge from each other. The
sculptures suggest the idea of flowering and colour fluctuation as well as
reacting with the spectators and their own experiences. With intense scrutiny we
perceive some evolved features; the sequencing of the natural world. The
relative simplicity of the sculpture display, the lacking of trees roots, seeds and
flowers typical of most land plants help to reveal how plants made their way onto
land: symbolically by magic.

Shrubs, flowers and trees must protect themselves from animals and man. Theirs
is a constant struggle to find enough light and nutrient. These natural stresses
are never shown in Ben David’s sculpture combinations. They are swapped
between similar elements, change sequences, a sort of iconic symbol, and a
glyph of nature in a small scale.

Like humans, plants evolved from water and represent about the same
evolutionary distance as that of fish and humans. That means we need to
understand the leap from water to land and our closeness to nature. It seems
likely that our ancestors underwent whole-genome duplication early in its
history, to reveal clues about how plants accomplished the transition to land.

The first surprise in this installation work is the abundance of plants and the
multiplication of species evolved as an additional background, adding colour the
suggesting a magic world that it has grown independently from the artist’s hand.
Even more surprisingly these plants have as many recombinations in nature as in
their gallery environment. Ben David memorised or mirrored the increased levels
of forms and structures in nature as he is interested in this homologous
combination.

We see in this work just a fraction of plants that we would expect to see in a
classic collection or in a botanical album. The work made has an unusual
transmission of order by sequence, the structure is against the chaos and the
display is not simply a case of a sequence to create a happening. It is a higher
level exercise showing the possibility of fostering a utopia symbol of nature and
using the iconic element of it.

The changes in the installation work, which moves from one place to another,
from one city to the next, are a boost to the idea that promotes recombination
and assists the artist into making variations. In particular in this case the plant
plays centre stage in the installation work that gives us the opportunity to assert
the present of multiples viewsvi.

Magic Realism or Utopia in the work of Zadok Ben David

Looking for hermeneutical theories about specific environmental interpretations

presented in this installation we can assume that the many differences in nature
could be resolved by a fundamental agreement about shape and structure. The
installation work goes behind the scientific points and general plan advanced by
deconstruction, archaeology, genealogy, phenomenology and the varieties of
hermeneutics of those concepts. The objective of the Magic Realism conveys to
us a new concept of the everyday world we live in. The artist may choose
unusual points of view, mysterious juxtapositions or common objects presented
in uncanny ways. However, everything we see here is within the realm of
possibility. We could argue over whether or not our world has some sort of
"magic reality-objectivity” with the connotation that we can discern and use the
installation work and the sculptures in order to non-arbitrarily plan and build as
well as we can understandvii. This basic tension between those who
deconstructed and those who tried to retrieve original meanings could emerge.
Clearly, it is crucial to understand this difference and to choose how to proceed
in regard to what is at stake in understanding Ben David’s work.

Nietzsche believes human nature is just a euphemism for inertia, cultural

conditioning, and what we are before we make something of ourselves. A few
exceptional humans are the creators, who, having subjected themselves to
prevailing norms, then break with them and explore new territory, thus "raising
themselves above the all-too-human mass".

The works of Ben David are in contempt of the concept of ignoring issues so
important for all of us. Parts of the tropical rain forest have been left inhabited,
dried up and turned into grasslands as it is the case of large parts of the
Amazonia in Brazil which gives us thought about what side we are on.

With the coming of the exhibition Blackfield to Italy-Turin we recall the existence
of a botanical garden as early as 1560 in Turin which became the botanical garden of
the “Valentino” viii. In the age of Renaissance an interest in naturalism resulted in
an emphasis in drawing from life and nature, and the intimacy of the subject and
a greater accuracy were seen by the artists of that era. Examples are the herbals
collections of Brunfels and Fuchs, although by no means primarily botanical
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artists, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 -1519) and Albrecht Durer (1471- 1528)
produced extraordinary drawings of plant subjects. This period also saw the
advances of gardens and the evolution from a plot of vegetables and herbs to
elaborate outdoor collections of plants combined with architecture. The physics
gardens spread through Europe and become a household of the feudal classes
that increased the appetite for such extensive courtyards in their castles.
Collections of exotic and native plants became an aristocratic pursuit. Beautiful
herbariums appeared celebrating and cataloguing these collections. Most were
etchings and watercolours and include works by Daniel Rabel (1578-1637),
Nicholas Robert (1614-85) and Claude Aubriet (1665-1742) among many othersix.

Understanding Nature Evolution and the Exploration of the Artistic

Force of Representation

Knowledge about nature has increased and has continued an irregular pattern of
growth until the present when technology has brought about rapid changes and
scientific advances. Natural life has become more observed and complex in its
social organisations and, at the same time, the scope of research has increased.
Botanical research gives us the opportunity to make advances in science in our
favour and it plays an important part with the application of medicinal plants.

Industrialisation brought about new classes who had an instinctive sense of

altruism and exploration and expanded the community of the Grand Tour era,
bringing about the discovery of the existence of primitive organism of the
vegetable world which became the pillars and foundation of today’s modern
ecology movement.

Human knowledge today is the result of layers upon layers of innovative thought
followed by assimilation, followed by general acceptance, followed by the
introduction of new innovative thought about the perception of nature. The
memory -"the layering" - process of interpretation of our natural world involves a
lot more than just our sense of seeing.

The layering that has occurred with regard to human development, the memory
of nature, falls into a special category. Throughout human history, one society
after another has erected elaborate social constraints to control and channel the
instincts trying to govern the community behaviour and the collective memory,
which we inherited from our primitive ancestors. Most social systems have tried
to keep culture and history memory suppresses by terror, and their social or
collective memory committed to upholding the state or the status quo. High
value is attached to preventing this collective memory from interacting until they
are properly subdued into a slave society, i.e. the complex of authority.

Within the human psyche there is a strong underlying relationship between

nature and the human urge to belong to it. I strongly suspect the tension
generated between our cultural interest and the dictated constraints against a
free rein of nature constitutes today a major force that is an increasingly
complex and sophisticated love and togetherness for nature.
Past, Present and Future in the Interpretation of Nature

Ben David’s work comes into that creative impulse of exploration. The creation
of an illusion of life forms expresses his interpretation of nature and thereby
influences our perception. Humans with their extraordinary mental powers have
other options other animals do not have to see the difference between the reality
and representation. In addition to the act of consciously knowing and the
accumulative layers of scientific knowledge and experience which constantly
influence our teachings, writings, inventing, exploring and collecting, Ben David
gives us his artistic and personal act of meaning and understanding which also
increases our perceptions of the real worldx.

Ben David is a force of pure creativity. It seems to me that one of the noblest
attributes he has is the clever manipulation of various elements and his ability to
grasp the intimate factors and rapport so close to our animal instincts of
observation. Memory or “layering” is basic human nature and adding to it, over
and over, is what has brought our species to its present state. Contemporary
works of art has its roots in the foundations of artistic interpretation of nature.
Ben David could argue that we need to keep on adding new layers of aesthetic
values and representation while regarding that the conditions of our historical
evolution are almost parallel to plants, but unfortunately remembering that
extinction is part of the process of evolution.

The process of physical changes to man occurred over tens of thousands of

generations that made possible the eventual development of vocal organs and
new brain patterns. Speech became possible. These and other changes in our
ancestral physiology changed the ways in which we obtained food, avoided
predators, and organized ourselves socially. We were off on a new kind of
evolutionary track and in which Zadok Ben David has dedicated one of his
famous works called Theory and Evolution.

Blackfield is a direct statement about earth; from the wandering of the artist’s
mind comes this imaginary element creating a utopia. There is an explicit
search for a magical formula in this installation which centres on the causality
and rupture of nature. Blackfield is due, in part, to Ben David’s accidental
encounter with the literature of the age of exploration and the illustrations of the
plants and fauna, which sparked his curiosity. The artist’s creative and thoughtful
force took this adventure in a new representation of nature as a sculpture work.

In these uncertain times it is especially important that creative individuals are

capable of articulating new ways of introducing representation as a way forward
in the artistic creation. Ben David’s work emerges as credible as he is firmly
planted in the tradition of exploration. He adds a new layer of knowledge to us;
nothing less than a new layer of understanding beauty and ethical
representation of nature which gives us the power of a new mindset or global

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view that can be grafted into our western representation, using our memory as a
tool to grasp meaning in his work, the essentia.

The progressive humanist view of his work is that it is imaginative and innocent
in its intentions. The work can be seen for what it is; the foundation block upon
which the entire installation is based: the past, present and future. You are
looking in this work for a new world order view of nature. The leaves, the trees,
the plants let you confidently seek ways in the art of meaning, to be more than a
spectator, to travel into a new concept, and to accept a universal presence of
looking at the work of art but also been part of it. At the same time in this work,
you can not perceive any ideological, religious, and philosophical stand. The
humanism in Ben David is in the discovery of the idea of the wilderness. Perhaps
this work has a singular advantage over many of its preceding sculptures with it
is optimistic future, and this optimism is based on the view of the past as a
present. His sculptures have acquired, and shaped in that process, new
attributes of representation. Looking at the work of Ben David is a real
competition of concepts and an open battle raging as to which one of these
concepts could come out ahead.

With this installation Zadok Ben David gives us a vision of nature, which could be labelled
‘a model’ or ‘a prototype’, in which, he animates shapes and conveys them into a
formidable sculpture/installation.
He has consolidated the power of expression in his work, despite numerous setbacks
while placing and imitating nature. His key position is to ensure that his environmental
example, nature, benefits from the interest of the spectator and the use of its forms
come to us as fresh and tactile as possible. This may sound like an absurd caricature of
nature, but not when you look at what he has actually accomplished with Blackfield. To
define Ben David’s forms, we need to apply an earthly language but to explain that
neatly camouflaged element in his work deep in the sculpture display there is another
meaning: the concept of the illusion. The outstanding historical example of magic art is
Ben David’s great power; to advance other parts of his grand design of nature and doing
so he leads us to diminish our arrogance and hubris. See Kierkegaard theory about
perception

Ben David’s own vision rests in his understanding of the use of contemporary art
representation. He has given us a vast installation work using sculpture techniques to
communicate the issues of illusion and reality and he feeds them to the spectator. It is a
contemporary work that is closely influenced by nature itself.

The Artefact and the Symbol in the Sculpture Blackfield

Ben David’s work is praised for its absence of time; he has focused on what he perceived
as a space drawing without aesthetic persuasion from different generations and different
cultural legacies. Perhaps it could be said that he has inherited much from his strong
admiration for his father’s work; his story telling as jewel making; Zadok Ben David the
go-between two generations.

The abstract artistic platform of Zadok Ben David was his artistic debut in London three
decades ago, in which his work first received critical attention. The association of his
sculpture in that period was with the contemporary works. An expected indication by the
art critics was of influences and coincidences in the dimension of the work, and the idea
of an art devoid of meaning which was interpreted in a number of ways just because
there was a lack of a contemporary reference. Ben David’s work was intended as a
personal signature of a young artist. At the time he wanted to create his own work
against the establishment and nobody anticipated the applied flair or finesse of those
first crafted forms and the series of natural elements would evolved into a ground
breaking representation of nature.

The chosen elements of his sculpture today are done according to a predetermined
system/structure generated by both design and chromatic harmonies. The resulting
scheme rarely conforms to familiar or conventional ways of making a pictorial surface or
follows the common optical rhythms of nature. In the installation work Blackfield, the
single sculptures contradict any tendency to have spatial depth, yet, at the same time,
impact vividly, hypnotically, on the viewer given the overall feeling of a depicted surface,
and a carefully studied patternxi. the reference to Indian shadow theatre.

The idiosyncratic fusion of representation in his work is linked but also describes ancient
systems of divination from scientific hypotheses or from mathematics calculations, and
astronomy observations, all with references to ancient ideas about nature and
representation. We could relate Blackfield to ancient cosmologies which are potently
manifest in such mesmerizing monumental sculpture work, a bewildering conglomerate,
glyphs, symbols, signs, emblems, and interwoven elements of nature into a unique
statement. Determined according to quirkily cryptic calibrations these abstruse thematic
forms do not form the basis for an exegesis and are far from conveying information or a
strictly scientific knowledge. His enigmatic pictograms form an armature for exercising
cognitive and distinct eclectic systems of a propositional truth by unfolding the meaning
of nature.

We witness intuitive poetics; a delicate structure which prevails over the sculpture
"gesture" or the communication of a particular meaning. For the content there is more
than a pictorial sense, there is an exercise on formally resolving an aesthetically unified
whole, rather than on decoding the individual plant systems referenced within. A
fundamental aesthetic philosophy cannot be reconciled on dualistic opposition as they
are elements of syncretised introduction and of philosophical, cosmological and scientific
speculations. Cohesion nonetheless emerges from the Blackfield sculpture installation
that is the truth or the famous alétheiaxii and that gives the importance to the work.

Goethe emphasized that perhaps the greatest danger in the transition from seeing to
interpreting is the tendency of the mind to impose an intellectual structure that is not
really present in the thing itself: "How difficult it is...to refrain from replacing the thing
with its sign, to keep the object alive before us instead of killing it with the word."xiii

The imagery is subsumed into an all-over field of interlocking, repeating shapes conjured
from a delicately inflected plants found elsewhere, which may at times include
calculating and deciphering more visually oriented models of nature.

One reacts to the optically charged chromatic patterns and juxtapositions, or the physical
presence of nature representation, in which the focus is also the diagram and structure
of a work that convey simultaneously its syncretism and the aesthetic beauty. Further,
we could attest that the spectator rarely goes beyond appreciating the aspirations of his

13
distinctive dialogue towards a redemptive understanding of a metaphysical engagement
with the poetics of illusion, which reside more in a pictorial rightness than in a careful
stage iconography and perhaps using the "subterfuge" (Hintergehen) or "trick," which,
not accidentally, he uses extensively in his work.

Ben David is always reflecting his prevailing trend for Magic Realism and
incisively compares the structure of reality and the thematic subject into a
stylistically abstract thought in which he becomes someone who investigates
into the past for signs and symbols that will spring to life in the present as
cryptic, though vivid, bearers of meaning of Blackfield.

Many other elements are eloquent and distinctive in the work of Blackfield, which
ultimately depends neither on its ostensible idea of nature theme nor on the efforts of
the public at decoding an aesthetic illusion. By contrast, certain committed iconography
gives way to analysis, which is devoted to unravelling occluded systems and offers
illuminating accounts, without necessarily altering an appreciation of nature
accomplishment. The conceptualised presence of the sculpture is as an aesthetic object
relation, implying a characteristic and complex interplay of objective and subjective
components.

In the methodology in the construction and research of Blackfield Ben David also drew on
ancient cultures. He situated it outside the era of a contemporary umbrella to move in
very different modes of primitive forms. He is always reflecting his prevailing trend for
Magic Realism and incisively compares the structure of reality and the subject/concept
into a stylistically abstract thought in which he becomes someone who investigates into
the past for signs and symbols that will spring to life in the present as cryptic, though
vivid, bearers of meaning of Blackfield.

To advance in his tradition of working out his sculpture representation he has lucidly
mapped interpretative positions of ideal sections of forest and plants, one that could
reflect current philosophical inquiry falling away from constricted signification. What is at
stake is not the accessibility to the work in detail but the strangeness of these repetitive
systems, and hence their embodiment of an experience. Creating the relation between
the meanings of the universe that is the basis for science and the desire for aesthetic
sense.

The self position in the spanning of his work, owes something to the peculiarities of his
artistic upbringing, the period of itinerant travelling, the accumulation of formed
collection of memories, layers of them and the guidance that eventually allows him the
bequeathed modernist interpretation of an aesthetic culture. Following on from his
discoveries, his fascination with the diagram of plants in key works, from signs and
literature, the drawn systems of famous botanical illustrators and the informed echoes
and memories of landscape has led him to create these cultural artefacts.

The privilege of a speculative quest for meaning has propelled and beguiled his views
making his uncannily resonant work create a constant engagement with the duality of
reality and fiction. He limned the parameters of a vision that would tenaciously, even
obsessively, explore over, and over in some extraordinary installation works that play
with presence and illusion. Once we are captivated by the installation work, it is arguably
irrelevant whether we have exact answers to elucidate the notions of shapes and forms.

The Grimm Brothers’ fables have entered into popular folklore and their concept-ideas
are the simple products of a popular imagination, to the great enjoyment of children and
adults alike. Reading their stories, we become immersed in the existence of fantastic
worlds and meanings that can be summarized in a brief moral which made the
phantasyxiv and oddities a reality. It is probable that we would not have gone far beyond
a new viewpoint if the logic of their method or story telling had not allowed us to walk
into the unexpectedly openings and the many paths that are constantly bristling with the
fantastic obstacles and questions in the sequence of events. Their great merit is to have
reflected their country almost as a covered immense forest, bushes as enchanted
woodland conveyed in their tales, and to have taken the risk of following almost a magic
transcription made with incredible fervour in which the ancient tales of discovery is no
less evident than the exactitude of descriptionxv

From the Ancient World to the Present. The Ways of Making an Objective World
The traditions and techniques in the western world of the modelled specimen, more
familiar to us in natural history museums, are produced in multiples of objects or forms
which are allowed to betray their identity as casts or replicas as they are conveyed like
identical figures. Typically they relate as much to botanical forms as to prototypes for
their subjectivity (with few exceptions).

Although familiar and mundane the subjects in Blackfield become imbued with a highly
charged character that lifts them from the realm of the banal to take on an iconic even
archetypal status. Ben David in many of his monumental projects creates this impact
achieved by subtle shifts in form and scale, and through the stylization assistance on the
symmetry, the formality, and a multiplication on a referential proportion. The pristine
forms of the elements on display demonstrate simultaneous familiarity and distance of a
symbolically worked image that it is all too recognisable in motifs and it is tested for its
core of credibility and placed in a new, contemporary context in the installation work.

Not surprisingly then, the objects Ben David produces are neither fetishes nor trophies,
relics from another life, but carefully constructed artefacts devised to act as catalysts, as
their singularity is measured neither by notions of uniqueness nor by the idiosyncrasies
of the botanical accuracy, they are drawn or cut directly from the realm of nature books
and encyclopaedias (the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers) and photo etched and painted by hand, where affectively tends to have an
mutability with reference to nature works. Indeed, he often chooses objects that are
loaded with meaning in themselves, but they are not biographically accurate and have a
general significance at the same time, which is valuable in order to be comprehensible.
The traditional Islamic artists and Arab craftsmen have make jewels, windows, doors,
buildings and decorated surfaces of everything from modest artefacts to monumental
architecture with elaborate geometric patterns as we could see in the great wonders of
Yemen. The Koran forbids the representation of people and animals, but this in no way
hinders creativity in those countries that have taking representation further as we could
also appreciate in Granada and Cordoba in Spain.

Ben David’s father a top jewellery-maker from Yemen has followed the pattern of many
artisans in that part of the world, that generate intricate patterns by combining,
duplicating, and interlacing simple shapes, commonly the circle and square to help
produce the work in a metal sheet. The seemingly infinite geometries surprise and
delight the senses, especially as architectural screens. As screens, patterns become even
more complex, interacting with vistas and manipulating light and shadow.

In India, this window treatment is called Jali, and has become a salient feature of the
country’s architecture. Hand-carved out of a single slab of stone, the geometric mesh of
Jali responds to a number of cultural and environmental conditions by providing privacy
and security, filtering light, and permitting the circulation of air. The fretwork also works
as a unifying element in architecture, an approach Herbert J.M. Ypma describes as

15
"ornate order." The Jali colonnade at Akbar's tomb may at first appear to follow a strict
geometric pattern; in reality, the total design is actually random, with each screen
containing a unique abstract pattern. Together the screens produce a feeling of infinite
growth, framed and thus contained within a series of regularly spaced, identical arches.
Ympa describes the tension occurring between the free flowing detail and the repetitive
structural elements as a "combination of chaos and restraint." Ympa also claims that this
ordering principle of "asymmetry within symmetry" influenced renowned modernists Le
Corbusier and Louis Kahn”xvi
Yet strangely seductive, this images of plants and flowers fixes itself ineradicably in the
mind as if it were an emanation of the mesmerizing forms imprint in the suppressed
regions of the mind and similarly, its indelibly as if enunciating what was previously
known but never acknowledged, a revisited garden of nature.

European accounts dating from the Renaissance recorded the phenomenon of nature in
literature from the antiquity and irrespective of scientific verification of its authenticity
there was an almost blind belief in nature. In that way Ben David’s work rests on the
power of the image which resides in the veracity of these embroidered accounts, the
resemblance, variations, and repetition. It is the measure of vérité that he uses a
tempered realism in preference to naturalism; veracity in this instance should be gauged
in relation to inner truth rather than by standards of mimesis. The profiles are the near
symmetry of replicated and duplicated forms, and the almost overpowering scale,
together with the hieratic geometry of their configuration imbued in his work with a
potency far more eloquent than would be possible with a merely lifelike version of the
plant. The forms thrust forward towards the spectator in an epiphany encounter that is as
unsettling to the spirit as it is challenging to the experience of seeing.

The world has many cultural concepts and standards for us to determine the purpose of
the sculpture model proposed by Zadok Ben David. It is perhaps our close contacts with
theories of evolution in representation across the scientific world which provides us with
the tools of analysis. I do not endorse a preference for one theory nor am I bias towards
a single interpretation. The ontology of the work per se should allow for alternative
interpretations of the installation Blackfield.

Over the years, Ben David has developed a fascination with the representation of human
evolution, scientific observations and the presence of the human body in art. There is
also the awareness of elements that we observed every day, like the domestic animal,
the everyday objects we use and, of course, those elements we tend to collect. He is
intensively aware of time and movement within and through its representation. His work
can be seen as part of a long tradition of experimentation whereby the making of his
work becomes both an instrument of scientific record and a tool for aesthetic exploration.

The viewer effectively becomes part of the forest, knotted by the movement and
representation of an utopian Garden of Eden, Ben David invites us to travel as Gulliver,
through the infinity of his work, witnessing the pure representation of an incredible array
of colourful realm of plants which are planted in situ and allowing us to be spectators of a
great forest, only occasionally perhaps finding a moment of clarity within the mass
garden displayed in Blackfield.

Bibliography and Notes

Blunt, Wilfrid and Stern, William T. The Art of botanical illustration. New Edition,
revised and enlarged. Kew: Antique Collectors' Club in association with the Royal
Botanic Gardens, 1994.

Buchanan, Handasyde. Nature into art: A treasury of great natural history books.
London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1979.

Rix, Martyn. The Art of the plant world: The great botanical illustrators and their
work. Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press, 1980.

Saunders, Gill. Picturing plants: An analytical history of botanical illustration.

Berkeley: University of California Press in association with the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, 1995.

Sitwell, Sacheverell. Great flower books, 1700-1900. New York: The Atlantic
Monthly Press, 1990.

Guarino, N. (1992). Concepts, Attributes, and Arbitrary Relations: Some Linguistic

and Ontological Criteria for Structuring Knowledge Bases. Data and Knowledge
Engineering.

Takagaki, K. (1990). A Formalism for Object-based Information Systems

Development. Doctoral dissertation, The University of British Columbia.

17
i Zadok is a kind of Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) which, in his books offered a great interpretation of plants and nature
see: Systema naturae (1735), Fundamenta botanica (1736) and Genera plantarum (1737). And he follows the steps of
the amazing models of Leopold (1822-1895) and Rudolf Blaschka (1857-1939) father and son, which collection
continue today to be use extensively in biological and medical instruction and as objects of art in their own right. See.
University of Aberdeen Zoology Museum Many of the Blaschkas’ models are still on public display in many botanical
institutions among them the most important collections are, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Others
elements have spent years in storage like those at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. London’s Science Museum
sold its Blaschka collection in the 1920s when the Victorian vogue for ogling glass sea creatures was no longer quite so
popular. These models of beautiful and accurate of enlarged flowers were produced at Breslau and Berlin. Usually, the
models were made of papier mâché, but with other materials added to give detail and texture: wood, cotton, rattan,
pulp cane, glass beads, feathers and gelatine. The models made between 1886 and 1895 were made of clear glass and
cold-painted with things like fish glue obtained from sturgeon, dammar (botanical sap), hide glue and gum Arabic.
Later models were often enamelled. Other materials used to make the models included painted paper for internal
structures and actual shells of terrestrial, freshwater and marine gastropods (snails etc).

ii See Maurice Merleau-Ponty References to the Visible and the Invisible which gives the results of the
Phenomenology of Perception their ontological significance. In that sense, the subject influenced, and
often psychological thinking, would be revealed as also presupposing an account of the structure of being,
the notion of subjectivity, and its controlling place, is further diminished for the presence of the elements,
the reality.

iiiThe paper-cutting or Papier Coupe is the ancient art of Mongolian people and the community of the northern
herdsmen that created the paper-cutting. The art has long and wonderful progress history. People as an art in their
daily life expressed their aesthetic perspective with the most simple and sincere feelings and demonstrate their
colourful inner world and optimist outlook on life. Each piece is hand cut by the craftsman to a three dimensional effect
and in many occasion is framed to show off the shadows. The silhouette makes a reality and illusion of the elements
that become recognizable by our experience to see, by the icon or symbols that we are use to see and handle and a
illusion because plays with the deepness and round effects of the elements in composition in which, some contents
reflect the everyday scenes of people cultivating the land and animals roaming freely. The Papier Coupe has played an
important role in China's Folk Arts and the among the many symbolic elements are some of the most common pattern
that still today are been produce and related to believes and religious cults;"surplus year after year" and "Deer and
crane welcomes spring" praying symbols for a favourable weather, "Hamuer Pattern" the luck symbol, the "Panchang
Pattern" the solidarity and long life and the "10,000 words picture" that means good luck in four seasons and wheel of
life. The discovery of gold and silver fretwork decorations unearthed from Xianbei Tomb in Northern Wei, shows
decoration patterns on yurt of herdsmen, leather bags, bowing clothes, arrow holders, saddles and felt embroidery
made by Mongolians as well as handcrafts on their clothes are the basic reflection of fretwork consciousness of paper-
cutting art.

iv “A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing,
which is explained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of
Extension, or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order, or one
and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the same things follow one another.”
Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and
rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and
everywhere the same. So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same,
viz. through the universal laws and rules of nature.”
Baruch Spinoza Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt, 5 volumes (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925, 1972 [volume 5,
1987]
vAccording to Adorno, the domination of man’s natural environment made possible by controlling man’s inner nature
leads to a limitation of the human horizon to self-preservation and power. In addition, the justifying idea of a divine
commandment to subdue the earth and to have dominion over all creatures reduces the sensitivity of civilized humans
for the conditions of their violent domination of nature organized in and by society. Finally, the internalized violent
domination of nature also facilitates the use of force in social life. Adorno’s hypothesis with regard to a psychology of
civilization means that man’s brute force against nature encourages him to use violence against other human beings
as well. This radical thesis defended by Adorno must be differentiated from the traditional critique of culture,
particularly from its German version. Therefore I propose the term critique of culture as civilization theory
(zivilisationstheoretische Kulturkritik) in order to characterize Adorno’s approach. Man’s domination of the nature that
has been suppressed into the collective unconscious is considered by Adorno as a congenital defect of industrialized,
i.e. Western civilization. In KARSTEN FI SCHER Humboldt -University, Berlin IN THE BEGINNING WATHE MURDER:
DESTRUCTION OF NATURE AND INTERHUMAN VIOLENCE IN ADORNO’S CRITIQUE OF CULTURE
http://www.jcrt.org/archives/06.2/fischer.pdf
Or ©2005 Karsten Fischer. All rights reserved. Fischer, Karsten. “In the Beginning Was the Murder: Destruction of
Nature and Interhuman Violence in Adorno’s Critique of Culture.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory vol. 6 no. 2
(Spring 2005): 27-38. PURL: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/06.2/fischer.pdf
vi See Interpretations on behalf of place: environmental displacements ... by Robert Mugerauer
vii The Age of the World View* Metaphysics reflects on the nature of the existent and on the nature of
truth. Metaphysics lays the foundation of an age by giving it the basis of its essential form through a
particular analysis of the existent and a particular conception of truth. This basis dominates all the
phenomena which distinguish the age. Conversely, it must be possible to recognize the metaphysical
basis in these phenomena through sufficient reflection on them. Reflection is the courage to question as
deeply as possible the truth of our own presuppositions and the exact place of our own aims. Among the
essential phenomena of modern times we must count science. A phenomenon with the same degree of
importance is mechanical… "This translation first appeared in Measure, 2 (1951), 269-84. Heidegger's original is
included as "Die Zeit des Welibildes" in Holzwege (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1963), pp. 69-89. P 341 Martin
Heidegger translated by Marjorie Grene
viii See Orto Botanico del Valentino Turin
ix Leonhart Fuchs 1542, John Ray (1686–1704), Carl Linnaeus, James Cook, Alexander Von Humboldt, Aime Bonpland
and many others.
x Foucault developed through two stages with complementary views. First, he worked out the idea that discourse is
not about objects in the sense of referring to them as actual things; rather, discourse constitutes things—all objects
and meanings. Systems of discourse, even if without deep or grounded meaning, are intelligible because they have
systematic structures. Modes of discourse go through historical changes and. most interestingly, discontinuous
transformations.

xi India has a very long and rich tradition of Shadow theatre. Shadow theatre According to many scholars
is a performing art, (which is close to puppetry, but differs from it in the sense that while in puppet
theatre the audience directly sees the puppet figures, in shadow theatre they only see the shadow cast
on the screen) originated in India. Reference to shadow theatre is found in the Tamil classic
Shilappadikaaram. Many Western Indologists such as Pischel, Luders and Wintemitz are of the opinion that
the well-known Sanskrit drama iviahaanaataka was originally written as a play for the Shadow Theatre.
This art form is, thus, at least one thousand years old. Apparently it went to Southeast Asia, Turkey and
other places from India. Shadow theatre is prevalent performed in the states of Orissa, Kerala,
Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kamataka. In the shadow theatre forms of the first three
states, the shadows are black and white while those from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kamataka are
multi-coloured. The shadow theatre in Orissa is known as Raavana Chhaya or shadow of Ravana. It is rather
strange that in this form, while the story is based on Rama, the theatre itself is named after Ravana. The
shadow theatre in Maharashtra is known as Camdyaachaa Bahulye, meaning figures made of leather. It is
also known as Chitra Marathigaru. Here also the themes are largely drawn from the legend of Rama. In
Kamataka there are two styles of shadow theatre, both known as Togalu gombeatta. One style uses very
large size figures ranging from 1-1.5 metres and the other style uses smaller figures ranging from six
inches to two and a half feet. The figures are made of goatskin, which is first treated to translucency and
then stencilled and coloured. The themes are drawn from Ramayana, Mahabharata and other Puranic
episodes. Shadow theatre. There is a light source and a screen and in between the manipulator inserts
the flat figures by lightly pressing them on the screen so that a sharp shadow is formed. Usually, the
figures in the shadow theatre are made of leather. They are carefully stencilled so that their shadows
suggest their clothing, jewellery and other accoutrements. Some of the figures have jointed limbs which,
when manipulated, give the appearance of beautiful moving shadows.
xii "alétheia and truth: Alétheia is Greek for 'truth; truthfulness, frankness, sincerity'

xiii Goethe: Scientific Studies, p. 275

xiv "Infantile feelings and phantasies leave, as it were, their imprints on the mind, imprints that do not fade away but
get stored up, remain active, and exert a continuous and powerful influence on the emotional and intellectual life of the
individual" (Klein:1975:290) We should make a differentiation with the debate of Adorno and Freud as the paper refers
to the origin and hatred in the Semitism. We just employ the concept.
xv Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, dramatize the vicissitudes of the creation of an aesthetic experience (1898).
In the reading of this story both the awareness of transformational object traces and the failure of the omnipotent
object are evoked by the permanent gap structured in the text. If the focusing on the formal characteristics of the text
acts as container of the anxiety created by the no transformational changes of meaning, the aesthetic event is
granted: the relation is to the object in itself without a peremptory need to solve the unsolvable enigma. But, if the
reading of the ambiguous text evokes degrees of anxiety which are not contained by the formal characteristics of the
story, then the reader is compelled to be himself the transformer and to create a univocal version of the story's
meaning. from Priel, B. (1994). The Dialectics of Aesthetic Experience: An Object Relations Persp... Psychoanal.
Contemp. Thought, 17:547-562.
xvi See working paper. http://intypes.cornell.edu/expanded.cfm?erID=107