Aharon Shabtai
Setting out to illustrate the assumption that there is an affi nity between
the fi gure of the artist and its projection as an intrinsic concept
revealed in his/her works, in this essay I will juxtapose, via two parallel
sequences, the fi gure of artist Deganit Stern Schocken, as captured in
a selection of photographs depicting her, with an assortment of her
works at various stations along her artistic path. These two sequences
will be combined in a narrative pertaining to the appearance of jewelry
in ancient Greek poetry, and to instances in Greek philosophy where
the transformations in ethical perceptions will be used as an analogy to
elucidate the changes in the design of Stern Schocken’s work.
In Within a Budding Grove (A l’ombre des jeunes fi lles en fl eurs), Marcel
Proust the youth expects the artist’s appearance to be explicitly
refl ected in his works. When he meets the fi ctitious novelist Bergotte
(Anatole France), he is disappointed to learn that the expectation was
groundless. On closer inspection, he concludes that the fi gure of the
artist is indeed projected onto his work, but not directly (from the
outside); it emerges as an internal fi gure styled from a heterogeneous
selection of details. Later, when he stays at Balbec and visits Elstir’s
studio, he meets the artist’s aging wife, only to discover that her
introverted fi gure is the living embodiment of beauty in Elstir’s
imagination: “Later on, when I had become familiar with Elstir’s
mythological paintings, Mme Elstir acquired beauty in my eyes also. I
understood then that to a certain ideal type illustrated by certain lines,
certain arabesques which reappeared incessantly throughout his work,
to a certain canon of art, he had attributed a character that was almost
divine, since he had dedicated all his time, all the mental effort of which
he was capable, in a word his whole life, to the task of distinguishing
those lines as clearly and of reproducing them as faithfully as possible.”
Years later, in Time Regained (Le Temps retrouvé), he arrives at a ball in
Prince de Guermantes’s mansion, revealing that the fi gures of his
friends and acquaintances, who have changed over time, are mere
masks. According to his inner view as an artist, the images of truth
are created from fragments of linear time, via accidental, spontaneous
recollection, and by synthetically combining diverse, ostensibly
unconnected elements: “In this, as in life, he fuses a quality common
to two sensations, extracts their essence, and, in order to withdraw
them from the contingencies of time, unites them in a metaphor.” In
this context one may also be reminded of the Platonic process described
in Symposium. Socrates notes that Eros is the son of Poros (plenty,
resourcefulness) and Penia (poverty, lack). By virtue of that lack, Eros
pines for the beautiful;
upon contemplation, he expands his search and fi nds it beyond the
beloved body, in different objects and forms whose common essence he
extracts and unites into an abstract idea of the beautiful and the good.
These thoughts, as they pertain to Deganit and her work, lead us to the
subject in question: the process whereby, through the artist’s “facial
mask,” the inner character is created from a conjunction of details
whose common essence s/he refines and unites in her/his work. Let
us bear in mind that to Plato’s Phaedrus, the ideal inner character is
fashioned after the specific god (e.g. Zeus, Hera, Apollon, etc.) that
the lover adopts, the one who should gradually seek the truth in the
beautiful as a philosopher and an artist. In this manner, the lover/artist
shapes his inner figure and projects it onto the chosen object; “he does
his utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of himself and the
god whom he honors.” The figure which he observes, it has been said,
is none but himself: “the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding
himself, but he is not aware of this.” This reflection of the self in the
other (as exemplified by Elstir’s wife), however, does not manifest itself
in external appearance as a mere mirror reflection. The self imprints
its image on the conceptual level, but this is not only an abstract act;
it is also an integrative one—mental and corporeal. Writing/creation is
performed with the body, and it is always also physical. The following
paragraphs will exemplify how Deganit writes and is being written
about with her body in her works. In this respect, jewelry as a medium
for self-shaping, hence for the shaping of the other, has had a special
place since the dawn of the classical tradition. In situations of Eros,
there is a demand for the work of art due to the constant gap between
Poros (the abundance existing in the body and in external appearance)
and Penia (that which is absent and lacking). The action performed on
the object is preceded by a self-reflexive act, shaping and beautifying the
image of the self to comply with the ideal model (of the god/goddess).
In The Iliad (Book 14), Hera, lacking beauty, requires cosmetics, fineries,
and jewelry to seduce her husband Zeus:
“first from her adorable body washed away all stains
with ambrosia, and next anointed herself with ambrosial
sweet olive oil, which stood there in its fragrance beside her,
and from which, stirred in the house of Zeus by the golden
pavement,
a fragrance was shaken forever forth, on earth and on heaven.
When with this she had anointed her delicate body
and combed her hair…” [Il. 14.169–175]
“…next with her hands she arranged the shining
and lovely and ambrosial curls along her immortal
head, and dressed in an ambrosial robe that Athene
had made her carefully, smooth, and with many fi gures upon it,
and pinned it across her breast with a golden brooch, and circled
her waist about with a zone that fl oated a hundred tassels…” [Il. 14.176–180]
“and in the lobes of her carefully pierced ears she put rings
with triple drops of mulberry clusters, radiant with beauty,
and, lovely among goddesses, she veiled her head downward
with a sweet veil that glimmered pale like the sunlight.
Underneath her shining feet she bound on the fair sandals.”
[Il. 14.182–186]
Still, the goddess does not settle for what is available in her room; she
requires that which quintessentially embodies Aphrodite’s daimonic power.
She turns to the goddess of love, borrowing her girdle (“zone”), which
possesses magical qualities as a metonymy of sorts for the goddess herself:
“She spoke, and from her breasts unbound the elaborate, patternpierced zone, and on it are figured all beguilements, and loveliness
is figured upon it, and passion of sex is there, and the whispered
endearment that steals the heart away even from the thoughtful.
She put this in Hera’s hands, and called her by name and spoke to
her: ‘Take this zone, and hide it away in the fold of your bosom.
It is elaborate, all things are figured therein. And I think
whatever is your heart’s desire shall not go unaccomplished’.”
[Il. 14.214–221]
Indeed, the great powerful Zeus succumbs to the charms of the goddess
who has become a “jewel-woman”:
“So speaking, the son of Kronos caught his wife in his arms.
There underneath them the divine earth broke into young, fresh
grass, and into dewy clover, crocus and hyacinth
so thick and soft it held the hard ground deep away from them.
There they lay down together and drew about them a golden
wonderful cloud, and from it the glimmering dew descended.”
[Il. 14.346–351]
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (81ff), even the goddess herself, to win
over Anchises, adorns herself with jewels, reducing her divine stature so
he won’t be frightened of her, as if she were transforming herself into a
miniature, a jewel. The youth opens his eyes and is fi lled with wonder:
“For she wore a robe that was more resplendent than the
brightness of fi re.
She had twisted brooches, and shiny earrings in the
shape of fl owers.
Around her tender throat were the most beautiful necklaces.
It [her robe] was a thing of beauty, golden, decorated with every
sort of design. Like the moon it glowed all around her tender
breasts, a marvel to behold.”
In this context, one should note that the borrowed grace embodied in
jewelry (“the whispered endearment that steals the heart away even
from the thoughtful”) possesses ambivalent baggage. In Hesiod’s Works
and Days (42ff), the acquisition of culture (fi re, crafts) involves theft
and a punishment infl icted on mankind in the form of the woman.
The woman is created as a work of art, an image, a visible form (eidos),
and represents everything adorned with and adorning fabrics and
jewelry. She is called Pandora—namely, “the gift of all” [the gods],
thus embodying the range of ethical powers, a total spectrum which is
harmonious among the gods, while for mortals it necessarily involves
confl ict and discordance, hence active and passive aspects. As stated by
philosopher Heraclitus:
“To God, all things are beautiful, good and just; but men have
assumed some things to be
unjust, other just.”
[fr. 102]
As a model work of art, Aphrodite endows the woman with grace
(charis), and Athene adorns her with fi ne jewelry and teaches her the
crafts of needlework and weaving. Concurrently, however, the gods
also give her cunning, falsity, fl attery, and a deceitful disposition.
She is given to mankind as “a precipitous, unmanageable trap” (dolov
amechanon). Due to this duality, she is identifi ed with the power of
destiny (indeed the Fates [Moirai] engage in spinning). The woman’s
duality is conspicuous and consistent in Archaic poetry and in Greek
tragedy. Archaic poet Semonides, in his poem Types of Women (aka
Women), lists the types of disagreeable women: evil, vain, wasteful,
insinuating that Helen was the first of them (“ever since Hades received
those who fought on account of a woman”; alongside these, however,
he praised another type, the “bee-woman,” who diligently contributes
to her husband’s success. The Greeks had images of women as powerful
goddesses. In Works and Days, just as Eris (strife) is twofold, instigating
war and conflict, while encouraging competition and diligence, which
make for greater wealth, so the temptation, cunning, and lies given
to Pandora by Hermes are vital ethical skills which belong with the
notions of activity used by heroes (e.g. Odysseus and his maternal
grandfather, Autolikos), and in human relationships, when one
person acts and confronts another, they inevitably assume a passive
and negative sense as well. Hence it is important to understand that
through the antithetical aspects of her qualities, Pandora embodies the
daimonic and sacred power of the woman, who stands for the work of
art, primarily jewelry.
Thus, in retrospect, it turns out that Helen’s beauty (which was
denounced as the epitome of strife) was used as an instrument by the
gods, and she ultimately joins her immortal brothers as a goddess and
the daughter of Zeus. In the Odyssey (Book 4), as a queen in the palace
of Menelaus, she spins wool with her golden spindle, like the faithful
Penelope, who stays in her room in Odysseus’s palace and weaves.
Pandora’s daimonic power pertains to the temptation innate to the
“unmanageable trap”—namely, to that which is hidden through the
face and jewelry. For this reason, in Greek mythology, jewelry can be as
dangerous as a trap, as was the necklace of Harmonia (given to Eriphyle
as a seductive bribe which leads to the death of her husband, hero and
prophet Amphiaraos), or the robe woven by Deianeira, which she dipped
in the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus (having been misled to think
it was a love potion) and gave to her husband, Heracles.
In Euripides’s Ion, Athenian queen Kreousa wears a golden bracelet on her
wrist inlaid with two drops of the Gorgon’s blood: one with deadly poison
and one with a healing agent. She intends to kill the young Ion with the
poison but surprisingly finds out that he is her long lost son since infancy.
She learns of her son’s identity when she identifies the heirloom necklace
adorned with serpents among the birth tokens in his cradle, associating
him with the Athenian royal house into which she was born.
These examples show that with regard to the woman and the status of
jewelry, the daimonic power lies in the duality of overt and covert, exterior
and interior, hence it belong to the notion of truth, Aletheia, which denotes
“that which is not hidden from the eye and the consciousness.” Jewelry
can conceal (or deceive), and it can also expose and reveal; in this respect,
it serves as a test for identity and truth. In the Odyssey (Book XIX, 215ff),
Penelope tests the foreign guest (her masqueraded husband) by asking him
what clothing the missing Odysseus wore when he visited his home. The
guest passes the test:
“Great Odysseus was wearing a woolen mantle of purple, with
two folds, but the pin to it was golden and fashioned with double
sheathes, and the front part of it was artfully done: a hound held
in his forepaws a dappled fawn, preying on it as it struggled; and
all admired it, how, though they were golden, it preyed on the
fawn and strangled it and the fawn struggled with his feet as he
tried to escape him.” [19.225–231]
Created from observation, the jewel demands a second glance, which
discerns the Aletheia—the identifying, disclosing image (the covert that
complements the overt) which is grasped, caught like the fawn held in the
hound’s forepaws, and evades neither eye nor consciousness.
As seen on the next page, the gaze of the artist, the maker of the jewel,
brings together the face and the “inner figure,” which is generated as a
concept projecting onto his/her own facial features. Deganit herself is
both the living jewel, seen from the outside, and she is also (like Elstir’s
wife) the “ideal type illustrated by certain lines, certain arabesques
which reappeared incessantly throughout his work, to a certain canon
of art.” In the following paragraphs I shall delve into the contents of this
encounter and the interrelations between the face and body, and their
refl ection in her works. I shall inquire what the relation is between
Deganit as a living image and her conceptual refl ections in the various
works: How Many is Deganit?
Deganit the woman is body and face; in the erotic category of poros
(abundance, resourcefulness), she is endowed with beauty that is
immanent to an object, which is supposed to be embraced as desirable
and coveted through its visibility. In the artistic category of penia
(that which is lacking and sought after), she requires some magical
enhancement of beauty through the creation of jewelry. The jewel, as a
displacement and a projection, is created with minimum or maximum
transformation and defamiliarization. Let us recall Rimbaud’s aphorism
“je est un autre” (“I am an other”). The displacement from the face,
from the living image, may be performed, as in the case of Aphrodite’s
jewelry, through the aura of the golden ring or the brooch inlaid with
diamonds.
It can also be manifested in the charismatic authority of Venus’s figure
As we have seen when discussing Plato, the paideia of Eros, the path
to the beautiful and good, involves refl ection and sublimation—a
transition from an image of the body in its corporeal form to the level
of shapes and concepts. In the aforesaid photograph, Deganit observes
the brooch attached to her blouse with an insightful gaze. In one of
my sonnets, I wrote about her: “Such silent essence as one fi nds in
fl ower seeds / Has molded you as such, without a looking glass.” In the
photograph, the inner image—embodied in Deganit’s work and refl ected
in her expression—is not narcissistic, but knowing; it conveys the gaze
and the thought, which are turned outward as well as inward, towards
the essence, requiring the invention of another kind of beauty. Instead
of ornamenting the body as an illustration, Deganit creates jewelry
which, to my mind, conceptually illustrates the ethical beauty of the
concept of the body perceived as a geometric, calculated, architectural
form comprised of organs held together by hinges that allow movement
and action.
In some photographs, Deganit is studded amid the objects like a gem,
and at the same time, she is the artist, who observes and probes “being
together” as a binding ethos that lends value to the combination of
possibilities between various objects and vessels (and even fragments).
The diverse heterogeneous elements fuse to form a harmony in her
works that stems from within, representing the “self.”
The works and series, which address diverse themes, thus represent
Deganit’s “ethos” in the fullest sense of this concept (whose Greek
denotation is “that which is repeated,” a custom or habit, hence it means
disposition, character). This concept may be expanded to apply to society
and nature. In Archaic Greek philosophy, which engaged with nature
and the elements of the world, “being together” and “being apart” were
always accompanied, other than the material elements, by an ethical
agent which separates and combines, sets apart and brings closer,
constructs and deconstructs. To philosopher Anaximandros, this element
is justice (dike), to Anaxagoras it is the mind (nous), and to Heraclitus it is
war (polemos)—the confrontation that unites opposites. In Empedocles’s
philosophy (fr. 17), the ethical motivation to take apart and reassemble the
element combinations are love (philotes) and strife (neikos):
“But come! but hear my words! For knowledge gained
Makes strong thy soul. For as before I spake,
Naming the utter goal of these my words,
I will report a twofold truth. Now grows
The One from Many into being, now
Even from the One disparting come the Many,—
Fire, Water, Earth and awful heights of Air;
And shut from them apart, the deadly Strife
In equipoise, and Love within their midst
In all her being in length and breadth the same.
Behold her now with mind, and sit not there
With eyes astonished, for ’tis she inborn
Abides established in the limbs of men.
Through her they cherish thoughts of love, through her
Perfect the works of concord, calling her
By name Delight or Aphrodite clear.”
Indeed, the concept of love—originally a poetic-mythical notion
(embodied in Aphrodite)—was “secularized” in Greece: the adjective philos
in Homer has a possessive sense (“mine,” “his”) that was also applied to
parts of the body. In Archaic Greece, philia (love, friendship, affection)
functionally intertwines as the possessive notion on which the ethos
relies in the family, in society, and in the polis. In Greek society, the
totality of reciprocal relations (connection and division) is based on the
differences between friends (philoi) and enemies (echtroi). The philos (close
companion/relative) is always a part of a familial and social complex.
The value of friendship/closeness thus functions as both identifi er and
connector of people in the family and in society; it may also be pinpointed
on the aesthetic level, when it is projected onto the work of art as a
creation that lends value to the combination of individual elements as
parts that belong to a single fabric.
As an expression of affi liation, common interests, and shared
values, relatives and friends (philoi) join hands, bodies, and faces,
as seen in the bracelets and brooches.
Philia has an emotional, political, patriotic, and ethnic sense as a notion
that ascribes similar, equal citizens to a structure, whether in the
society of warriors in Sparta (as described by Plutarch in Lykourgos) or
in Pericles’s democratic city. This is the positive aspect of the concept.
But it also sharply distinguishes between those who are close or related
(philoi) and those who are not: an outsider from another city (xenos), the
foreign settler who has no civil rights (metoikos), the bond-slave (doulos)
who is considered (by Plato and Aristotle) as subhuman and an object,
the enemy (echtros), and the foreigner who is not Greek (barbaros). This
distinction between philos (similar, affiliated) and foreign (different,
not belonging) is political and racist, and it is built into the sanctified
structure of the nomos (law, custom). The original sense of this notion
is “that which is assigned, distributed, or divided,” hence custom, law.
(The verb nomein means to divide or dispense). Nomos grants a portion,
but also distributes and discriminates for better or worse. Solon, at
the beginning of the 6th century BC, initiated a constitutional and
democratic reform by releasing the Athenians who had been sold into
slavery to cover their debts, thereby reinstating them in the circle of
closeness (philia) and the law (nomos). In the 5th century BC, slaves in
Athens are foreigners (barbaroi). Those who are not philoi are not citizens
and are considered to be inferior. On the aesthetic level, they are likened
to naturally inferior, ugly materials. The slaves and foreigners (barbaroi)
in the vase paintings and in Aristophanes’s comedies are portrayed as
belonging to this inferior status.
But the 5th century BC saw a transition in Greek philosophy. The new
philosophers, e.g. Protagoras, Antiphon, and Gorgias, undermined
the validity of the sphere of law and custom. They argued that nature
(physis) is more real and valid than the law (nomos) and believed that the
dividing and categorizing legal system had only the artificial validity of
conventions that do not stand the test of nature. According to Antiphon:
“We revere and honour those born of noble fathers, but those
who are not born of noble houses we neither revere nor honour.
In this we are, in our relations with one another, like barbarians,
since we are all by nature born the same in every way, both
barbarians and Hellenes. And it is open to all men to observe
the laws of nature, which are compulsory. Similarly all of these
things can be acquired by all, and in none of these things is any
of us distinguished as barbarian or Hellene. We all breathe into
the air through mouth and nostrils, and we all eat with hands…”[fr. 44]
This stance marks a transition in Aristophanes’s later comedies (The
Frogs, Wealth) and in Menander’s comedies, in which the slaves are
presented as equal in intellect and value to their masters.
Returning to Deganit and her works, and considering the
transformations in art since the 1970s, we may find a parallel to this
ethical openness in her deviation from the strict sphere of modernist
jewelry making in the spirit of nomos, which under the influence of
International Style architecture meticulously and strictly combines
“noble” substances which are akin to philoi (with hinges). In the next
phase of her work, she leans toward the egalitarian spirit of physis
when she fuses “related” and “noble” substances with others that are
“foreign,” “inferior,” “ugly,” and “barbarian” into a single totality.
The inclusion of foreign, inferior materials (which are not considered
philoi) is supplemented by a political sense in the Israeli context, of
embracing the enemies (echtroi), who also, as maintained by Antiphon,
“all breathe into the air through mouth and nostrils, and … eat with
hands.” In this I refer to Deganit’s didactic works in Arabic.
Thus, one may discern a transition from an ethos that defines, classifies,
and differentiates the figure by the class-aesthetic norms of the law
(nomos) to an ethos whereby the figures are created equal by virtue of
the substances of nature (physis). This transition, by analogy, is taken to
the extreme and further manifested in yet another process in Deganit’s
work, which somewhat parallels the Atomist perception introduced
by Leukippos and Demokritos, who were also active in the 5th century
BC. To these philosophers, the atoms of matter are in constant motion,
colliding and merging by a hidden accord, as creatures, plants, and
objects that may be classifi ed into groups. This fusion has its causes,
but they are infi nite, hence the cause is not perceived, in this instance,
as an ethical factor such as mind (nous), justice, or love, which shapes
a fi gure in its totality, but rather as an outcome of what they defi ne as
“chance by necessity” (anankaie tyche), a coinage which recurs several
times in tragedies. The notions of chance (tyche) and necessity (ananke)
recur in Archaic philosophy and Greek tragedy. As the forces of fate,
they are considered even more powerful than the Olympian gods
who, in the mythological tradition, follow the Titans, personifying—
as a family (philoi) and as distinct fi gures—various ethical concepts
(paternity, Eros, cunning, violence, etc.). One may say that the gods
are the models for what is defi ned as persona, specifi cally the authority
and idiosyncrasy of the face. In the Atomists world view, necessity
generates a whirlpool, which produces a constant cosmic movement.
The motion of each of the millions of atoms indeed has a mechanical
cause, but as one in a chain of countless causes, it cannot be grasped,
hence we ascribe the movement of the atoms, as well as the process of
their swerving and becoming individuals in groups, to chance (tyche).
According to Demokritos:
“Living creatures consort with their kind, as doves with doves,
and cranes with cranes, and similarly with the rest of the animal
world. So it is with inanimate things, as one can see with the
sieving of seeds and with the pebbles on the beaches. In the
former, through the circulation of the sieve, beans are separated
and ranged with beans, barley grains with barley, and wheat
with wheat; in the latter, with the motion of the wave, oval
pebbles are driven to the same place as oval, and round to round,
as if the similarity in these things had a sort of power over them
which had brought them together.”
[fr. 164]
The likeness ostensibly bringing things together is contingent,
molecular, hence indifferent, and does not acquire a sense of an active
ethical value as philia (close companionship) or as natural equality
which symbolizes human brotherhood. Thus, in her major work, How
Many is One, Deganit herself, like any other figure, is supposed to be
a cluster of atoms cast into the mold of “human being,” acquiring its
shape and beauty by the mere power of movement and chance, which
change in every casting of the material overflowing the same mold,
trickling as surplus from its apertures.
The same applies to all the works in this series: they are all created and
change by virtue of the uncertainty and sudden cessation of the casting
process. The Apollonian artist—like Pheidias, who created the figures
of human Lapiths, in the Parthenon metopes, defeating the Centaurs
as an epitome of the supremacy of culture—is now replaced by chance,
as a more radical artist, who presides over the mechanized, industrial
process. In a broader sense, and based on experience from then until
now, one may say that Capitalism (which pushes artist and craftsman
alike) reveals itself in society, nature, and every site as an embodiment
of tyche (chance which takes over as if it were a necessity).
Thus it may be said that in How Many is One and in Ants, the Aphroditelike figure, which was the source of art in general (and jewelry in
particular), was eliminated as one who is supposed to seduce and be
graceful as a persona, by virtue of the ethical concepts and aesthetic
rules (a planned construction with center and periphery, balance and
composition) dictated by the sphere of the family and the polis (filia).
As a concept it now acquires random, serial beauty, one which, due to
deconstruction and de-differentiation, no longer possesses the unique
ethical sense of FACE.
As in the aforesaid passage from Demokritos, Deganit is like one of the
cranes, the beans, or the oval pebbles which form and gather by chance.
Atomism today has a scientific, technological, elucidating, and ordering
sense, and at the same time—with regard to the fate of humanity—it also
possesses an uncanny, intimidating, disastrous sense. Both these meanings
echo Yeats’s words in his poem Easter, 1916:
“A terrible beauty is born.”