Jerusalem Through a New Lens: How 'Taking in the View' Challenges Our Perception of Landscape Art
There’s something profoundly intriguing about how art can reframe the familiar, turning the mundane into the extraordinary. This is exactly what Taking in the View at Ticho House achieves—and it’s not just another art exhibition. Personally, I think this show is a masterclass in how contemporary artists can dialogue with the past while pushing boundaries. What makes this particularly fascinating is how it uses Anna Ticho’s romanticized landscapes as a springboard to explore entirely new ways of seeing Jerusalem.
Anna Ticho’s work, with its bucolic landscapes and floral motifs, is often seen as a nostalgic tribute to Jerusalem’s natural beauty. But here’s the thing: Taking in the View doesn’t just celebrate her legacy—it deconstructs it. Curator Gilad Reich and senior curator Timna Seligman have paired Ticho’s work with five contemporary artists, creating a conversation that’s both respectful and revolutionary. In my opinion, this isn’t just about showcasing art; it’s about challenging how we perceive the very idea of a ‘view.’
The Art of Deconstruction: Raphael Y. Herman’s *Perspeciuum*
One piece that immediately stands out is Raphael Y. Herman’s Perspeciuum. What many people don’t realize is that Herman’s process is as much about time as it is about light. He leaves his camera shutter open for eight hours, capturing not the landscape itself but the light pollution that dances in the air. The result? A haunting, abstract print that feels more like a ghostly echo of a place than a photograph.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Reich and Seligman placed Perspeciuum in a dimly lit room, forcing viewers to strain their eyes to decipher the details. If you take a step back and think about it, this isn’t just a curatorial choice—it’s a metaphor for how we often miss the subtleties in familiar landscapes. Herman’s work isn’t about showing us what’s there; it’s about revealing what we can’t see.
Anna Ticho’s Secret: The Photographer Behind the Painter
A detail that I find especially interesting is the revelation that Anna Ticho herself was a photographer. Who knew? Her snapshots, taken in the 1970s as preparatory studies for her paintings, are a stark contrast to her romanticized watercolors. Her photographs are almost clinical, stripped of the sentimentality that defines her paintings. What this really suggests is that Ticho’s artistic process was far more complex than we’ve been led to believe.
This raises a deeper question: How much of what we see in art is the artist’s intention, and how much is our own projection? Ticho’s photographs feel like conceptual art, a far cry from her pastoral paintings. It’s as if she was two artists in one—a romantic and a realist, constantly at odds with each other.
Blurring the Lines Between Real and Imagined
Noa Ben-Nun Melamed’s work takes this idea even further. Her digitally altered landscapes are so abstract that it’s impossible to tell where reality ends and imagination begins. From my perspective, this is where the exhibition truly shines. It’s not just about Jerusalem; it’s about the very concept of place and how technology can reshape our understanding of it.
Ora Lev’s The Way It Was series, on the other hand, feels like a time capsule. Using a camera-less photogram process, she creates hyperrealistic images of flowers that look like X-rays. What makes this particularly fascinating is how it inverts our expectations. We’re used to seeing flowers in full bloom, but Lev shows us their skeletal structure, reminding us of the fragility beneath the beauty.
Nostalgia in Motion: Dorian Gottlieb’s Train Journey
Dorian Gottlieb’s video work, If You Loved Me and If, is a love letter to a bygone era. Anyone who’s ever taken the old train to Jerusalem will feel a pang of nostalgia watching the landscape flicker past the window. But what’s truly brilliant is how Gottlieb connects this to Ticho’s watercolors. The movement of the train mirrors the fluidity of her brushstrokes, creating a dialogue between past and present.
Looking Ahead While Glancing Back
Ella Littwitz’s diptych, Edith, adds a biblical twist to the exhibition. By depicting Lot’s wife as identical twins, Littwitz invites us to reflect on the tension between looking back and moving forward. It’s a theme that resonates throughout the show: How do we honor the past while embracing the future?
In my opinion, Taking in the View isn’t just an exhibition—it’s a manifesto. It challenges us to rethink what we see, how we see it, and why it matters. Anna Ticho’s Jerusalem is no longer just a romanticized landscape; it’s a living, breathing entity that evolves with every new perspective.
If you take a step back and think about it, this exhibition is a reminder that art isn’t static. It’s a conversation, a dialogue across time and space. And in that conversation, Jerusalem isn’t just a city—it’s a canvas, endlessly reinterpreted by those who dare to look closer.
Final Thought: What this exhibition really suggests is that the view is never just the view. It’s a reflection of who we are, what we’ve seen, and what we hope to see. And that, in my opinion, is what makes Taking in the View so profoundly relevant.
