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ISRAELI ART Page 29

the scene, according to Debo-
rah Sampson of Dvorah Art
Collection. The paintings are
"similar in that both are calm
and depict women, but that's
about it," says Ms. Sampson.
But other work bears
tremendous similarities to
that of Tarkay. And insiders
say that copying from the
artist is rampant, and even
encouraged. "When other art
traders and dealers saw how
successful Tarkay was, they
actually took painters and di-
rected them to paint in the
same way," claims Udi She-
leg, the manager of Zule's Eu-
ropean exports.
The name that comes up
most frequently when imita-
tion is discussed is that of
Itzchak Maimon. Many of
those who work in the field of
decorative art say that the 41-
year-old Beersheva artist was
strongly influenced by
Tarkay. "Everyone knows
that when [Maimon] started,
he was literally copying
Tarkay," says Mr. Sheleg.
Those who publish the
work of the 41-year-old Beer-
sheva resident don't agree.
Maimon, they note, began
painting cafe scenes in the
late 1970s and early 1980s
when he owned a few coffee-
houses in Beersheva. "Mai-
mon has been doing cafes
practically all his life, while
Tarkay started out doing
nudes and landscapes," says
Judy Bishop, vice president of
B & R International Art.
Despite these claims, the
owners of London Contempo-
rary Art thought that Mai-
mon's work was similar
enough to Tarkay's to begin
to take legal action against
the artist a year or so ago, ac-
cording to Piers Johnston. At
that point, said Mr. Johnston,
Maimon "moved away, and
his work became less similar."
Still, the damage to Tarkay
may already have been done.
Indeed, some signs point to
a wane in Tarkay's populari-
ty. Joan Young, a Mary-
land gallery owner, said
that interest among con-
sumers has dropped in
recent months — a trend
she attributes to overexpo-
sure of the artist. As a
result, she's started to carry
less of his work.
And Peter Mitchell says
that at recent Artexpos,
gallery owners have begun to
turn away from the Tarkay
style. "They're saying, we're
coming back to Schneuer, he's
the original. Everyone else is
just copying." The Tarkay-in-
spired style, he said, is now
referred to as the "Tel Aviv
Trash Can School of Art."
According to Piers John-
ston, though, Tarkay's prints

are still selling well. "When
we sold at Artexpo [New
York] in March, we sold out
five editions totally," he says.
"That's certainly not on the
wane as far as we're con-
cerned."

away From Judaic('

T

arkay and his followers
are hardly the first Is-
raelis to make headway
into the international art
market. Yaacov Agam, the ki-
netic artist who rose to fame
in the 1970s, is better known
and more well respected than
Tarkay: his work, which often
contains Jewish symbols, is
in such museum collections as
that of the Guggenheim, and
he has even designed a hotel
in Los Angeles.
"Agam is enormously pop-
ular in Europe, and he's in
major, major collections, while
Tarkay is not on that level,"
says Ms. Sampson. Likewise,
Shraga Weil, a 74-year-old
kibbutznik whose lyrical oils
and prints bear some resem-
blance to those of Chagall, is
represented in the collections
of such institutions as the
Philadelphia Museum of Art,
the Fogg Museum of Harvard
University, and the Los An-
geles County Museum.
Other artists have also
managed to cross interna-
tional boundaries. The work

You can't pin down
what is Israeli art.
It's very eclectic.

of Moshe Kupferman and
Menashe Kadishman, along
with that of several other
artists, appeared in an exhi-
bition on Israeli art at the
Jewish Museum in New York
three years ago. Both artists
deal with Jewish or Israeli
themes: Mr. Kadishman, for
example, exhibited a stark
steel sculpture called "The
Sacrifice of Isaac" which
showed a large, menacing
ram's head hovering over a
lonely, helpless Isaac.
On the more accessible
side, Amram Ebgi, Shalom of
Safed, and Edward Ben
Avram have each achieved
considerable recognition in
the U.S. within the last 10
years or so, with their work
sold in many synagogue
and community center gift
shops.
What separates the Tarkay
school from the best known of
these artists, apart from its
highly decorative, accessible
quality, is its lack of Jewish
content. Tarkay and his fol-

