Jacob Porat - A few words about the background and the theme of this exhibition [A part of my Opening-Speech]:
I became acquainted with Franz Kafka, the subject matter of this exhibition, long before I have visited his town, Prague. My first significant encounter with Kafka was in my first year in the Department of Literature in Tel Aviv University (quite a long time ago) in the course of a seminar that dealt with another important writer -- Agnon. As you may well know, Shmuel Yossef Agnon - at the age of 78 years - and Nelly Sachs won the Nobel Prize of literature together in 1966. [A side remark: Agnon was most probably inspired by Kafka - although he refused to admit it...he was once asked whether he was acquainted with Kafka's writings and his response -- with his special sense of humor - was: I've never read Kafka although my wife did...].
It was at that time that I read Kafka's "The Trial".
This first encounter with Kafka's novel was a revelation for me... What astounded me the most -- or so it seems in retrospect - was the revolutionary narration of this novel, which I have never before met until that time. I refer to the enormous gap and contradiction between the epic serenity in which Kafka tells his story, making use of quite a few elements of humor, and the unreasonable and arbitrary reality and existence, which he presents in this epic tranquility, with no sign of pathos or excitement, as if it were obvious.
Much later I read a description of this Kafka way of narration in Milan Kundera's book of essays - "The Betrayed Wills". Relating to a specific scene from "The Castle", Kundera wrote: "This scene, which has an immense comic poetry [...] would have been inconceivable in the time before Kafka. In no way would it be imaginable. The fact that I repeat this insight is meant to underline how radical Kafka's aesthetic revolution has been." Kundera goes on to quote Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who has told him 20 years earlier: "It was Kafka who made me realize that writing differently is possible." Kundera interprets Marquez' "different" as "Crossing the border of reasonableness not in order to escape from reality (as the romanticists did) but in order to grasp it better."
As for Prague: as mentioned earlier, I have met Prague many years after I have become acquainted with Kafka's writings. It was in February 2000 that I arrived in Prague very acutely aware that I am about to visit Kafka's city but with no plans for preparing an exhibition about him. It was only when I returned to Israel, having looked at the photographs I have taken in Prague and having digested the visit that the idea developed, and the works began piling up quickly.
In May 2001, 15 months after my first visit in Prague, I opened my first exhibition on this theme under the kind auspices of the Czech Embassy in Israel and the honorable Ambassador Mr. Daniel Kumermann.
And a last remark:
Not only were the works in the present exhibition created with a complete lack of the slightest intention of illustrating specific writings by Franz Kafka, they do not even seek to provide an interpretation for his specific works. This is the reason that none of the works has a title [or in other words, that the title of each and every one of the works is "untitled"]. On the other hand, I did have a premeditated aspiration, which I hope I have succeeded in attaining, to present in them and through them the Kafka being, which his writings emit, the way I understand it. More than anything else, I have tried to present the humor (usually bitter and ironical) as well as the terror that emanate from his works.
Even so, my testimonial about the paintings creation process in no way contradicts the possibility that visitors might detect in my works elements that relate somehow to specific Kafka's works. This would be legitimate from any point of view, because from the moment a work of art -- be it a painting, a novel or any work of art in whatever medium - sees light, it becomes an object that everyone is entitled and capable of interpreting. The creator has no privilege or advantage in terms of interpretation over other people, who are not the creators. I will not tire you with the reasoning for this assertion, as the time this would take far exceeds the time I have already forced you to spend listening to my speech.
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7:37UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEINGby francheval70,520 views
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