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Ilana
Goor
Her corner of paradise
By
Andrew Princz
Reporting from Jaffa for ontheglobe.com
Walk through massive stone entrance hall of the Ilana Goor Museum in the historic port-town of Jaffa in Israel, and you will likely feel as if you had just entered an eclectic artistic jungle. Interspersed throughout the fascinating collection are the contemporary and the classical, the refined to the naïve, the secular to the religious.
To give all of this its very unique context - throughout this very setting are classically designed iron furniture, humorous bronze sculptures, far-out jewelry designs, and decidedly abstract wooden artworks that are all the creations of your spiritual host - the multi-talented Israeli artist, designer and collector, Ilana Goor.
The seaside museum - literally a home turned into a museum a decade ago - is lined with a wide array of objects that Ms. Goor has collected over the years from the many corners of the world. There is a room filled with an array of African sculptures, a guest room with an iron lamp she designed from which Jesus seems to dangle, another with a Menorah and a Crucifix, or an Indian bronze Marriage Ceremony Tree. Another room is dedicated to her family, while her trademark birds or other small animal figurines that can be found here and there throughout the museum, and may even surprise you in very unusual places.
Interspersed also are artworks of a wide array of artists including a small Henry Moore sculpture, several works of the contemporary Polish artist Olga Wolniak, or an etching by Iraqi-born artist Mordechai Moreh.
Ilana Goor took the time to talk with Andrew Princz on her courtyard - rich with sculptures, beautiful flowers and urns, overlooking the greenish-blue Mediterranean at sun-down.
ontheglobe.com What you have created in this museum amounts to an eclectic yet homogeneous world, with a very distinct character. This strange eclecticism seems, nevertheless, ordered and very intentional.
Ilana
Goor I created a world
of my own to share with people in Israel, to teach Israelis about design
and about art and how to use art. Not only to talk about art but how to
hang a painting, for instance. Not to be afraid to mix the old and the new.
Here, I have a lot of eclectic works on display as I believe that one should
not be afraid of trying. Life in Israel is always very tense with all of
the wars, and people do not always have the time to develop. I was very
fortunate because my mother was a doctor who studied medicine, she came
to Israel in the 1920s, and she had taste. She was a lady who only used
Christiane Dior and such. I am married to an American, and I developed and
learned, because we always traveled. All my talent is from within. I just
needed direction, because I did a lot of things: sculpture, jewelry, design...
But when I needed something and I couldn't find it, I made it for myself.
ontheglobe.com What do you consider yourself first: and artist, collector, designer?
Ilana Goor I am an artist and have my own taste, though, and I buy things because I like them and not because of the name. I don't buy to invest, I buy things that I like since I realized that the best judge of art is not a critic, but it is time. If you like it after five years, it means that it is good. If after one year you see that something is wrong, that means that it is not good and you should change it.
It has taken me ten years since the museum opened. Now I can practically see that in my eyes, ninety-nine percent of what we have in the museum is good, and that is because I am not tired of it. In a matter of ten years I kept changing. I used to buy something which if I didn't like it later, I would give it away… I didn't keep it. I would then look, while traveling, to find the right thing. I have to say that I feel that I have succeeded in that I can look at many apartments in Israel when I am a guest, and I always feel my touch there. That they were in the museum and they got an idea, and they put it in their homes. It makes me happy that I received my wish to teach, in my own way, how to be comfortable in one's home, and the furnishings within it. The home is the most important thing for a person. That is where they go out to work, that it where they come back.
ontheglobe.com I was amused by the chairs in your dinning room - which you designed - that are adorned with sculptures of heads talking to each other behind your back!
Ilana Goor I am glad that you see the humor in it, because most people don't. I look at life as humorous because otherwise you can really almost go crazy. Some people also ask me how I can live with the sculptures of the strange heads peering out of pots. The message is that I have lived all of my life in the United States - but I am still an Israeli. I did not try to change my slang or try to become an American. I am an Israeli who got married to an American, but I am an Israeli. For example, the Russian, the Israelis, the Polish, the Turkish all seem to stay in their own ghettos until they make a lot of money. When they make a lot of money they start moving and they get accepted elsewhere. For me, the pot is always Israel, the ghetto. As much you try to come out of it, you are still there, your roots are there holding you inside.
ontheglobe.com
Many of the works that are part of your collection
always seem to be artists from one country, and yet live in another. Is
that just a coincidence, or do you have an affinity to artists that are
somewhat uprooted from their original surroundings?
Ilana
Goor They are displaced.
People always look to better their lives. When you are happy where you are
you don't move, in most cases. When you know your surroundings you tend
to feel comfortable. When you are happy with your job and home, or family
- you will end up staying where you are. The ones that are not so lucky
think that somewhere else their problems will be solved. But I do believe
that their problems stay within them, because when you travel, you travel
with your suitcase wherever you go.
ontheglobe.com
Your work seems to have many very different sides
to it. Classical iron chairs, small chickens or big birds, creepy animals
and then simply found objects. How do you marry these very divergent directions?
Ilana Goor The story about the furniture started like the jewelry and my belts… I needed some furniture for this house, when it was a private home. I had some leftover materials for the building, called rebar. It's a type of a material that you stick into cement, which gets a hold on it. I made quite a few tables with the right proportions, because in Israel in 1983 I could not find a very thick glass. Eventually, I found glass that they used in the armored cars in the war in 1948. The glass was one meter by one meter, which ended up being the same size as the tables. On top of it I made small sculpted birds. Jaffa has a lot of birds, but they disappear because of the heat, but these would sit on top of the glass. All of a sudden everybody that came over asked me to make them a similar table. I didn't know what is so special about it. They liked the idea of the bird, and supposed that I liked birds. How can you love birds? I don't like birds because they don't like you back. I only like things like dogs that love you back. A bird disappears the moment you run after it. But it was a nice display. When I had so many complements, I decided to bring some of the tables to New York to Art Expo to show it. So I brought a few very simple and cleanly designed tables and lamps. I also had this rebar, which was a rusty building material. In New York, in one weekend I got orders to close to two hundred thousand dollars. Then Andy Warhol came to me and he told me that I had really hit the jackpot. I asked him why, and he said that I used a material that nobody had used earlier. I took a material that they used as a building and made something very basic, very classic and beautiful. He was right, because in a matter of one year they were on display at twenty-two show-rooms in the US.
ontheglobe.com You seem to be constantly reinventing yourself.
Ilana Goor I needed the furniture, and this is how I came to design it. I was thinking of nothing other than pleasing myself, and I think that this was my luck. You can never please all the people. It takes years to build a name. When you have a name like Miro or Picasso or Warhol - it is very easy to sell. But when you don't have a name, it is very difficult. So I always wanted to do things for myself. If somebody else likes it, they are welcome, then that is ok - otherwise, that is also ok.
