The Parisian art dealer Olivier Waltman has a rather talkative temperament. In mid-September, however, he was discreet about his skirmish called “Will their voice be heard?” “. On the program for this flash exhibition, over three short days, around forty works by artists, mainly Israeli, put on sale for the benefit of the families of captive Hamas hostages. “I wanted to stay under the radar to avoid problems”murmurs the gallery owner, burned after having the mezuza that was hanging outside his gallery torn off last June.
The same month, the metal plate of his colleague Frank Elbaz, also of Jewish faith, was scratched. The latter then expressed his concern to the Professional Committee of Art Galleries, of which he is a member, hoping for a public position from the union regarding the outbreak of anti-Semitic acts – this was condemned in their newsletter of the month of July. Frank Elbaz painfully experienced October 7, which shattered his complicit relationship with two exhibition curators. Ordering his friends to balance their compassion and, for one of them, to remove the tablet « Stop genocide » from his Instagram profile, he was immediately criticized for being deaf to Palestinian suffering. Since then, these friends are no longer friends, no longer speak to each other, no longer understand each other. “In my worst nightmares, I didn’t think I would experience this”laments Frank Elbaz.
Art for art’s sake, this utopia of a bubble of mutual understanding, is no longer an option since the carnage perpetrated on October 7, 2023 by Hamas, which left some 1,200 dead, and the bombings launched in retaliation by the Jewish state, which caused more than 41,000 deaths, according to Hamas’ count, transforming Gaza into a field of ruins. This sector which saw itself as a tolerant tower of Babel only resisted the madness of the Middle East for a few days. From October 19, an article published by the magazine Artforum accuses Israel of “genocide” and demands the liberation of Palestine, without reference to Hamas atrocities or calls for the release of hostages. The text, which collected 8,000 signatures, immediately split the art world into two camps, increasingly radicalized, leaving little room for moderate voices.
A year of excommunications
“Where are you talking about?” »we asked in the 1960s of politicians who demanded absolute coherence between social status and convictions. Today’s political commissioners are repeating the same questioning. Returned to their nationality alone, Israeli creators are judged to be in solidarity with the government of Benyamin Netanyahu, although most of them fight politically, presumed to be responsible for the deaths accumulating in Gaza, while the majority are campaigning for a Palestinian state.
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