Go Seth Go!

Portraits of Israelis & Palestinians: For my parents

By Seth Tobocman

Soft Skull Press: Brooklyn, NY, 2003

104 pp, $15.95, ISBN: 1-887128-83-2

www.softskull.com

 

Seth goes to Palestine.

Seth, see Ahmed!

Ahmed, see Seth!

Seth smiles.

Ahmed smiles.

Seth and Ahmed are friends.

 

Amir comes.

Amir steals Ahmed's toys.

Bad Amir.

Ahmed cries.

Waaaaah.

Seth writes.

Seth draws.

Lie, Seth lie.

 

Jiminy! No fooling, Mr. Tobocman's book reads like a first grade primer.

 

It has big words to be sure; Eric Drooker's introduction invokes the Left's familiar lexicon: "awareness," "struggle,"  "freedom," "occupation." He paints Tobocman's portrait-an evolution from Lower East Side after-school art program volunteer to Dir Ibzia summer-school teacher, in the "West Bank."

 

Where Tobocman's text slants to promote a Leftist agenda, his drawings give scribbling a bad name.

 

One hundred and four pages of caricatures accompanied by text, Portraits-mimetic treachery betraying Spiegelman's MAUS-embodies all that is anti-aesthetic and repellent in mannerism. The book is cute, but altogether unconvincing, childish and obtuse.

 

Do not get me wrong, his idea, albeit hackneyed, presents interesting possibilities. Take French artist, Honore Daumier (1810 - 1879) por ejemplo.

 

Called the "greatest of the satirical draftsmen" by aesthetics giant, H. H. Arnason (1977, 23), Daumier spent six months in a Parisian prison for his peach-face cartoons of Louis-Philippe. (Incidentally, Daumier created some of his greatest works in prison, where much to his delight, he was fed and sheltered-luxuries that the poor artist was not used to taking for granted- courtesy of the French government.) His immense output of lithographs (roughly four thousand) and busts provocatively depicted the French aristocracy at its worst and wed simple drawing and biting social commentary in holy matrimony. Daumier rightfully assumed his perch in the Pantheon, canonized both as artist as well as social critic.

 

Seth, sadly, is neither.

 

Drooker calls Seth's illustrations, "drawn on the fly" (VII). How right he is! So poorly drawn and awkward are his drawings that after completing a wholly fruitless escapade in the Middle East, he probably scribbled them furiously in his notebook as his plane landed back in America. Judging from their appearance, he most likely "drew" them literally as the plane bumped along the runway.

 

My inspiration enthused me to take a few Picasso books off my shelf and to lay them side-by-side with Tobocman's. The juxtaposition blinded.

 

Hear Picasso. "I remember at the School of Fine Arts they made us write in a notebook-'One must learn to paint' and to repeat it several times. I did it, but in reverse. I wrote 'One must not learn to paint. One must not learn to paint" (Olano 1982).

 

This point deserves underscore after underscore. Picasso did not care much at all for drawing, and he cared less for art per se. Picasso drew; he did not learn to draw or theorize about drawing. This trend of replacing aesthetics with tangible, practical philistinism typifies the modern period, and mutatis mutandis to Toulouse-Lautrec and Daumier.

 

Jacques Lassaigne recounts Joyant's comments on Toulouse-Lautrec's habit of "jotting down his impressions of people in the boxes and lobbies of theaters, touching up his sketches in the intermissions, adding a dab of blue for and eye, a red line for a mouth; drawing, in fact, all the time, no matter where, no matter what the subject. Once a mere dot and a couple of dashes were the jumping-off point for a lithograph or picture" (1953, 64). This should remind us of Hirschfeld and Sorell.

 

Gesture drawings done well convey a certain immediacy and oomph.

 

Or take Anna Tico's work. She drew Arab women, and I have no qualms about crediting her with a job well done. Certainly she is no Picasso or midget of a lithographer, but she drew life honestly, like they did. Tobocman could have improved on Tico and Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso. He could have sought out the next conceptual progression. Instead, sadly, he settled for stylized, artsy trash.

 

Maybe I am unfair, though. Perhaps Seth's fraudulent captions cancel out his pseudo-drawings. Maybe two wrongs right themselves...

 

Take an editorial on Arafat qua role model for example: "Before we judge this too harshly, let's remember that George Washington owned slaves and that didn't keep his face off the dollar bill" (65). Right Seth. Good old GW, a regular terrorist.

 

Seth's target audience, understandably, is the average American. "[I]n many ways, the fate of the region has been in the hands of Americans who aren't experts, Americans like you and me" (VIII).

 

I fear that I for one am not falling over myself with excitement from Seth whitewashing (tarring?) me with his amalgamate brush. Neither should you.

 

Seth argues, "Israelis and Palestinians are two communities at war. But they are communities. Communities where people love their children, care for their neighbors and participate in civil society. They are not crazy. They are not barbarians. They are not evil" (14).

 

In all seriousness, Seth is neither crazy nor a barbarian, but, criminy, he sure is evil!