The Justice

The 1977 work 'Untitled (No. 101),' above, typifies the minimalist style, clearly making reference to Josef Albers' Homage to the Square series. Images courtesy of jacob el hanani

In a country where fast-food restaurants have adorned our cities, highways and even small towns, minimalism and the ready-made art of the Dadaists are recognizable, and now accepted, contributions to art history and the American cultural scene of the '60s and the '70s. Artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Fred Sandback have thrived under this idea of "fast art." For the artist Jacob El Hanani, however, life and art have transpired in a much slower, detailed and painstaking pace.

Born in Morocco and raised in Israel, El Hanani grew up in a culture in which time was in abundance and means were scarce. As a child he was familiar with life in the desert and watched his grandmother make every platter of couscous by hand. After his move to Soho, N.Y. in the early '70s, when artists dominated the area, life did not change that much. He, like many artists, had very little means and all the time in the world to wait to be discovered.

Last week, while he was preparing for two shows that will open this week in Boston, I had the honor of interviewing El Hanani and the pleasure of asking him about life in Soho during the '70s. He summed up his experience by quoting the abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman, who said that "artists don't make art; they make real estate." In other words, artists like El Hanani move into areas that are affordable and, after a few years, everyone else wants to move into those areas too.

El Hanani cites "Picasso and others [who] did it with Montmatre in Paris … and look, today downtown New York is a truly sought-after place to live." Since moving to Soho, El Hanani has had the opportunity to meet many other artists who created "fast art." He jokingly revealed to me: "I remember calling artist friends on the phone that would tell me that they were in the middle of a very important piece. I would say to them, 'I will wait on the line while you finish,' because I knew that in five or so minutes later, they would be done."

El Hanani's friends, however, could neither understand nor truly accept his form of art. Finite squiggles and, sometimes, miniscule Hebrew letters are meticulously arranged into a much larger pattern, which his friends call "maximalist" art. Using only the square and rectangular pieces of paper (and rarely canvas due to the cost of the material), he uses these tiny wavy lines to create larger forms, such as that of a handmade basket, that were familiar to him in his youth.

"Clients and fellow artists," he informed me, "used to ask how I didn't go blind from doing these drawings, but so far my vision is stronger than most at my age."

At age 61, El Hanani can measure his life through his work. In one of his larger works, for example, he related to me that when beginning his work, he was dating a girl named Charlotte, and when he finished it two years later, he was dating Elizabeth.

Jokes aside, these forms and lines have an even deeper meaning to El Hanani than the visual outcome. What really interests him is the idea of human imperfection. It matters not how many works he creates, for there is always the chance, he says, that "someone will call on the telephone or there will be a distraction, and then 'oops,' a mistake is made." To him, the idea that the work can turn out beautiful with these mistakes is important. As he puts it, "humans are not computers," and we must learn to accept that.

As serious as he is about his work, he is a lighthearted man who, in his spare time, will create caricatures on scraps of paper, an art form quite opposite from his culture and his formal artwork. These caricatures and doodles will not go on display until after he passes away because they are the antithesis of his hard labor. To El Hanani, these caricatures are simply his camera on which he can document the artists, actors and other people from his daily life.

Today, his work is included in over 30 public collections, including that of the Rose Art Museum, which acquired a drawing in 1991 after his show "Existence, Passage, and the Dream." This week, he returns to Boston for the opening of two shows. The first is a group show called "Drawn to Detail" at the Decordova Museum on Sept. 4, which will feature 26 artists who give extreme attention to detail. The second one, which features his most recent work, opens on Sept. 5 at the OSP Gallery on Harrison Ave. in Boston.

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