Gilad Efrat's (b. 1969, Beersheba, Israel; lives and works in Tel Aviv) ape portraits are the real heirs of the portraiture tradition of previous centuries. As in the greatest portraits by Rembrandt or van Dyck, these are paintings in which the visibility of the specific model becomes marginal to some revelation of its essence, which is exposed not in the image, but in the conduct of the paint on the canvas. As in the aforesaid masterpieces, the medium directs the viewer to introspection. How does this happen?
Well, the most basic paradigm of painting is that the canvas is covered with paint. The painting is dressing the naked canvas, applying make-up to its white face. Hiding, covering, layer upon layer. Something is always buried under the paint. These paintings by Efrat work in the opposite way. Efrat paints by subtraction. He does not apply paint, but rather removes it. When he leaves it on, it is dark; when he removes it partially—it takes an intermediate tone, and when he removes it entirely, the white canvas is laid bare. He starts with the impervious, making openings in it. He starts from the woven and unstitches. It is a painting of revealment, not concealment. The conduct of the paint on the canvas is archeology: exposure via excavation and removal. The viewer of these portraits is not concerned with the question of how similar they are to one specific ape or another, just as a museumgoer observing a Rembrandt portrait does not care how similar this portrait is to the depicted figure—in fact, we often know that it is not, because that person has other portraits by other artists. Still, Rembrandt's portrait is more real to us. The treatment of paint seems to become he crux of the matter, coming at the expense of the external resemblance; it presents something profound about the model's inner life. Painting by subtraction activates the same mechanism.
These paintings also have a special place in Israeli art. The local field has always been divided in its position regarding the masterpieces of previous centuries. Even today, it remains somewhat divided in its relation to skill, figuration, workmanship. Since the local ethos sanctified abstract and the nonchalant sloppiness of "bad," child-like painting, it had difficulty accepting the figurative painters and allotted them a niche that was virtually separate from the general field. These paintings by Efrat do not fall into that niche, however. They constitute a rare case of technical tour de force, found at the heart of the local discourse on landscape, body, the political, and ars-poetica.
In the discussion of Efrat's ape portraits, I would like to argue that the real model in these works is the viewer. The face, looking at us with wide-open eyes, full of emotion, is our face. The truth revealed in these paintings is the truth about us, about the profound nature lying beneath the layers of our culture. These are paintings that express the blurring of boundaries between nature and culture, which is one of the hallmarks of the present age. Before Darwin, it was easy for man to regard himself as completely separate from nature; today, not only are we increasingly aware of the extent to which our daily decisions are driven by biological factors (from hormones and evolutionary dispositions to the effect of gut bacterial composition on one's personality), but we are also beginning to question the naturalness of nature. It is clear, for example, that a cat and a dog are not nature to the same extent as a tiger and a wolf. It is clear that a chimpanzee that has learned to speak sign language and convey a complex picture of reality, is not nature to the same degree as a jellyfish carried in the sea.
The ape paintings were begotten in this exact space: when Efrat saw an advertisement for an exhibition of monkey paintings whose sale was to be a donation to the zoo. And here—apart from the obvious: that this is an opportunity for general culture to mock high culture ("It looks like an abstract painting that is worth millions! What's the difference?"), and apart from the ironic reversal of the ape as a symbol of art (because apes are imitators, and art is an imitation of reality)—a real crack appeared between culture and nature; a reminder, in the beautiful eyes of the apes, how human they are; and, since they are our— the viewers'—portraits, to what extent we are apes.
