Ella Cohen Vansover’s paintings bear something of the ancient role of art, in which works of art and art objects functioned as part of systems of religion, ritual, and faith [omanut, art as part of emunah, faith]. These systems were not only the subject of artworks, but the mechanism that enabled the making of art, its exhibition, and acceptance. As such, art became the visual vehicle for the development of the intimate relationship given the role of establishing religious feeling: people imbue ornaments with power and meaning, and in return, they provide direction (kivun( and intention )kavana). Ella Cohen Vansover’s paintings have some of the qualities of ritual figurines, temple sculptures, icons from houses of prayer, religious murals, Shiviti plaques in synagogues, Mizrah [Eastern wall] decorations, and portraits of holy men, kabbalists, and great rabbis.
The series of paintings in this exhibition developed out of a minor series of personal paintings in which Ella Vansover Cohen depicted her grandparents’ home after her grandmother’s passing. The paintings in the series titled “Halls” by the artist are on pieces of cardboard, such as dismantled shoeboxes, with overall brushstrokes; their goal was not a precise depiction of the view but a deciphering of the aesthetic code of the home and its interior walls. The paintings emphasize the shrine-like gaze of the home as a site of ritual objects, of hamsas (palm-shaped good luck charms), traditional objects, portraits of Rav Ovadiah, Rav Amar, the Baba Sali, Rav Kadoori, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe exhibited in decorative frames. With its many pictures, the domestic space in one of the paintings looks almost like a portrait gallery, but among the many differences is one at is especially significant: a portrait is mainly designed to have viewers gaze at the sitter, while the pictures of the rabbis and saintly men along with the observation of the portraits serve as a kind of fulfillment of the admonition “May you see your teachers before you.” The pictures of the rabbis are intended to implant the sensation of the rabbi observing the behavior in the home, while the awareness of the gaze reinforces careful and moral behavior, evoking the feeling of the home and its residents being watched over and blessed. In these paintings, Ella Cohen Vansover has represented the way in which the home is evidence of the customs and spiritual way of life of its residents through its externality, but it is precisely the personal items, the small objects that are hidden from the domestic space, that led to the rich paintings in the current exhibition.
The series “Jewelry Box” comprises compositions overflowing with plenty, with sparkling and attractive jewels, more and more diamonds, pearls, pendants, rings, earrings, brooches, necklaces and all kinds of gems and fine jewelry until it seems that the canvas is bursting its bounds. On the surface, they are paintings of effects that adopt the logic of merchandise, the aesthetics of advertising, and the mechanism that stimulates people’s lust for the product. This is only a surface impression, since the small paintings on cardboard depict the modesty of the artist’s grandmother’s home with its faith in tradition and spirituality under the surface. The dissonance arises from the visual seduction that gives rise to the momentum, to the painterliness expressed in her demonstration of virtuosity and bravura technique, similarly reflected in the intimacy of the home and the aesthetics of its traditions. However, along with the dissonance comes congruence: the material and coloristic richness, the overflowing plenty and density, the large formats and the financial capital of the jewelry, are precisely what are suited to and reflect the powerful personal and economic significance, the spiritual capital embodied in the painted items (and the Jew in jewelry, as it were). Ella Cohen Vansover’s paintings in the “Jewelry Box” series do not depend on observation but on memory, emotion, and the experience of jewelry, (at first personal and later general). The jewelry functions as materials that bear non-material qualities of virtues, and magical properties, like amulets. Each ornament bears not only its own characteristics but also the ceremony of how it was given and received, pathways of intergenerational inheritance, and the memory of its transfer from one body to another – from the grandmother to her painter granddaughter.
Takshit. Bejewelled. Ornamented. Each painting in the series is a jewel in itself – a takshit – a word with alternative interpretation and an alternative spelling for takhshit – a piece of jewelry. The word with its 3-letter Hebrew root K-Sh-T emphasizes the decorative aspect. The paintings in the series “Jewelry Box” make their decorativeness stand out as they take on the guise of a look which is festive, luxurious, and full of splendid glamor, satisfying “hungry eyes.” In this way, Ella Cohen Vansover brings to her paintings something of the aesthetics of one shrine (the home) to another (the gallery).