Imagining Antarctica: Two Cosmic Pivots - Jerusalem at the South Pole

 

IMAGING ANTARCTICA

Antarktis - Vorstellung und Wirklichkeit

Nordico - Stadtmuseum Linz

20 June 1986 - 31 August 1986

click on the image above to enlarge the text

Two Cosmic Pivots: Jerusalem at the South Pole^[16] This environmental artwork juxtaposes the pivot point at the South Pole around which our planet rotates with Jerusalem, a pivot point from which spiritual energies radiate from the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Alexenberg collected earth from two sites in Jerusalem that span two millennia, from the Western Wall where the Temple stood to the college Mercaz Harav founded by Israel’s first chief rabbi Kook. This mixture from the past and future was placed at the South Pole for the exhibition “Imagining Antarctica” at the Nordica Stadtmuseum Linz, Austria, in 1986.

Cyberangels Virtual Flight from Israel Museum to Rembrandt House Museum to Victoria & Albert Museum in Honor of King Charles III

Cyberangels from Israel Honor King Charles III

by Mel Alexenberg

In honor of the Coronation of King Charles III, Israeli digital artist Mel Alexenberg launched his Rembrandt-Inspired cyberangels on a virtual flight from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem through the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam to the Victoria ad Albert Museum in London. He tells the story here:

I created this visual narrative artwork as an image and text expressed in pioneering digital fine art prints that are in the collections of thirty museums throughout the world.

The image in the narrative begins with a virtual flight of cyberangels from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the site where millennia ago angels in Jacob’s dream went up and down a ladder.

They arrive at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam when I am in the great master’s studio from where I send my Rembrandt inspired cyberangels on a virtual flight to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to bring good wishes to King Charles from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. King Charles III is the first British monarch to be descended from two children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

My cyberangel artworks are in the collections of these museums in Jerusalem, Amsterdam and London. The cyberangels that have been asleep in the flat files of the museums for three decades are coming alive, morphing into cryptoangels taking flight through virtual skies.

In the tradition of the British royal family, the coronation throne rests on a stone on which Jacob rested his head as he dreamed of angels ascending and descending. It became the stone under the throne of King David in Jerusalem three millennia ago that has found its way to the Coronation Throne at Westminster Abbey in London in 2023.  

Art is a Computer Angel

This narrative begins with the birth of cyberangels when I was listening to the ancient Hebrew words being chanted from a handwritten Torah scroll while translating them into English in my mind. It described the artist Bezalel as being talented in all types of craftsmanship to make artworks” (Exodus 35:33). The Hebrew words for “visual art” literally mean “thoughtful craft,” a feminine term. When I transformed it into its masculine form, it became “computer angel.”

I rushed to tell my wife Miriam that I discovered that my role as a male artist is to create computer angels! I was equipped to create them as the head of the art department at Pratt Institute where I taught the first course on creating art with computers and was research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

Rembrandt was the master at telling Bible stories with angels in his paintings, drawings, and etchings. He created artworks based on the verse: “A ladder was standing on the ground, its top reaching up towards heaven as angels were going up and down on it.” (Genesis 28:12) The angels in Jacob’s dream go up from the Land of Israel and go down throughout the world heralding a message of peace: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

In Jerusalem, I created a serigraph “Angels Ascending from the Land of Israel” showing Rembrandt inspired cyberangels ascending from a satellite image of Israel. It is in the collection of the Israel Museum.

Cybererangels Fly around the Globe

The image of my cyberangel on its virtual flight from Israel to Hollland shows me in period garb in Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam welcoming a cyberangel from the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book where some of the oldest Bible manuscripts are housed that contain the narrative of angels going up and down the ladder in Jacob’s dream. The Rembrandt-inspired cyberangel continues its virtual flight to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

My cyberangel first flew between Holland to Israel in my AT&T sponsored telecommunications art event on October 4, 1989 honoring Rembrandt on the 320th anniversary of his death. I launched a digitized image of his angel on a circumglobal flight from New York to the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, University of the Arts in Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and back New York. After a five-hour flight around the planet, the deconstructed angel was reconstructed at its starting point.

When it passed through Tokyo, it was already the morning of October 5th. When it arrived in Los Angeles, it was still October 4th.  Cyberangels can not only fly around the globe, they can fly into tomorrow and back into yesterday. Millions watching TV saw the cyberangel’s return from its circumglobal flight.  It was featured in sixty newspapers and the AT&T annual report.

Alexenberg's Computer Art in Collection of Victoria and Albert Museum

The official opening by Queen Victoria of a museum for progress in art and design in 1857 was followed by her laying the foundation stone of its new building in 1899 and naming it Victoria & Albert Museum.

King Charles’s mother Queen Elizabeth participated in the opening of the “World of the Bible” exhibition at V&A in 1965 in co-operation with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and “The Bible in British Art” in 1997 with a poster for the exhibition showing angels ascending and descending on a ladder. This poster joined my 1986 “Digital Homage to Rembrandt” computer generated serigraph in the V&A prints and drawings collection.

Coronation Oil from the Mount of Olives in Israel 

One emotional visit to Israel occurred in 2016, when Charles travelled to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres, the President of Israel. While there, he visited the grave of his grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, who saved Jews during the Holocaust and was honored as Righteous Among the Nations. She is buried in Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

The Archbishop of Canterbury explained, "Since beginning the planning for the coronation, my desire has been for a new Coronation Oil to be prepared using olive oil from the Mount of Olives. This demonstrates the deep historic link between the Coronation, the Bible and the Holy Land."

From Psalm 21, envision my cyberangels in the Victoria & Albert Museum descending on Jacob’s ladder to Jerusalem to hear King David sitting on his throne playing a lyre as he sings a sweet song to bring blessings of goodness to King Charles III as a golden crown is placed on his head.

It seems that the cyberangels ascended the virtual ladder from Jerusalem to Amsterdam to London and have come back down to Jerusalem.

From https://grandfatherofnfts.com

Cyberangels of Peace Fly into Ukraine

About the artist

Mel Alexenberg in known as “Grandfather of NFT’s” since he created experimental digital artworks for more than half a century. They have be seen by millions and are in the collections of thirty museums throughout the world from The Met and MoMA in New York to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

He has educated generations of young artists as art professor at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age and Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture are published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press.

NFT of Cyberangel Flight from Amsterdam to Kyiv

I am sending Rembrandt inspired “Cyberangels of Peace” on a virtual flight from Rembrandt’s studio in Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam to the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.

After having been sent on a flight around the world, my computer generated angels are back in the great master’s studio ready for me to launch their flight into the museum in Kyiv to bring a message of peace. Their flight will be documented as an NFT gifted by me as the artist to the National Art Museum of Ukraine.

An NFT (non-fungible token) is a non-interchangeable digital asset like my artwork that documents cyberangel flight through image and narrative. The ownership of an NFT is authenticated and stored on a database called a blockchain.

The “Cyberangels of Peace” image that I created for the NFT shows me in period garb next to Rembrandt’s etching press holding a cyberangel that I transformed from black and white to the Ukrainian flag’s colors of yellow and blue. I chose to have these cyberangels ascend into the Kyiv museum through a drawing of it on a Ukrainian postage stamp that represents the past hand delivered messages being transformed into future forms of Web3 technology that can instantaneously deliver messages of peace.

My Family in Ukraine Singing Angels of Peace

“May your coming be for peace, angels of peace. Bless me with peace, angels of peace.”

You could have heard more than a century ago, my grandparents Max and Lena Alexenberg and great-grandparents singing this song with their families gathered around the table set for the Sabbath meal every Friday night in Rivne, Ukraine.

“Peace Be Upon You” is a traditional song that I also sing at Sabbath meals with my wife Miriam and our family in Israel where angel flights began. We encounter angel flight in the biblical verse:  “A ladder was standing on the ground, its top reaching up towards heaven as angels were going up and down on it.” (Genesis 28:12) The angels in Jacob’s dream go up from the Land of Israel and go down throughout the world heralding a message of peace: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

When Cyberangels Were Born

Cyberangels where born when I was listening to the ancient Hebrew words being chanted from a handwritten Torah scroll.  It described the artist Bezalel as being talented in all types of craftsmanship to make artworks (Exodus 35:33). The Hebrew words for “visual art” literally mean “thoughtful craft,” a feminine term. When I transformed it into its masculine form, it became “computer angel.”

I rushed to Miriam to tell her that I discovered that my role as a male artist is to create computer angels! I was equipped to create them as the head of the art department at Pratt Institute where I taught the first course on creating art with computers and was simultaneously research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

Since Rembrandt was the master at telling Bible stories with angels in his paintings, drawings, and etchings, Miriam and I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to see them.  We enjoyed siting in the print room where we were given Rembrandt’s work with angels to see up close. The Met made photographs of them for me to digitize and create variations of them in different media that are in the collections of thirty museums worldwide. Today, my 1987 multimedia artwork “Jacob’s Dream” combining experimental etching, photoetching, and computer-generated etching is in the collection of The Met inhabiting the same print room as the Rembrandt originals.

When Peace Comes to Ukraine

After peace returns to the land where my ancestors sang of angels of peace, I plan to send as a gift to the National Art Museum of Ukraine my original 1986 lithograph of cyberangels Digital Tribute to Rembrandt that you see in my hands in Rembrandt’s studio. When the Ukrainian postal service will return to normal, I will send it air mail in a mailing tube with postage stamps from Israel from where angels ascend. 

By having both the original physical artwork and NFT is becoming a current trend described in The New York Times article “NFT Collectors Getting Real.” It explained that NFT collectors are beginning to crave the context for their digital collections that art history can offer through physical artworks. My NFT coupled with the lithograph is a “phygital” artwork, a recently coined term to describe art experiences that create a dialogue between physical and digital art forms.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington added my lithograph to its collection as a historic exemplar of pioneering digital printmaking. The chairman of the Department of Social & Cultural History wrote: "It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge, on behalf of the National Museum of American History, the receipt of ‘Digitized Homage to Rembrandt’ presented to our Division of Graphic Arts. This lithograph from a computer-generated image is a most valuable addition to our collection."

The chairman of the Committee on Prints of the Museum of Modern Art in New York wrote: “The members of the committee were pleased to accept this computer-assisted etching of Rembrandt’s imagery. As an example of the innovative technological experimentation taking place at Pratt Graphic Center, it will be of great interest to students of the development of graphic techniques.” 

Abraham Accords NFT: From Ocean to Sea to Gulf

Atlantic Ocean to Mediterranean Sea to Arabian Gulf                                                        From USA to Morocco to Israel to UAE to Bahrain 

Artist Mel Alexenberg Launches Cyberangels from Rembrandt's Studio in Holland to Abraham Accords Museums in USA, Morocco, Israel, UAE, and Bahrain

Dressed in period garb, I launched Rembrandt inspired cyberangels from the great master’s studio in Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. 

It was a wakeup call to my cyberangels that were asleep in the Smithsonian’s flat file for three decades to begin the first leg of their virtual flight to convey a message of peace to USA on the Atlantic Ocean to Morocco and Israel on the Mediterranean Sea to UAE and Bahrain on the Arabian Gulf.

My cyberangels were born when I was research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies and realized that the biblical Hebrew term for “art” is “thoughtful craft.” In its feminine form, “thoughtful craft” becomes “computer angel.”  

On the White House Lawn

My wife Miriam and I witnessed a historic event of biblical proportions heralding the emergence of a different spirit for shaping a new era. We watched from our home in Israel the signing of The Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House on September 15, 2020.

If we were at the National Museum in Washington to see my Digitized Homage to Rembrandt lithograph of cyberangels in the museum collection, we would only have to walk a short distance to watch representatives of the three Abrahamic religions launching a new epoch of peace in the Middle East.

 The Abraham Accords were being signed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jewish prime minister of Israel, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, the Muslim foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and Donald Trump, Christian president of the United States of America.

The Bible tells of Abraham’s contentment that his sons Ishmael and Isaac came together to be with him at the end of his life. Now, four thousand years later, their heirs came together in brotherhood at the White House. The names of Abraham’s sons, Ishmael and Isaac, are English versions of their original Hebrew names. Ishmael is Yishmael meaning “God will hear” and Isaac is Yitzhak meaning “will laugh." Linking Yishmael and Yitzhak can be read as: “When God will hear that Abraham’s sons have reunited, He will laugh in joy!”

My Moroccan Family

At the same time that Miriam and I were watching the signing the Abraham Accords, we heard sirens announcing that rockets were being fired into Israel by the Arab terrorists who rule Gaza. Our daughter Iyrit phoned us to tell us that a rocket had struck the Israeli city of Ashdod sending her wounded neighbors to the hospital.

Iyrit’s husband Dr. Yehiel Lasrey is the mayor of Ashdod who was born in Morocco and moved to Israel with his family when he was six.  He grew up in Ashdod, a small town on the sea that has grown into one of Israel’s largest cities and its major port. Yahiel studied medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and went from being surgeon-general of Israel’s navy to specialist in internal medicine at Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot, a member of Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and a founder of the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra – Ashdod.

The orchestra performed in Morocco in March 2022 in collaboration with the Moroccan Association of Andalusian Music. It was the orchestra’s first performance in Morocco since the resumption of diplomatic relations between the countries in December 2020. A moving moment occurred at the outset of the evening with the playing of the Israeli and Moroccan national anthems.

Ascending to Israel

Ascending from the Land of Israel applies to angels. “A ladder was standing on the ground, its top reaching up towards heaven as angels were ascending.” (Genesis 28:12)  I created a serigraph “Angels Ascending from the Land of Israel” at the Israel Museum’s affiliated graphics center in Jerusalem that shows Rembrandt inspired cyberangels flying up from a satellite image of Israel.

Ascending to Israel applies to the Jewish people returning home to Israel after 2,000 years of exile.  “I bore you on the wings of eagles and brought you to me.” (Exodus 19:4) “Bring My sons from afar, and My daughters from the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 43:6)

When my wife Miriam and I and our children Iyrit, Ari and Ron flew from New York to live in Israel in 1969, we were called olim (ascenders) coming on aliyah (ascending). The eagles that flew us and millions of Jews from the ends of the earth to live in our ancestral homeland had jet engines on their El Al Airlines wings. Our son Moshe was born in Israel as were our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

“From generation to generation, they will dwell in the Land of Israel where the wilderness will rejoice over them, the desert will be glad and blossom like a lily. Her wilderness will be made like Eden, and her desert like a Divine garden. Joy and gladness will be found there, Thanksgiving and the sound of music.” (Isaiah 35:1, 51:3)

Rembrandt in United Arab Emirates

My Rembrandt inspired cyberangels’ flight from Rembrandt’s studio to USA on the Ocean, Morocco and Israel on the Sea, to Louvre Abu Dhabi art museum in UAE on the Gulf. A cyberangel of peace ascending from the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book, where the oldest Bible texts are housed, makes a virtual flight into the Abu Dhabi museum.

In the permanent collection of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, is a gemlike Rembrandt painting “Abraham and the Angels” that was purchased for the museum at Sotheby’s in Dubai. It shows winged angels sitting with Abraham while his wife Sarah watches.

The historic Abraham Accords that forges ties between Israel and UAE occurred during the year that Rembrandt was being honored on the 350th anniversary of his death by museums throughout the world. Louvre Abu Dhabi presented the exhibition Rembrandt, Vermeer & the Dutch Golden Age, masterpieces from the collection of the American Thomas S. Kaplan whose wife Dafna in the daughter of Israeli artist Mira Recanati.

Dr. Kaplan writes “More than any other painter’s legacy, we believe Rembrandt’s ability to touch the soul represents a uniquely fitting expression of this visionary Franco-Emirati project seeking to promote tolerance and the common civilization of mankind.”

Roots of Abraham Accords in Bahrain

Bahrain’s leadership set the stage for the Abraham Accords decades ago. Crown Prince Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa at his meeting with Israel’s foreign minister Silvan Shalom in 2003 expressed his pride over Bahrain’s Jewish community and described it as an example for peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews.

Hounda Nonoo from a Jewish family that has lived in Bahrain for more than a century served as a member of parliament and as ambassador of Bahrain to the United States from 2008 to 2013.

In December 2022, President of Israel Isaac Herzog on his first visit to Bahrain to meet with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said: “Our budding relationship is in many ways a reunion. Jews and Muslims are not strangers but family, sharing a common ancestor, Abraham, after whom our historic accords are named.”

Bahrain is shaping the future by building a Museum of Contemporary Art that will fly up like an angel of peace to hover over the Gulf waters. The internationally renowned architect, the late Zaha Hadid, created designs for the museum which protrudes from a narrow alleyway in Muharraq and gently curves in an overhang above the water in the direction of Manama. The museum’s interior reflects the folds and outcrops of the building’s wavy exterior.

May the Hebrew Malakh Shalom and the Arabic Malak Salam be recognized as one and the same Angel of Peace.

USA to Morocco to Israel to UAE to Bahrain

Narrative NFT: Cyberangels, Rembrandt, King Charles III

Narrative plays a prominent role in the postdigital art of Web3 and NFTs. In my book, The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age (Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press), the word “narrative” appears fifty times, from art narrative, autobiographic, biblical, community, creative, data-driven, historical, to personal narrative.

I have been exploring visual narrative art in many of my artworks that can be seen at my websites Mel Alexenberg and Grandfather of NFTs  and at Wikipedia. I also created an Artiststory blog in 2007 with the 2011 post Postdigital Narrative Art.

I partnered with Michael Bielicky, professor of digital media art at ZKM University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, in establishing the Institute for Postdigital Narrative at ZKM in 2010. The video of my talk at the inauguration of the Institute can be seen at Vimeo.

The statement of the Institute’s aims are even more relevant today than they were over a decade ago. “Mankind has always operated on narrative to explain and understand its own existence.  Our times, in particular, call for the exploration, expression and especially, creation of new story-telling formats.”  NFTs offer unprecedented opportunities for generating creative postdigital narratives.

NFT Honoring King Charles III

I created a three level visual narrative NFT to honor King Charles III on his acceding to the British throne.  It begins from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem where more than three millennia ago angels in Jacob’s dream went up a ladder and then flew down three centuries ago into Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam where I transformed them into cyberangels and launched them from Rembrandt’s studio on a flight around the globe until they descended into the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to bring good wishes to King Charles from his mother Queen Elizabeth’s great-great grandparents Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

My cyberangel artworks have been in the collections of these three museum. The cyyberangels that have been asleep in the flat files of the museums for three decades are coming alive, taking flight through virtual NFT skies from Israel to Holland to England.

 Art is a Computer Angel

This narrative begins with the birth of cyberangels when I was listening to the ancient Hebrew words being chanted from a handwritten Torah scroll while translating them into English in my mind.  It described the artist Bezalel as being talented in all types of craftsmanship to make MeLekHet MakHSheVeT” (Exodus 35:33). These Hebrew words for “visual art” literally mean “thoughtful craft,” a feminine term. When I transformed it into its masculine form MaLakH MakHSheV, it became “computer angel.”

I rushed to tell my wife Miriam that I discovered that my role as a male artist is to create computer angels! I was equipped to create them as the head of the art department at Pratt Institute where I taught the first course on creating art with computers and was simultaneously research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

Since Rembrandt was the master at telling Bible stories with angels in his paintings, drawings, and etchings, Miriam and I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to see them up close. He created an etching of Jacob’s dream for the only book he illustrated based upon the verse: “A ladder was standing on the ground, its top reaching up towards heaven as angels were going up and down on it.” (Genesis 28:12) The angels in Jacob’s dream go up from the Land of Israel and go down throughout the world heralding a message of peace: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

In Jerusalem, I created a serigraph “Angels Ascending from the Land of Israel” showing Rembrandt inspired cyberangels ascending from a satellite image of Israel. It is in the collection of the Israel Museum.

Rembrandt Cybererangels Fly around the Globe

My AT&T sponsored telecommunications art event on October 4, 1989 honored Rembrandt on the 320^th anniversary of his death. I launched a digitized image of his angel on a circumglobal flight from New York to the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, University of the Arts in Tokyo, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and back New York. After a five-hour flight around the planet, the deconstructed angel was reconstructed at its starting point.

When it passed through Tokyo, it was already the morning of October 5^th. When it arrived in Los Angeles, it was still October 4^th.  Cyberangels can not only fly around the globe, they can fly into tomorrow and back into yesterday. Millions throughout North America watched the cyberangel return from its circumglobal flight over major TV networks’ broadcasts from New York. It was featured in sixty newspapers and the AT&T annual report.

The image in the middle level of the NFT shows me in period garb in Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam welcoming a cyberangel from the Israel Museum’s Shrine of the Book where some of the oldest Bible manuscripts are housed that contain the narrative of angels going up and down the ladder in Jacob’s dream and sending the Rembrandt inspired cyberangel on to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

King Charles and Victoria and Albert are Family

The official opening by Queen Victoria of a museum for progress in art and design in 1857 was followed by her laying the foundation stone of its new building in 1899 and naming it Victoria & Albert Museum. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are the great-grandparents of King Charles’ mother Queen Elizabeth. 

Queen Elizabeth participated in the opening of the “World of the Bible” exhibition at V&A in 1965 in co-operation with the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and “The Bible in British Art” in 1997 with a poster for the exhibition showing angels ascending and descending on a ladder. This poster joined my 1986 “Digital Homage to Rembrandt: Night Angels” computer generated serigraph in the V&A prints and drawings collection. Both the biblical Hebrew words for “angels” and “kings” sound the same.

King Charles is a keen and accomplished artist who has exhibited and sold his works to raise money for his charities and also published books on the subject. King Charles commissioned seven major paintings of Holocaust survivors to add to the official Royal Collection of Art in 2022.  The project was part of the king’s long-standing aim of educating future generations and ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten.

One emotional visit to Israel occurred in 2016, when Charles travelled to Jerusalem for the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. While there, he visited the grave of his grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, who saved Jews during the Holocaust and was honored as Righteous Among the Nations. She is buried in Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

It seems that the cyberangels ascended the virtual ladder from Jerusalem to Amsterdam to London and have come back down to Jerusalem.

60 Newspaper Stories about Alexenberg’s Global Faxart Event Honoring Rembrandt

Newspapers with AP Stories about Circumglobal Cyberangel Flight

Three stories that made the front page: “Rembrandt angel flies across globe via fax” Billings Gazette, Montana; “The Light Side: Rembrandt copies via fax” Marion Star, Ohio; and “Rembrandt drawing meets fax age” Shelby Star, North Carolina.

Five major newspapers: “Rembrandt angels fly via fax” The Elkhart Truth, Indiana, “Rembrandt Angel Flies Into Fax Age” The Atlanta Constitution and Journal, Georgia; “Rembrandt’s Angel Flies Around the World Via Facsimile,” Tulsa World, Oklahoma; “Electronic Angel” Winston-Salem Journal, North Carolina; “Angel Sightings” The Detroit News, Michigan

Two Newspapers' “People” page: 

Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Alexenberg’s “On the wings of an angel” story is juxtaposed with “Dancing on Air Jordan” about a jazz dance performance as a tribute to basketball star Michael Jordan illustrated by a photo of tall male dances in basketball uniforms leaping up with their outstretched hands reaching for the sky. 

The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio. “Painting on a Global Canvas” is sandwiched between Elvis Presley ticket prices being refunded for concerts he never performed because he died, and Francis Ford Cappola reviving “The Godfather” working in Italy with stars Al Pacino and Diane Keaton.

 Other newspapers with Associated Press stories:

Armstrong, Kiley, AP (October 5, 1989). “Fax me an angel painted by Rembrandt” Dothan Eagle, Alabama

Armstrong, Kiley, AP (October 5, 1989). “Rembrandt angel takes wing via fax” Record Journal, Meriden, Connecticut

Armstrong, Kiley, AP (October 5, 1989). “Rembrandt Angel Wings Way Across World” Parkersburg News, West Virginia

Armstrong, Kiley, AP (October 5, 1989). “World sees Rembrandt angel via fax” Marietta Daily Journal, Georgia

 “New York (AP)” is the preface to all the following stories published in October 1989.

“Rembrandt’s angel circles globe on 320^th anniversary of his death” Pioneer Press Dispatch, St. Paul, Minnesota

 “Artist faxes Rembrandt copies around the world” Traveler, Arkansas City, Kansas

“Rembrandt would have liked this” The Sacramento Bee, California

“Rembrandt’s angel takes wing via fax” The Times Herald Record, Middletown, New York

 “Rembrandt angel faxed all over” The Bridgeport Telegram, Connecticut

“Artist experiences ‘global canvas’ with Rembrandt” Durham Sun, North Carolina

“Rembrandt Remembered 320 Years after Death” Record Gazette, Banning, California  

“Rembrandt’s angel flies via Fax” Brattleboro Reformer, Vermont

“Angel faces the fax” North Jersey Herald & News, Passaic, New Jersey

“Rembrandt’s angel ‘flies’ with fax” Helena Independent Record, Montana

“Faxed art celebrates Rembrandt’ Salem News, Ohio

“Rembrandt’s angel gets trip by ‘fax’” The Sanford Herald, North Carolina

 “Rembrandt Goes Around the World By Way of Fax” The Cortland Standard, New York

“Rembrandt angel flies around the world via fax” Carroll County Times, Westminster, Maryland

“Masterpiece is faxed to the max” Standard-Times, New Bedford, Massachusetts

“Rembrandt work gets new dimension” Carthage Press, Montana

“Rembrandt drawing faxed from N.Y. to Amsterdam” The Daily Messenger, Canandaigua, New York

“Rembrandt’s Angel flies by fax” Las Cruces Sun-News, New Mexico

“Rembrandt’s angel flies around the world, thanks to modern technology” Chronicle Tribune, Marion, Indiana

“A global canvas” Evening News, Newburgh, New York

 “Rembrandt’s angel wings around the world – via fax” Gazette, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

“Rembrandt angel wings way around planet – via fax” Times & Democrat, Orangeburg, South Carolina

“Rembrandt angel takes wing via fax” Enterprise-Journal, Mc Comb, Mississippi

“Angels by Rembrandt fly via fax” Freeport Journal Standard, Illinois

“Rembrandt via Fax” Gardner News, Massachusetts

 “Rembrandt via Fax Machine” Union Leader, Manchester, New Hampshire

 “Rembrandt’s angel flies over fax” Daily News, Olathe, Kansas

“Exchange by Fax Honors Rembrandt” Intelligencer, Wheeling, West Virginia

“Rembrandt copies faxed around the world” Journal, Falls City, Nebraska

“Overstatement” Record, Troy, New York

“Rembrandt angel circles globe via fax” Middletown Journal, Ohio

“Rembrandt angel wings around the world” The News-Times, Danbury, Connecticut

 “Rembrandt Angel Faxed Around the World” Post-Journal, Jamestown, New York

 “Rembrandt’s angel flies via fax machines” Weekend Times-Courier, Charleston, Illinois

“Rembrandt’s Angel Flies via Fax” Wyoming Eagle, Cheyenne, Wyoming

“Lighter Side” Piqua Daily Call, Ohio

“Rembrandt’s angel faxed to commemorate his death” Journal and Courier, Lafayette, Indiana

“Rembrandt’s angel floes with help of fax” The Times Leader, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

 “Rembrandt’s angel flies via fax machines” Weekend Times-Courier Charleston, Illinois

Tradition and Transformation

 Soltis, Ori Z. (July 19, 2016). Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art and Architecture, Publisher: Canal Street Studios, ISBN‏ 978-1530201273

 MEL ALEXENBERG, Text from Tradition and Transformation book

The play on Western visual themes in a uniquely “Jewish” direction that differently defines Rivers’ triptych and Rand’s diversely sweeping series of paintings also—differently—forms a substantial part of the work of Mel Alexenberg (b.1937). As by the 1980s the explosion of visual artistic creativity in the United States among Jewish artists born here continued in exponential expansion, Alexenberg is symptomatic of one end of the broad spectrum of artists and media that fall logically within the parameters of this narrative. That is, antithetical in myriad ways to the work of those artists in which “Jewish content” requires somewhat of an archaeological enterprise, he exemplifies a pattern of intense overtness with regard to consciousness of and asking the question of how to define Jewish art.

                Beginning as a New York-based scientist, Alexenberg early in his career began very consciously to articulate the parameters of Jewish art in conceptual form. He was commenting in the summer of 1984 on the form of the tallit—the prayer shawl—in the Jewish tradition, and its termination in particularly structured fringes (tzitzit) which, apart from being an element that hangs from the tallit, is worn daily by observant Jews, as its own separate garment, under the shirt. In his remarks he noted the tzitzit structure: knot, spiral, branching, extending, outflowing terminations. Alexenberg related these images, of spiral, scrolling and branching, both to the natural world—from the DNA helix to the sea shell—and to Jewish visual symbology. Not only is the tzitzit a spiraling, scrolled fringe, but the phylactery thong that wraps around the arm in prayer forms a spiral, as does each of the unshaved earlocks of traditional Jewish males, and, of course, the doubly scrolled Torah: Book of books for the People of the Book.

                Interestingly, much of Alexenberg’s work has been electronic—he offers computer-generated images—which also develop as spiral and branching systems: the doubly-wound video and audio tape, the branched format of the microchip.  This is endemic to nature, he argues, as it is to Jewish consciousness: and thus, both his chosen technique at the time of his remarks, of computer-generation, and his sense of image, are endemically symbolic of Jewish art and artistic consciousness. Hundertwasser, we recall, had denounced the straight line as pagan. Alexenberg speaks of the one-line circle as idolatrous—relating the Hebrew word circle—iggul—to that for the Golden Calf (Egel HaZahav)  of the Exodus story (Ex 32:1-6, 15-20) which pulled the Israelites back toward pagan, Egyptian-style worship. Even more emphatically, he refers to the single-line square as symbolic of slavery with its enclosed, stop-based parameters (at each corner one stops in order to turn and continue the line).

                This is an artist whose every thought in generating art derives from a conscious exploration of himself as a Jew and what it means to be a Jewish artist. There is superb irony—even humor (and the humor of appropriation and transformation of message, while not unique to the Jewish engagement of the world, is certainly endemic to it)—in his appropriation of an icon from the western—Christian—artistic tradition: Rembrandt’s angel, floating up the ladder of the Patriarch Jacob/Israel’s sacer-suffused dream. Alexenberg repeatedly used, transformed and essentially distorted that image by digitalizing, dismembering and recreating it in an important part of his work of the 1980s [FIG 504].

                Like Rivers in his “Story of Matzah” triptych, but completely different in technique, style and visual direction, Alexenberg transforms the normative Western tradition within which he works, as he rebels against it—as a Jewish artist conscious of the long centuries through which Jews were denied participation in Western cultural and other mainstreams. He does it in various media, sometimes by superimposing that Rembrandt angel, intermediary between divine and human, sacer and profanus realms, over a Brooklyn street scene in which delicatessen—food—signs repeat themselves; or soaring into the space left when a bite has been taken out of a buttered muffin advertised in a subway car.

FIG 504: Mel Alexenberg: Muffin Angel (from Subway Angel series), 1987

                Thus he word-plays on the relationship in Hebrew between the term for food (ma’akhal; okhel) and angel (mal’akh) and the classical term for art (m’lakhah), and thus between the most down-to-earth notion (food) and the element of the divine (angel) as mediated by art, created out of human—in this case, Jewish (certainly linguistically Jewish)—consciousness.

                He has attached giant styrofoam Hebrew letters—the seven letters that are typically decorated by a scribe with vertical pointed crowns called tagin—to hydrogen-filled weather balloons. The letters were painted the seven colors of the rainbow floated upward from the wilderness of Tzin, near the Dead Sea. Alexenberg observes that a midrash points out that these seven letters are found in words like “hate,” that are too heavy to float up to Heaven when the Torah is chanted, and therefore need the tagin to help elevate them. The artist literalized and aggrandized this idea with his upwardly-soaring letters released near the lowest geological point on the planet's surface and both in Israel and near Jordan [FIG 505].

FIG 505: Mel Alexenberg: Ascent from the Tzin Wilderness, 2009

                At other times he uses technology as his paintbrush and the human worlds both below and above as his canvas. He has sent computer angels via satellite from the Old City of Jaffa, in Israel, to New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Buenos Aires: creating a universalistic happening by “connecting” these seven sites across the globe; or in the sky above Munich—Hitler’s 1930s geographic rallying point, and the PLO’s 1972 Olympic murder point—where he floated seven giant Hebrew letters, in the 1983 “Sky Art” exhibit.

                As elsewhere, in these gargantuan works the artist draws explicitly on the number seven with both its broad and its narrow significance: a pregnant, redemptive number that connects creation to Sabbath to Temple Menorah to Jewish (and Christian and Muslim, among others) art symbolism. Floating upward, like the spherot of the Jewish mystical tradition, these angels, these letters and numbers, intermediate between God-creator and God’s created universe; they represent the transformation of spirit into matter and of matter into spirit. They recall Jacob’s dream in the journey out from Canaan, of angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth, to counterpoint his dream on the journey back to Canaan, where he wrestled the angel of God to a draw and was transformed, from Jacob to Israel. Within the blue sky with its white, whispy clouds, these are strands of the blue and white conceptual tapestry—the blue and white tallit—with which Mel Alexenberg weaves “Jewish art” out of the minute and magnificent elements of human aspiration.

                Alexenberg has also used art, more recently, as specifically American political commentary on the relationship between heaven and earth. His interactive “Divine Retribution” installation of 2000 offered newspaper front pages from three moments in President Clinton’s political life: the day before and after his 1992 election and the day of the impeachment decision. Below these mounted newspaper clippings, we read that the President brought back a substantial amount of earth from Israel to be offered as “gifts”—soil from the Holy Land—to political patrons. The artist’s implied commentary was that the impeachment was divine punishment for abrogating God’s will by taking away and giving away pieces of the Promised Land to those to whom it was not promised—and the viewer was invited, tongue-in-cheek, to carry off a scoop. Alexenberg punned, moreover, on the idea of “Four corners of the Land”—a biblical phrase used with reference to that Holy Land—by selecting the news headlines from cities located in the four corners of the United States. He thus also implicitly commented on the issue of Homeland/Promised Land that has, in many Jewish circles, placed Israel and the United States in either opposition or apposition since the end of the nineteenth century.

National Museum of American History

 To Dr. Anthea M. Hartig, director of National Museum of American History, Washington, DC

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History should be the first museum in America to have the first exemplar of NFT crypto art in its collection.

Just as cyber artworks have found their homes in museums worldwide since the 1980’s, crypto artworks will enter museum collections in the 2020's.

My "Digitized Homage to Rembrandt" computer-generated lithograph has been in the collection of the National Museum of American History since 1987 as a historic exemplar of the first digital printmaking art. I created this artwork during the time I was head of the art department of Pratt Institute and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

To make the National Museum of American History the first museum to have the first exemplar of NFT crypto art, I will be pleased to gift to the National Museum an NFT of my 2022 artwork in the image above: “Artist Alexenberg in period garb launches cyberangel on flight from Rembrandt’s studio in Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam to Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.”

On April 8, 1987, Gary Kulik, Chairman, Department of Social & Cultural History at the National Museum of American History wrote: “It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge, on behalf of the National Museum of American History, the receipt of "Digitized Homage to Rembrandt: Day Angels" kindly presented to our Division of Graphic Arts. This lithograph from a computer-generated image is a most valuable addition to our collection. It has been entered on our records as a gift from the Pratt Graphics Center. Please accept my thanks for your generous interest in the national collections.” The original letter is in the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Art with my papers.

My experimental digital art is in the collections of thirty museums and cyber events have been seen by millions. I am author of the key books in the field, The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age and Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture, published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press.

Emblems of War and Peace

 

PLO/HAMAS EMBLEM is the PLO emblem shared by Hamas. It shows rifles and hand grenades representing death and destruction and the genocidal aims to wipe Israel off the map and slaughter all its Jews. Its background shows a map of Israel replaced by an Islamic state.

The PLO/Hamas emblem illustrates the PLO “pay for slay” policy that encourages Arabs to murder Jews and rewards them to the tune of millions of dollars. It also graphically represents Hamas’ murderous and genocidal intent as expressed in its charter.

HAMAS CHARTER: “Israel, by virtue of its being Jewish and of having a Jewish population, defies Islam and the Muslims. Muslims will fight the Jews until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him. I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill.'”

Historian of Islamic art, Elisabeth Siddiqui, writes in the Arabic journal Al-Madrashah Al-Ula that art and design is the mirror of a culture and its worldview.  She emphasizes that there is no case to which this statement more directly applies than to the art of the Islamic world.  “Not only does its art reflect its cultural values, but even more importantly, the way in which its adherents, the Muslims, view the spiritual realm, the universe, life, and the relationships of the parts to the whole.”

 

ISRAEL’S EMBLEM shows a menorah and olive branches representing light and peace. It illustrates its Declaration of Independence that extends its hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in peace and good neighborliness

ISRAEL DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: "The State of Israel will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.  We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people in its own land."

The emblems of the five Arab countries at peace with Israel display peaceful images of eagles with national colors of Egypt and United Arab Emirates, jeweled crowns of the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, and a decorative abstract image of Bahrain. 

Although I am an expert on the power of visual images as professor of art and education at Columbia University and research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, anyone can see the radical difference between the values and aims of Israel and PLO/Hamas expressed through their emblems. 

There can be no peace until PLO and Hamas change their emblem.

President of the United States Joe Biden says it clearly, “Let’s get something straight here, until the region says unequivocally they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace.”

The writer Dr. Mel Alexenberg is author of  Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture (Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press) and Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media (HarperCollins).