Author David Grossman collaborates with artist Matan Ben Cnaan on a one of a kind piece at the Israel Museum

Last year we featured an interview with artist Matan Ben Cnaan, who is best known for his large group portraits and, in 2015, became the first and only Israeli artist to win the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award. When he spoke to us (July 2020) he was putting the finishing touches on a monumental two-by-four metre oil painting, The Bureaucrat, which took two years to complete. Now that painting is finally on display at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, as part of a wider Ben Cnaan solo exhibition, and it comes with a new accompaniment by none other than award-winning Israeli author David Grossman.

The author came across The Bureaucrat while it was still in progress and something inspired him to write about it. The result was an eight-page interpretation of what he saw, which can be heard alongside the painting in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Grossman reads the Hebrew version, while actor Raida Adon reads in Arabic and Anna Barber reads in English.

“I search for a story,” says Grossman in the recording, “because it is through stories that I can feel and comprehend. But when it comes to this painting, with its mysteriousness and vicissitudes, the attempt proves futile: almost every aspect of this piece is cast in doubt, evades conclusions, repels interpretation, resists being boxed into any reasonable plotline.

“Art is the dimension in which we – who look at paintings and sculptures and films, who listen to music, who read books – experience our singularity, along with the bitter realisation of just how transient we are.”

Ben Cnaan’s work offers an unusual perspective on bureaucracy, which resonates strongly today with the rising levels of antisemitism.“I stood many times in front of The Bureaucrat trying to decipher its meaning,” said Professor Ido Bruno, director of the Israel Museum, “The more I did so, the more the feeling of mystery grew. This ability of Ben Cnaan and Grossman, to expose and conceal, is one of the most important pillars of this creation.”

By Danielle Goldstein

The Bureaucrat is currently on display at the Israel Museum until Tuesday 31 August. imj.org.il