Picnic Magazine: A Visual Guide to Your New Reality by Hemda Rosenbaum

Picnic Magazine: A Visual Guide to Your New Reality
by Hemda Rosenbaum

Summer 2010

In 2007, when the first volume of Picnic Magazine came out, the absence of a
specialized art magazine was beginning to be felt within Israel’s small yet minded art
community. The country’s only highbrow art-monthly was on the wane, and despite
an apparent surge in off-handed art-and-culture publications, none of these deemed
visual art worthy of its main focus. By starting their magazine, Meir Kordevani, Adi
Englman and Dan Geva (Picnic Magazine’s three founding editors) did not exactly
seek to fill this void. They envisioned something completely different and quite
unique: first, they conceived the magazine as a 100% text-free platform wholly
devoted to communicating through images; second, despite a keen and manifest
interest in the peculiarities of local visual production both present and past, the
magazine was to encompass artwork and images from around the world, and it would
also target an international audience.
        In what comprises the vast spectrum of art, culture and fashion magazines,
words usually relate to images either as captions or as topics for the latter to illustrate.
Picnic Magazine, on the other hand, belongs to a breed of experimental publications
where this comfortable balance is broken. In it, the image is left to speak for itself, to
emit its own message, with only other images to relate to and place it in context. But
more than an anthology of images in a given moment, Picnic Magazine seeks to
construct a whole experience through its chosen imagery; to articulate its messages by
visual means that readers may immerse themselves in. It is an open invitation to
decipher and decode imagistic data, to reverse, as it were, the initial process of careful
selection and composition that results in the finished compilation. Picnic Magazine
offers a path for readers to make their way through a vivid and colorful flow of
images, through visual sequences rich in cultural signifiers and emotive statements
devoid of any verbal keys.
        With each of Picnic Magazine’s three editors coming from slightly different
fields – Toony Navok (who consequently replaced Geva) is a visual artist and graphic
designer, Englman an art historian and independent curator, and Kordevani an
architect – one would think that each is in charge of a different area. But while a
certain division does exist, in essence they all fulfill one and the same task: that of
tracking images from myriad sources (from art galleries to television to the web),
refining their initial selection and curating the shortlisted items in magazine format.
And if the first stages are characterized by a more solitary exertion of individual
sensibilities, then the following are done in tight synergy. Kordevani, Navok and

Englman meet-up and discuss each others’ visual loot (excavated at times from
unlikely sources) and reach their decisions together. At its core, this exchange of
attitudes and ideas over visual resources resembles an activity typical of the current
phase of the information age: that of sharing things – images, videos, funny bits –
with like-minded friends. By embracing this attitude while taking it to the next level,
Picnic Magazine is achieving two things: the rich level of discussion ensures a textual
dimension absent from the magazine proper, and the continual, fast-paced exchange
of images echoes the Internet, where the magazine claims only a minimal presence:
their website is designed not to draw attention from the genuine article, that is, the
print version.

***
Right from the start, Picnic Magazine was designated as a visual lexicon of
contemporary visual culture. Every volume holds roughly one hundred visual items –
single images or sets of them. Tiny numerals, which correspond to a list of credits
given separately, are the sole textual interference. The numbers proceed from where
they stopped in the previous volume, indexing the vibrant and highly original content
in the manner of encyclopedic tomes. Contrary to this archival continuity, the
magazine’s format and logo are reinvented with every volume, to match the
distinctive mood and direction prevalent in each. In the case of Picnic Magazine, the
constant shift in design operates as an editors’ note, orientating readers through the
content. Furthermore, along with its aim to chart visual tendencies both local and
foreign, to deliver an “archeology of contemporary times” – as decidedly
idiosyncratic as that archeology may be – each volume is self-sufficient. How they do
differ from one another is, however, an elusive matter, which yields itself to a more
in-depth exploration.
        The distinction between the various volumes (four so far) should not be sought
along an explicit divergence of themes, or at any rate, not by the means of a clearly
verbal categorization. On the contrary, the volumes seem interconnected through
certain thematic threads, or ongoing visual preoccupations. And while some of these
relate to pre-existing cultural categories, most belong to a particular and very
subjective realm of inspiration. The scope is wide, ranging from an overall interest in
pop culture and fashion to the aesthetics of bygone modernisms, such as optokinetic
art, non-referential abstraction and pristine geometric forms; collages and other
intrinsic forms of graphic art are nearly always present, as are renderings of outer-
space, supernatural phenomena and nondescript forms of spiritual elation; one is
likely to encounter furry creatures, benevolent monsters and a funny side of eroticism;
things madly frivolous and unabashedly flashy along with things forlorn, gloomy and
introverted. There is a studied mix of the nostalgic, the futuristic and the historic; a

poetic surrealism that might quietly develop into full-blown psychedelia. These
connecting threads have much to do with private inclinations, or rather sensibilities,
which crystallize in response to contemporary visual production, and are indeed, part
of it.
        However elusive, something in the overall mood does change from volume to
volume, and with it not just the graphic packaging but also the events that accompany
every volume launch. Picnic Magazine’s hefty third volume, with its glossy cover
featuring a pattern of rectangular shapes in prestigious bronze, was launched in the
foyer of a fancy yet intimate auditorium in Tel Aviv – an octagonal edifice that
welcomed a crowd of artists, designers and hipsters with electronic music and a
matching video display. To celebrate the appearance of their second volume, Picnic’s
co-editors chose the lobby of one of Tel Aviv’s architectonic landmarks of the 80’s, a
biomorphic-shaped building whose lofty and elegantly curved interior proved ideal
for late-night partying. These events are regarded as an integral part of an overall
statement, as are the stickers, posters and other supplements offered with the
magazine.

***
Picnic Magazine’s fourth volume – a powerful, highly condensed mix of grainy
images and saturated colors suggestive of ancient rites, dated futurisms and out-of-
body experiences – was launched amidst a greater celebration for the magazine: the
2009 Herzliya Biennial for Contemporary Art, to which the magazine served as a
catalogue. A year and a half earlier, the three editors of Picnic Magazine were
commissioned to curate the biennial. This rare opportunity, of translating their vision
from two-dimensional print format to large scale exhibition, resulted in a week of
night-time celebrations of artistic and musical manifestations. Along with plastic art,
the biennial offered an extensive menu of live performances, DJ sets, screenings and
other activities in a mix that reflected the spirit of the magazine in full.
        On the level of curating, the biennial presented Picnic’s co-editors with one
major difficulty: Herzliya’s is a biennial for Israeli art, not an international one. To
conform to this precept while still maintaining their international approach,
Kordevani, Navok and Englman had to stretch somewhat the limits of contemporary
Israeli art. Not neglecting the younger generation of Israeli artists, who traditionally
serves as the biennial’s backbone, they chose to combine artifacts from earlier strata
of Israeli art – precisely those capable of highlighting a contemporary zeitgeist; The
very domain of contemporary art was stretched sideways to include such varied visual
practices as bird photography, a large collection of folk and period musical
instruments, a mesh-clad temporary kiosk especially designed for the biennial (which

housed the biennial boutique and info-center), and a screening of Lanvin’s latest prêt-
à-porter collection designed by Paris-based Israeli fashion designer Alber Elbaz.
        Most importantly, Kordevani, Navok and Englman handpicked a group of
Israeli-born artists who work and live abroad, mainly in Europe. In an increasingly
globalized art world, Israeli artists who choose to work abroad aren’t of course a
rarity; but the curators’ selection skipped the obvious names – those who regularly
exhibit in Israel and whose work bears obvious thematic or representational ties with
their country of origin. Instead, they sought artists who, despite having veritable
artistic careers abroad, were practically unknown to the local art scene. For some of
these, Israel clearly is a subject matter, while for others it is all but absent from their
work; either way, their artistic products betray a certain distance, or a stylistic
detachment from Israel. They seem to exist not in the realm of Israeli art, but in a
sphere of Diaspora. And despite initially being chosen to endow the biennial with an
air of internationalism, they ended up giving it a fresh and well defined stance within
a densely populated discourse on Israeli art, which tends to consider Israeli art vis-à-
vis foreignness.

***
Time and again, and under multiple art-theoretical guises, the predominant discourse
on Israeli art had sought to define and encourage what it perceived as a distinct local
artistic language. Invariably, such a language is defined within this discourse through
a well-calculated matrix of adjustments and oppositions to central artistic currents in
the West. It might borrow a foreign ethos and reject its formal and material aspect; it
might try to infiltrate the global trend through a critique of it, or by applying a
dialectic of center-versus-margins; but never would it admit to an unchecked
emulation of international themes. Since Israeli art was born modern,1 its history is
heavily marked by self-definition through novelty and difference. In a context such as
this, the foreign elements need to be deconstructed before they are granted entrance
into the system: it is an exigency of self-awareness. By consequence, and in line with
the ideology of Zionism 2 at large, the “Diasporic” arouses suspicion, and is not easily
integrated into the general history of Israeli art.
        Picnic Magazine aims to articulate an alternative genealogy, to chart visual
phenomena previously deemed inappropriately foreign, overly stylistic or lacking in

1
  Zionist emigration to Israel-Palestine began only in the late 19th century, and had gathered momentum
in the first half of the 20th. The state of Israel was founded in 1948.
2
  Zionism is the Jewish national movement. Since its emergence among eastern European Jews in the
19th century, it has advocated the founding of a political Jewish national entity in Israel-Palestine and
the emigrations of Jews from all corners of Diaspora to this territory. Zionism held that new
immigrants should assimilate themselves into the young and modernized Jewish state, and leave their
Diasporic past behind them.

ideology, may seem to occupy the opposite stance; but in fact, its step is essentially a-
historic. Even when it draws connecting lines between visual manifestations of the
past and contemporary forms of expression – and between these and their
international parallels – the message is not theoretic but practical, and in a far-
reaching sense: taken in the context of the local Israeli art scene, Picnic Magazine
strives to inspire a much needed shift in emphasis from self-definition to aesthetics –
and from rhetoric to artifact. This strategy is most apparent in Picnic Magazine’s
fourth volume, which includes the work of mainly local artists. But there is, of course
a universal perspective as well.
        On this, the more universal level, Picnic Magazine sees itself as “a visual
guide to your new reality” – a locus of inspiration for today. Its mix of images,
landscapes and sights, assembled so as to reveal the cultural DNA of the present,
provides a visual lexicon honestly open for anyone to see, feel and explore. The
uncharted strata of the present moment are rearranged in Picnic Magazine towards a
powerful, if nonverbal message. But these, perhaps, are times when images travel
farther and faster than words; times that require a new Bible, a manual of the present
moment.