A catalogue essay for the exhibition Mixed Emotions

Haifa Museum of Art

February – June 2006

Catalogue (designed by Michal Sahar): 152 pages, English/Hebrew, two additional essays by Aaron Ben-Ze’ev (“Why Do We Get Emotional?”) and Danielle Knafo (“Once More, With Feeling”), color plates 

Mixed Emotions reflected a fundamental change in the understanding and treatment of emotions in contemporary culture. The works in this exhibition dealt with a wide range of human emotions – from the most positive to the most negative ones – as they are represented in local and international art; they pointed to the status of emotions as a central theme, which challenges an increasingly large number of artists to examine it. The exhibition highlighted the representation of human emotions marginalized by the modernist ethos, and is thus concerned with shifts that have taken place in art from the late 1980s to the present moment.