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The Cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant - A Visual Paradigm for Dialogue

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The Cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant - A Visual Paradigm for Dialogue

The Torah portion of Terumah in the Book of Exodus discusses the details of the Sanctuary in which God dwells. The first vessel related to in detail in this portion is the Ark of the Covenant, above which are the two CHERUBS (Exodus 25: 10-23). While the Holy Ark contains the Torah--God's eternal wisdom--His voice and ongoing directives emanate from between the joined wingtips of the two cherubs, who symbolize the consummate love of delights between God and the people of Israel.
Not always were the cherubs in a state of harmony, at times they "moved themselves" back-to-back and in opposition, reflecting God's anger when Israel did not follow the ways of the Torah, according to the teachings of the Midrash. The concept of the “changing faces” of the cherub statues became for me a stimulus and visual imputus for my Dialogue paintings, which has been a major preoccupation of mine for the last decade, based on a simple illusionist form of two cartoon faces in confrontation.
Its artistic expansion and development may have been also inspired by my studies of the teachings of the noted philosopher, Martin Buber (the famous I-THOU / I-IT paradigm) and its application in modern Gestalt psychology. The I-THOU Dialogues show two faces in harmony and balance,
while in the I-IT paintings (which I call Anti-logues), the second face is diminished or non-existent.

SLIDE SHOW on the Dialogues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU9LmM8S6V4

http://dov-lederberg.artistwebsites.com/featured/dialogues-poster-dov-lederberg.html