Italian Renaissance, Tel Aviv Style

Artist Lenny Dinar Dothan?s Renaissance-inspired painting of herself and her infant son. Image by Lenny Dinar Dothan

By Daniel Rauchwerger April 6, 2012

Crossposted from Haaretz

Artist Lenny Dinar Dothan?s Renaissance-inspired painting of herself and her infant son. Image by Lenny Dinar Dothan

Entering the Tel Aviv studio of artist Lenny Dinar Dothan one encounters hospitality amid charming disorder. Sawdust is scattered everywhere, among the saws, rulers, pencils and books. Propped up against the wall are some of her works, among them a painting in which she is seen nursing her little son against the backdrop of an arch. The classical composition immediately evokes associations with the Florentine school of the Italian Renaissance. Add to this the fact that Dothan works in the Florentin neighborhood of the city — and you have an apt name for her current exhibit — “Florentin,” at the Hahanut Gallery in south Tel Aviv. The tiny exhibition is her first solo one, but the list of Dothan’s activities to date is extraordinarily long and complex.

The same composition is repeated in Dinar Dothan’s video work, “Sleeping Madonna,” in which she is filmed nursing her son as she falls asleep. “I wanted to be a perfect mother,” she says, “but I’m not. I fell asleep. All those utopians,” she says, referring to the new generation of parents. “All of them are in couples therapy. I don’t buy those utopians.”

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