Lot 139: ADI NES

Untitled from The Soldiers
Signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/3 in ink on the verso; signed, titled, dated and numbered 2/3 in ink on a label affixed to the reverse of the frame.

24 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (62.2 x 59.7 cm)

Color coupler print, printed 1998.

1996

<em>Composed: Identity, Politics, Sex</em>, The Jewish Museum, New York, 22 December 2011- 30 June 2012, anotherprint exhibited

Tel Aviv Museum of Art, <em>Exposure: Recent Acquisitions: The Doron Sebbag Art Collection, O.R.S. Ltd.</em>, pl. 45

Acquired directly from the artist

Throughout his career Adi Nes has been appropriating and restaging images culled from Italian Renaissance, European Judaica, Greek mythology, American photojournalism, and as seen in the current lot, Classical sculpture. By doing so, Nes subverts the principles underpinning the formation of nationalist and masculine identities. The current lot depicts a young, shirtless man flexing his muscles. His pants, boots, dog tag and the tent identify him as a soldier, while the yarmulke on his head identifies him as Jewish. Thereby, Nes presents a Postmodern rebuttal to the 19th-century stereotyping of young Jewish men as &#8220;shtetl Jews&#8221;—studious, weak and craven. However, the Classical pose, the Romantic sky, the exaggerated lighting and the narcissistic self-adoration all allude to the artificiality belying the scene, consequently dispelling notions of what constitutes the age-old clich&#233;s of masculinity and religion.

Another print of this image is in the collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.