Throughout the city, more than one hundred sculptures are exhibited, with the aim of providing the residents an enjoyable and unique experience in addition to green areas, parks, playgrounds for children and benches to rest. The municipality takes care of the welfare of its people and adorns the city with various elements which diversify the urban landscape and beautify it.
For example, take the bronze sculpture of Meir Dizengoff on Rothschild Boulevard: “Dizengoff riding his horse”. Dizengoff was the first Mayor of Tel Aviv in 1922 when the city was still called “Homestead” – This statue then, seeks to preserve the history of the “Yishuv” (the Pre-State Jewish residents in Palestine)
Other statues have decorative touches such as the contemporary sculpture of three circles diagonally connected to each other – this sculpture of Menashe Kadishman, called “Hitromemut” (“Uplifting”) is placed in the Habima Square. The height measures 15 meters and the three circles, each 5 meters in diameter are made of unpainted rusty metal. The statue implies that you can rise above the gravity of the Earth and not fall.
Various works of art at the Tel Aviv Museum plaza: “Binding of Isaac” from 1987by Kadishmanis a worksimilar to thatof the artiststandingat the Jewish Museumin New Yorkandin The Netherlands. The sculpture was inspired by the period the artist was a shepherd in a kibbutz and expressed his bond with nature and earth.
A presentation of the artist Zadok Ben David, from 2006, is called “Troubles in the Square” is a collection of people and birds silhouettes which, for no reason, find themselves together in the museum plaza. This display forces the spectator to become an unwilling part of the exhibition.
On the railing of the bridge, connecting the Tel Aviv Law Courts with the Museum Tower, sit a couple – these are statues of the artist Ofra Zimbalista.
Sometimes an art form is used as a monument or a memorial to an event that occurred on the same spot, like the “Peace Monument” in memory of Yitzhak Rabin, murdered in the town square on November 4, 1995. These are 16 large black basalt rocks heaped together by the sculptor Yael Artzi, with a fire burning underneath. The proximity of these stones to that ground symbolizes Rabin’s closeness to land and the strewn rocks look like after an earthquake symbolizing the feeling of all Israelis after the murder, the entire country was out of course.
Another example is the monument dedicated on September 11, 2011, in the space of the ‘Twin Towers’ in New York, in memory of the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001. It is an open area of 65 ha, half on which the Towers stood, with two wading pools surrounded by walls on which the names of those who perished in the terrorist attacks are engraved and more than 400 trees are planted.
We see that people do not remain indifferent to these art installations, they come and leave their mark: sometimes lay flowers or light memorial candles, at times attach notes with their private thoughts. When there was no monument in Rabin Square to express the emotions thus evoked, bystanders felt the need to spray the walls with graffiti to express them.
When a statue enhances the public space in a plaza; a square or avenue, it allows conveying art into the daily life of passersby. It reminds them of an event from the distant past or proximity of the place. The statue can symbolize a time passed by like the statue of Saddam Hussein which was toppled by US forces as they entered Iraq. Initially soldiers bound ropes around its neck, and then threw stones at it, brought a ladder and hammers and an hour later the statue toppled over and marked the beginning of celebrations for the residents having brought down the regime.
Statues of communist thinkers like of Vladimir Lenin were smashed in the squares throughout the Ukraine and sent an unequivocal message of the residents’ wishes to cut the ties with Moscow.
By smashing statues, the organization of “ISIS” symbolizes the contempt and ignorance they have for the region’s historical heritage that they occupy and the cradle of its civilization. In the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, statues 2,700 years old symbolizing the people from the Assyrian period were smashed.