1 00:00:07,332 --> 00:00:10,135 My name is Hanoch and I play. 2 00:00:10,135 --> 00:00:12,748 I play with objects. 3 00:00:12,748 --> 00:00:17,331 I've been making portraits with objects for a long, long time, 4 00:00:17,331 --> 00:00:20,914 and the portraits are published in different magazines 5 00:00:20,914 --> 00:00:23,058 all over the world, 6 00:00:23,058 --> 00:00:25,965 and of course, in Israel as well. 7 00:00:25,965 --> 00:00:30,464 Here is Mrs. Netanyahu, the wife of the Prime Minister 8 00:00:30,464 --> 00:00:33,417 who happens to have a slight, 9 00:00:33,417 --> 00:00:37,510 special way of dealing with cleaning. 10 00:00:37,510 --> 00:00:39,881 (Laughter) 11 00:00:39,881 --> 00:00:43,113 And here is President Peres. 12 00:00:44,545 --> 00:00:49,286 So, I also play with my food. (Laughter) 13 00:00:50,210 --> 00:00:54,664 So after having been doing this for so many years, 14 00:00:54,664 --> 00:00:57,163 I want to share with you, what did I learn 15 00:00:57,163 --> 00:01:00,302 of 20 years of playing with bananas. 16 00:01:00,302 --> 00:01:02,296 (Laughter) 17 00:01:02,296 --> 00:01:06,097 So, I learned that all artists play: 18 00:01:06,097 --> 00:01:08,363 Picasso played with food, 19 00:01:08,363 --> 00:01:10,982 (Laughter) Picasso played with objects, 20 00:01:10,982 --> 00:01:14,660 because artists know that playfulness 21 00:01:14,660 --> 00:01:18,495 is a fertile ground for creativity. 22 00:01:19,833 --> 00:01:23,299 When Picasso made this head of a bull, 23 00:01:23,299 --> 00:01:27,291 he wasn't using his amazing talent in drawing, 24 00:01:27,291 --> 00:01:31,654 he was just using his ability to look at the world 25 00:01:31,654 --> 00:01:34,961 in a playful way, in a different way. 26 00:01:34,961 --> 00:01:38,885 And perhaps we can not learn to draw like Picasso, 27 00:01:38,885 --> 00:01:41,944 but we can learn, perhaps, to look at the world 28 00:01:41,944 --> 00:01:44,176 in a little bit different way — 29 00:01:44,176 --> 00:01:50,265 the way Picasso did when he created this sculpture. 30 00:01:50,265 --> 00:01:54,044 So let's look at the definition of seeing: 31 00:01:54,044 --> 00:01:56,175 I like what Paul Valery wrote, 32 00:01:56,175 --> 00:02:02,172 "To see is to forget the name of what we are looking at." 33 00:02:02,172 --> 00:02:06,428 What Valery is talking about, is forgetting a label. 34 00:02:06,428 --> 00:02:09,543 To name something, is a direct path. 35 00:02:09,543 --> 00:02:13,483 Once we understand it, we move on. 36 00:02:14,022 --> 00:02:17,127 But what if we refrain from naming, we stay with it, 37 00:02:17,127 --> 00:02:21,390 we explore it, we take the winding road, we wonder around? 38 00:02:21,390 --> 00:02:24,015 We might then discover something new, 39 00:02:24,015 --> 00:02:25,777 which we haven't seen before. 40 00:02:25,777 --> 00:02:29,792 Maybe we will make some playful new association. 41 00:02:29,792 --> 00:02:33,879 A good way to practice this, is to look for faces — 42 00:02:33,879 --> 00:02:38,877 I don't mean faces like this, I mean faces like that! 43 00:02:38,877 --> 00:02:42,557 The world is filled with faces. 44 00:02:42,557 --> 00:02:44,607 (Laughter) 45 00:02:44,607 --> 00:02:47,472 This is the bathroom in my house. 46 00:02:47,472 --> 00:02:51,678 And once we see faces, we are forgetting for a millisecond, 47 00:02:51,678 --> 00:02:56,758 the name of that which we are looking at. 48 00:02:57,466 --> 00:03:01,804 So, by now you can tell that I am a sucker for playfulness. 49 00:03:01,804 --> 00:03:04,578 And it's true, and it is because 50 00:03:04,578 --> 00:03:09,265 playfulness made a big change in my own life. 51 00:03:09,265 --> 00:03:12,773 I was born and grew up in Uruguay, South America, 52 00:03:12,773 --> 00:03:15,072 and I always drew. 53 00:03:15,103 --> 00:03:18,602 This is my 4th grade teacher whom I drew. 54 00:03:18,658 --> 00:03:22,126 It's probably the oldest caricature I have. 55 00:03:22,126 --> 00:03:26,233 In Uruguay there are many cows, so I drew cows. 56 00:03:26,233 --> 00:03:30,411 I even drew steaks, (Laughter) 57 00:03:30,540 --> 00:03:33,831 and Gauchos on horses, 58 00:03:33,831 --> 00:03:37,630 and when I was 11, we came to live in Israel — 59 00:03:37,630 --> 00:03:40,099 So the subject matter slightly changed. 60 00:03:40,099 --> 00:03:42,099 (Laughter) 61 00:03:42,099 --> 00:03:45,802 But not my passion — I wanted to be a caricaturist. 62 00:03:45,802 --> 00:03:50,578 I looked at the newspapers, I copied what other people were doing. 63 00:03:50,578 --> 00:03:52,725 But life has a way of happening to you, 64 00:03:52,725 --> 00:03:55,881 so when I finally wanted to go and study, 65 00:03:55,881 --> 00:03:57,987 I was already in my mid-20s 66 00:03:57,987 --> 00:04:02,055 and my talent was kind of iffy. 67 00:04:02,055 --> 00:04:05,547 I missed many hours of practice 68 00:04:05,547 --> 00:04:07,345 because I'd been doing other things. 69 00:04:07,345 --> 00:04:11,737 As a matter a fact, I was rejected from the Bezalel Art School, not far from here. 70 00:04:11,737 --> 00:04:15,499 And I had to go and study in New York. 71 00:04:15,499 --> 00:04:20,616 When I arrived in New York, (Laughter) 72 00:04:20,616 --> 00:04:23,705 I realized that I did suck! 73 00:04:23,705 --> 00:04:25,508 (Laughter) 74 00:04:25,508 --> 00:04:29,883 Most of the people around me drew much better than me. 75 00:04:29,883 --> 00:04:34,683 I was doing this kind of lame cartoons, while the real pros, 76 00:04:34,699 --> 00:04:37,092 what I was seeing in the newspapers 77 00:04:37,092 --> 00:04:39,413 were amazing pieces of art, 78 00:04:39,413 --> 00:04:44,154 by wonderful artists like: Steve Brodner, like Philip Berk. 79 00:04:44,185 --> 00:04:46,960 And that made me feel like this: 80 00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:49,654 This is me, depressed in New York. 81 00:04:49,654 --> 00:04:52,948 So, I was frustrated, I was pesimistic, 82 00:04:52,948 --> 00:04:55,099 I had hit a wall. 83 00:04:56,576 --> 00:05:00,175 Now, if you remember the diagram from before, 84 00:05:00,175 --> 00:05:03,337 the direct path was not working for me anymore. 85 00:05:03,337 --> 00:05:07,369 I had to take a different path — I had to start wandering around, 86 00:05:07,369 --> 00:05:13,739 looking for other ways to find my own way of making caricatures. 87 00:05:13,739 --> 00:05:17,046 And as we all know, when we get off the main road, 88 00:05:17,046 --> 00:05:20,946 this is where some treasures might be. 89 00:05:20,946 --> 00:05:23,664 And I did find some treasures. 90 00:05:23,664 --> 00:05:25,626 The first treasure that I found — 91 00:05:25,626 --> 00:05:30,293 I found it in the picture collection of the Mid-Manhattan Library. 92 00:05:30,293 --> 00:05:34,673 It was an old poster for the movie "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin. 93 00:05:34,673 --> 00:05:37,935 And I don't know who the artist was — 94 00:05:37,935 --> 00:05:39,897 "designer unknown" it said, 95 00:05:39,897 --> 00:05:44,685 but it was amazing to me, how the designer with so little said so much — 96 00:05:44,685 --> 00:05:50,274 both a portrait of Adolf Hilter and of Charlie Chaplin. 97 00:05:50,698 --> 00:05:52,970 So, I needed to see this, 98 00:05:52,970 --> 00:05:56,381 because that made me understand that it wasn't about technique — 99 00:05:56,381 --> 00:05:59,303 it was about communication, and it was about 100 00:05:59,303 --> 00:06:03,129 finding your own way of doing things. 101 00:06:03,129 --> 00:06:04,964 The second treasure that I found, 102 00:06:04,964 --> 00:06:07,357 as I was drawing Saddam Hussein, 103 00:06:07,357 --> 00:06:10,740 it was the first Gulf War, 1990, 104 00:06:10,740 --> 00:06:15,105 and I was living at the time with a girlfriend who was a heavy smoker, 105 00:06:15,105 --> 00:06:17,739 and there were matches all around the house. 106 00:06:17,739 --> 00:06:20,809 And suddenly, I picked up those matches 107 00:06:20,809 --> 00:06:23,847 and I put it on the face of Saddam Hussein, 108 00:06:23,847 --> 00:06:26,181 and I made the mustache with it. 109 00:06:26,181 --> 00:06:29,456 Now, I did it because I thought the form was the correct one, 110 00:06:29,456 --> 00:06:33,964 but only later I realized that there was an idea — 111 00:06:33,968 --> 00:06:38,385 the matches where basically explaining 112 00:06:38,385 --> 00:06:42,825 that this man had just started a war. 113 00:06:42,825 --> 00:06:51,043 I wouldn't have found the poster or the matches 114 00:06:51,043 --> 00:06:55,439 if everything would've been well with my road, 115 00:06:55,439 --> 00:06:58,179 If I would've stayed in the direct road. 116 00:06:58,179 --> 00:07:01,414 So, looking back twenty something years, 117 00:07:01,414 --> 00:07:05,624 I know now that I was blessed by hardships. 118 00:07:08,362 --> 00:07:13,882 By the way, Edward de Bono who coined the phrase "Lateral Thinking", 119 00:07:13,882 --> 00:07:15,905 he calls the opposite of this, 120 00:07:15,905 --> 00:07:18,586 to be "Blocked by Adequacy". 121 00:07:18,586 --> 00:07:20,958 When everything is sort of adequate, 122 00:07:20,958 --> 00:07:22,619 maybe not great, but not bad, 123 00:07:22,619 --> 00:07:25,859 you don't have an urge to look for other solutions. 124 00:07:25,859 --> 00:07:30,830 So in my case, being blessed by hardships made me look outside. 125 00:07:31,888 --> 00:07:33,684 So I made a collage. 126 00:07:33,684 --> 00:07:36,436 I started making collages, 127 00:07:36,436 --> 00:07:40,451 and I realized that collage is the ultimate playful technique. 128 00:07:40,451 --> 00:07:44,260 You can not make a collage on a direct path. 129 00:07:44,260 --> 00:07:46,324 You need to wander around – 130 00:07:46,324 --> 00:07:48,465 to find something here, to find something there, 131 00:07:48,465 --> 00:07:53,269 and when you put it all together, you create something new. 132 00:07:54,110 --> 00:07:59,615 And I realized that this way of working, really, really suited me. 133 00:07:59,615 --> 00:08:05,305 I felt very comfortable in this way of working. 134 00:08:11,463 --> 00:08:14,539 It was really about trial and error — 135 00:08:14,539 --> 00:08:17,206 about trying things, 136 00:08:17,206 --> 00:08:20,520 and about allowing myself to make mistakes. 137 00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:24,343 Most of the objects that I try do not work, 138 00:08:24,343 --> 00:08:27,686 but I need to go through like twenty or thirty 139 00:08:27,686 --> 00:08:30,459 in order to find the right one. 140 00:08:30,459 --> 00:08:32,984 Just as in the eyes of Einstein, 141 00:08:32,984 --> 00:08:37,902 I used twenty gears until I found the really good ones. 142 00:08:37,902 --> 00:08:42,140 So, it's really about forgiving yourself when you make mistakes. 143 00:08:42,140 --> 00:08:47,305 And playfulness lets you do that. (Laughter) 144 00:08:47,796 --> 00:08:50,764 When I made the portrait of Homer Simpson, 145 00:08:50,764 --> 00:08:53,664 all the sketches that I made weren't working very well. 146 00:08:53,664 --> 00:08:55,855 So I threw them to the garbage can. 147 00:08:55,855 --> 00:08:58,158 And then I look at the garbage can in my studio, 148 00:08:58,158 --> 00:09:01,132 and I realize that it was exactly the mouth of Homer Simpson! 149 00:09:01,132 --> 00:09:05,204 (Laughter) (Applause) 150 00:09:07,128 --> 00:09:08,783 Thank you. 151 00:09:08,783 --> 00:09:12,955 So sometimes those happy accidents come to save you. 152 00:09:12,955 --> 00:09:15,738 The happy accidents are always there, 153 00:09:15,738 --> 00:09:19,666 and when we play, and when I make collages, 154 00:09:19,666 --> 00:09:21,467 I notice them. 155 00:09:21,467 --> 00:09:25,574 And sometimes is about helping them arrive. 156 00:09:25,574 --> 00:09:28,967 So, sometimes it's about going out to look for something, 157 00:09:28,967 --> 00:09:30,974 which I even don't know what it is. 158 00:09:30,974 --> 00:09:34,141 When I made the portrait of Hafez al-Assad, 159 00:09:34,141 --> 00:09:38,820 I went out in the flea market in Yaffo to look for some metal stuff, 160 00:09:39,543 --> 00:09:41,511 and I came upon this object – 161 00:09:41,511 --> 00:09:45,855 And I said, "I don't know what this is, but I am sure Assad had one of those at home!" 162 00:09:45,855 --> 00:09:48,531 (Laughter) 163 00:09:48,531 --> 00:09:52,018 It just felt right. 164 00:09:53,465 --> 00:09:57,962 When I make a collage, I only see what's in front of me. 165 00:09:57,962 --> 00:10:00,882 It's very easy to forget all the preconceptions 166 00:10:00,882 --> 00:10:04,182 about how one thing should be. 167 00:10:04,182 --> 00:10:06,629 It's easy to challenge those preconceptions. 168 00:10:06,629 --> 00:10:09,824 So for example, when I was making the portrait of Fidel Castro, 169 00:10:09,824 --> 00:10:12,881 I realized that it just didn't need a face, 170 00:10:12,881 --> 00:10:15,425 and it still looked like Fidel Castro. 171 00:10:15,425 --> 00:10:18,876 Well, who said that a caricature should have a face — 172 00:10:18,876 --> 00:10:20,801 So once I realized that, 173 00:10:20,801 --> 00:10:24,291 it was easier for me to use other objects, 174 00:10:24,291 --> 00:10:27,416 just about anything I wanted. 175 00:10:27,416 --> 00:10:30,813 Like a stretched rubber ballon for Michel Jackson, 176 00:10:30,813 --> 00:10:33,947 because it's obvious that's what his skin was made of, 177 00:10:34,141 --> 00:10:37,664 (Laughter) 178 00:10:37,664 --> 00:10:42,365 or sausage for Yeltzin, (Laughter) 179 00:10:43,621 --> 00:10:47,229 or bread for Karl Marx, (Laughter) 180 00:10:49,045 --> 00:10:52,648 a drum stick for Golda Meir, (Laughter) 181 00:10:52,648 --> 00:10:54,375 or Gefilte Fish. 182 00:10:54,375 --> 00:10:59,077 But perhaps the most important thing I learned from making collages, 183 00:10:59,093 --> 00:11:02,959 is about adaptation, about being flexible. 184 00:11:02,963 --> 00:11:06,476 And, because really, any new object that arrives, 185 00:11:06,476 --> 00:11:10,129 can change totally what I am making 186 00:11:10,129 --> 00:11:12,228 because things are not glued. 187 00:11:12,228 --> 00:11:16,414 And slowly, I realized that I was starting to live my life in that way, 188 00:11:16,414 --> 00:11:19,301 not just to make my work in that way. 189 00:11:19,301 --> 00:11:24,534 College really taught me how to live my life in a more flexible way. 190 00:11:25,265 --> 00:11:30,984 And I started to notice treasures which appeared in my life. 191 00:11:31,523 --> 00:11:35,717 The first one happened after I made my first book for children: 192 00:11:35,717 --> 00:11:37,854 "Notza Segula" in Hebrew, 193 00:11:37,854 --> 00:11:42,298 or "The Perfect Purple Feather" in English. 194 00:11:42,298 --> 00:11:45,128 And what happened was, after I made that book, 195 00:11:45,128 --> 00:11:50,877 kids, started sending me all these innocent drawings, 196 00:11:50,877 --> 00:11:53,908 with objects, or with food which they made, 197 00:11:53,908 --> 00:11:56,968 (Laughter) 198 00:11:56,968 --> 00:12:01,324 some were less innocent, like this portrait of Monica Lewinsky. 199 00:12:01,324 --> 00:12:03,543 (Laughter) 200 00:12:03,543 --> 00:12:05,932 Liol Zamil, who was twelve at the time, 201 00:12:05,932 --> 00:12:09,745 sent it to me with a letter saying, "And I also put the stain". 202 00:12:09,745 --> 00:12:12,385 (Laughter) 203 00:12:12,385 --> 00:12:16,378 (Applause) 204 00:12:17,447 --> 00:12:22,294 People develop fast here. (Laughter) 205 00:12:22,294 --> 00:12:26,268 But that lead for me to start visiting schools, 206 00:12:26,268 --> 00:12:29,138 and doing workshops with children, 207 00:12:29,138 --> 00:12:31,968 first in Israel, and then I started to travel 208 00:12:31,968 --> 00:12:36,173 to other places: like Brazil, like China. 209 00:12:36,173 --> 00:12:40,620 And slowly, the kids participating in my workshops grew older, 210 00:12:40,620 --> 00:12:47,106 and I realized that even adults could make the most amazing work with objects. 211 00:12:47,396 --> 00:12:49,957 Look at this self-portrait that this guy made — 212 00:12:49,957 --> 00:12:52,537 and he's no artist, he's an x-ray technician. 213 00:12:52,537 --> 00:12:54,803 (Laughter) 214 00:12:54,803 --> 00:12:58,495 So, I realized that if I were to give those people a pencil, 215 00:12:58,495 --> 00:13:03,606 and white paper, they probably all would've made something like this. 216 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:06,710 But because they were playing, 217 00:13:06,710 --> 00:13:10,794 they could really go around those hardships, 218 00:13:10,794 --> 00:13:14,295 and they really even didn't know they were creating art, 219 00:13:14,295 --> 00:13:16,228 they were just playing — 220 00:13:16,228 --> 00:13:20,796 and then they were happy with what was coming out. 221 00:13:20,796 --> 00:13:22,932 It was actually sort of the same process 222 00:13:22,932 --> 00:13:28,218 that happened to me twenty something years earlier. 223 00:13:28,218 --> 00:13:31,566 But then another treasure came my way — 224 00:13:32,258 --> 00:13:35,691 I was contacted by a group of art therapists 225 00:13:35,691 --> 00:13:38,040 in a hospital in Israel to come and work 226 00:13:38,040 --> 00:13:41,383 with the children in the oncology department. 227 00:13:41,383 --> 00:13:44,335 And we spent three days together 228 00:13:44,335 --> 00:13:48,659 making the most amazing workshops with those kids. 229 00:13:48,659 --> 00:13:51,747 And the kids really did amazing work. 230 00:13:51,747 --> 00:13:55,503 This kid, for example, made a portrait of the doctor 231 00:13:55,503 --> 00:14:00,454 who conducted the procedure of bone marrow transplant on him. 232 00:14:00,454 --> 00:14:05,070 And the syringe that he used for the nose is the actual one that the doctor used. 233 00:14:07,573 --> 00:14:11,494 And then we went on to work with adults, 234 00:14:11,494 --> 00:14:13,690 cancer patients as well, 235 00:14:13,690 --> 00:14:17,566 which again made amazing pieces of art. 236 00:14:18,459 --> 00:14:22,668 And then we moved on, and we worked with army veterans, 237 00:14:23,048 --> 00:14:27,773 and army veterans suffering from PTSD. 238 00:14:27,773 --> 00:14:31,056 And you should've seen these men in their fifties 239 00:14:31,056 --> 00:14:35,112 creating the most amazing artworks — 240 00:14:35,251 --> 00:14:38,458 just by playing with objects. 241 00:14:38,458 --> 00:14:40,453 Look at this one. 242 00:14:40,453 --> 00:14:44,385 Is it a self portrait? Is the small fish a self portrait, 243 00:14:44,385 --> 00:14:46,533 or perhaps the large fish. 244 00:14:46,533 --> 00:14:51,326 So. then I understood that it wasn't really about creating art — 245 00:14:51,326 --> 00:14:53,780 It was about telling stories. 246 00:14:53,780 --> 00:14:56,130 It was about communicating. 247 00:14:56,130 --> 00:14:59,487 Playfulness through the use of collage 248 00:14:59,487 --> 00:15:03,562 was allowing people to tell a story through art, 249 00:15:03,577 --> 00:15:09,403 which perhaps would've been too difficult to say in words. 250 00:15:10,215 --> 00:15:14,408 So, I want to end with this guy, this picture of this kid. 251 00:15:14,485 --> 00:15:19,998 He participated in one of my workshops in Tel Aviv, in the Bialik Rugozin School. 252 00:15:20,049 --> 00:15:21,956 And supposedly he didn't get it — 253 00:15:21,956 --> 00:15:25,945 You're supposed to glue the stuff on the board, not on yourself. 254 00:15:25,945 --> 00:15:27,273 (Laughter) 255 00:15:27,273 --> 00:15:29,633 But because he didn't listen to me, 256 00:15:29,633 --> 00:15:32,642 he didn't listen to the preconceptions, he was playing. 257 00:15:32,642 --> 00:15:36,041 He only listened to his inner voice 258 00:15:36,041 --> 00:15:38,105 and to what was in front of him, 259 00:15:38,105 --> 00:15:42,211 he created a really special image, 260 00:15:42,211 --> 00:15:44,526 which we are showing here today. 261 00:15:44,526 --> 00:15:47,311 When we play, we are free! 262 00:15:48,618 --> 00:15:50,427 Thank you very much. 263 00:15:50,443 --> 00:15:52,597 (Applause) 264 00:15:52,819 --> 00:15:54,248 Thank you.