Memorial Column
Ilana Goor
Date 1988 | Technique Stainless carotene and plexiglass | Height h.12.00 | Location Yad le Banim, Raanana, Israel
The memorial column constructed by Ilana Goor for the Fallen Soldiers Memorial House in Raanana is surprising in its architectural appearance and its minimized form. The sculpture,12 meters high, is made of four vertical plates of rusty and coarse Corten steel which constitute, according to Goor, “the hard materials of which they (the soldiers) are made, the scratches and beatings that we have absorbed throughout our lives”. When seen from a bird's eye view, at their peak the boards take the form of the Star of David. The lower third of the column is split open and through this split a red Plexiglass pipe reveals itself. The Plexiglass tube represents the injuries and bleeding and is emphasized in this association by the contrast between the glowing redness and the leaden, roughness of the steel.
Goor’s monument joins a long list of monuments sculpted by the best of Israel’s sculptors (Yitzhak Danziger, Dani Karavan, Yehiel Shemi, Yigal Tomarkin, Menashe Kadishman) whereby their abstract dimensions evoke a sense of secular heroism. At the split, the two pyramidal parts are asymmetrical (broad and short at the bottom, narrow and long at the top) they then meet each other at the apex which is positioned according to the classic proportions of the Golden Ratio. The narrow waist of the sculpture seems a threat to its stability and throws doubt on the atmosphere of strength and permanence that it exudes at first glance. There is a resemblance between the form of the sculpture and that of an obelisk, namely a narrow, tall, four-sided monument that is pyramid-like in shape.
