Israeli and Palestinian Postcards: Presentations of National Self

Shared Heritage Revisited

“…The Arab society in Palestine during the British Mandate was mostly rural, and therefore had less exposure to plastic art than more urban societies. Moreover, and although Kamal Boullata (2009) dates and analyzes the roots of Palestinian art as early as the 19 th century, modern Palestinian culture was in its vast majority verbal, and before '48 produced mainly literary and poetic masterpieces. After the various fields of cultural creation by the Arab population in mandatory Palestine suffered a bad blow as a result of the expulsion or departure of most of the Palestinian intelligentsia, literature and poetry, rather than plastic art, were the first to recover from the shock and muteness of the Nakba (Arabic for the catastrophe) (Balas 1970).…”

Art education under development in Palestine: de‐ and repoliticization via universal values, institutional critique, and reflexive practice

“…In this period, Palestinian artists were expected to support the national cause, harnessing imagery for education and mobilization, and creating a national resistance iconography (Lionis 2015: 71). The PLO Art Education Department was established in Beirut in 1965 to oversee the creation of posters as an affordable way for visual messages to reach villages and camps (Saudi, quoted in Antonius 1979: 42), as well as pamphlets, publications, and touring exhibitions (Boullata 2009: 131). During the early 1970s, Palestinian cultural and literary forms were ‘distinctly political in nature’, inspired by Palestinian nationalism, Pan‐Arabism, Marxism, and socialism – revolutionary forms which ‘[resisted] the colonization of the Palestinian consciousness’ (Dana 2015: 205).…”