The Crusading Past and the Israeli Present: Between History and Autobiography in the Work of Igael Tumarkin

The “Zionist-Crusader analogy” is a recurring trope in Israeli politics and society. The present article focuses on an overlooked aspect of this analogy, the visual and artistic expression of supposed similarity and distinction between the medieval Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) and the State of Israel. We examine the visual and literary output of renowned Israeli artist Igael Tumarkin (1933–2021) whose crusades-related art embodies the tensions between past and present, east and west, and personal and collective memory. An in-depth study of a few of Tumarkin’s artworks and writings reveals the artist’s unique viewpoint on the “Zionist-Crusader” historiographical framework. These works, it is argued, inhabit two main interpretive frames, which are intricately connected. The first reflects, though not always consistently, the extent to which contemporary Israel “belongs” within the greater Levantine context; the second is the artist’s reflection on his own identity as a Jew born in Germany and an Israeli citizen, who often perceives himself as an outsider navigating between different cultural iconographies and identities.