V. Found Object and Found Image (1964-1967)
Yona Fischer, Catalogue: "Itineraries and Forms", 1976
1964 Paints The Jewish Couple of the Dutchman Werkman, Agrippas Street (a street sign attached to a painted rectangular surface) and Old Inscription.
1965 Finishes Tabletop with Reproduction by Léger.
1966 Paints The High Commissioner, based on the figure of Herbert Samuel on a Jewish Persian carpet from 1928.
1967 Paints After Dérain's Ball at Suresnes.
This period was crucial in Aroch's development for two reasons:
1. From now on the given form would serve not only as "a form of a form" (the panda paintings) but also as "a form near a form" (found object) and "a form within a form" (metaphoric image). That is, the work was built from various materials, including found elements (a street sign, a tabletop) borrowed for the formal structure (a reproduction of Léger) or copied and freely interpreted in order to include the image in the work (The Jewish Couple by the Dutchman Werkman ).
2. The use of a found object and a found image is a personal interpretation of the concepts of time and place, specifically, the artist's time and place in relation to other times and places: the work is the meeting place of forms and images from various times, places and cultures (Agrippas Street is a Jerusalem street sign from the 1920s, the "couple" is the Jewish couple of the Dutchman Werkman), and of artistic and non-artistic materials (reproduction of Léger and tabletop, respectively).
"There are images in the paintings from the 1950s, and later, in 1966, after an in-between period during which I played more with large forms and color surfaces, the images returned. [...] But the return is not a return because the images have a different character and function in the two periods. In the painting Girls in the Garden, the images are only forms, which, for certain accidental reasons, turned into girls. In terms of the painting, its composition and color, it wouldn't have mattered if I had painted only elongated forms. They're no more than a patch of colour in the painting. On the other hand, in The High Commissioner, which I painted in 1966, the Commissioner's double image is actually a picture from a picture. Had I not painted the figures here, or had I painted other figures, the painting would have looked entirely different, and even its content would have been different. And this is what actually happened to the image in the painting in general: after all the crises it went through, it came back as legitimate, with a new role in Pop." From Conversation with Yocheved Weinfeld, Massa, November 1968.