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Contemporary
Arab Art By
Ibrahim Alaoui
(Head
of The Museum Department and Curator of the Exhibitions at
The Institute of the Arab World, Paris)
In the Arab world today, the visual arts occupy an important
place in the field of creativity and artistic and intellectual
exploration. They therefore have a major contribution to make
to any study of the roots of creativity in contemporary Arab
societies.
The history of painting in the Arab world is only a fragment
of the history of these societies, and evolves in a multidimensional
movement where it is only one part of a whole. That whole
comprises not only aesthetic history but also social history,
not to mention the complex relationship between the producers
of symbolic forms and their societies. Unlike the history
of modern Western painting, which was the result of a series
of transformations linked to social revolutions, Arab easel-painting,
as a system of representation which is modern in both its
conception and its function, was born, at the beginning of
this century, through contacts with the West which fundamentally
altered not only the social systems of these countries but
also the ways in which Arabs saw the world.
The emergence of this new mode of pictorial expression adopted
by the Arabs is related on the one hand to the establishment
of a relatively autonomous artistic domain (that of the artist
as individual creator with a specific social status), to a
market, to an audience, to all those who are interested in
art, and on the other hand to the advent of new mode of expression
and creation: the painting.
Although this artistic domain in the Arab world, with all
the relationships it implies, was established in the early
20th century, it is necessary to add that easel-painting did
not emerge from an aesthetic void. Inherited forms exist,
both varied and essential, to express the cultural capital
with which Arab artists must come to grips. They will no doubt
be aware that their lands, through their creative and intellectual
achievements, have produced a succession of remarkable civilizations
which knew how to spread their influence throughout the world.
They are therefore heirs of a rich and diverse tradition.
This abundant heritage, born of the meeting between pre-Islamic
artistic traditions, on the one hand, and Islamic and Arabic
culture on the other, is reflected in Arab societies characterized
by a great diversity of modes of expression.
It is by considering the foundations of contemporary Arab
art in this multiple dimension that we can most productively
investigate the Arabs' visual memory. Since its foundations
are so diverse, and since many elements and currents have
participated in the re-birth of Arab art, its evolution is
far from uniform. However, certain dominant forces have determined
the development of contemporary art in the Arab world.
THE MEETING OF EAST AND WEST
The introduction of easel-painting is linked to the transplantation
of Western political, economic, and cultural influences into
Arab countries. Furthermore, European expansion in the 19th
century fostered a growing interest in the arts of the Orient.
In painting, the Orientalist vogue had its origins in the
orders issued by Napoleon to celebrate military successes
in his Egyptian and Syrian campaigns. Later, the Greco- Turkish
conflict and then the colonization of Algeria resulted in
a lasting interest in the Orient on the part of European artists.
The voyages of several major artists to Islamic lands in the
19th century were certainly determining factor: Delacroix
to Morocco in 1832, Chasseriau to Algeria in 1846, Fromentin
to Egypt in 1869, etc. Their Oriental travels had a multiple
significance: at once a historical and archeological search
for the origins of western culture, and an almost mystical
quest for the cradle of religion. These painters also contributed
to the development of pictorial Orientalism, which is to say
amore or less obscure , more or less frivolous search for
"the other." This quest issued from the need to escape from
a civilization paralyzed by 19th -century bourgeois culture,
and from the desire to liberate ones individual subjectivity
by giving it free rein. What Westerners sought in the East
was not, moreover, the recognition of their own identity ,
but rather the "Oriental" as Edward said has defined it- an
entity invented by the west, its double, its opposite, at
once the incarnation of its fears and the proof of its own
superiority, the flesh of a body of which it could only be
the spirit.
This fascination with the Orient also affected the first European
photographers who set out for the Arab world immediately after
the invention of the camera. Some settled there as early as
1860, such as Felix Bonfils in Beirut, the Abdullah brothers
in Cairo, etc. Film-makers were to follow them as soon as
cinematography was invented - the first projection of a film
by the Lumiere brothers took place in Egypt in 1896. The installation
of Europeans in Arab countries was accompanied by the establishment
of milieus and institutions designed to receive and subsequently
to educate Arab artists. Both intrigued and fascinated by
this unfamiliar iconography and these new inventions, Egypt
would be the first Arab country to attempt to master its language
and techniques, and to devote itself to the remaking of its
own image. Thus we witness the emergence of painters, of the
first Arab photographs (notably Mohammad Sadie Bey who as
early as 1861 took the earliest photographs of the Holy Land),
and of cinematographers.
THE EMERGANCE OF ARAB PAINTING
At the beginning of the 20th century, Egypt awoke. Political,
social, and cultural effervescence pervaded every sphere.
It was in this propitious context that Egypt developed its
artistic structures. In 1908, Prince Youssef Kamal created
a school of Fine Arts in Cairo, the first of its kind in the
Arab world. Among the original graduates were the pioneers
of modern Egyptian art: the painters Ragheb Ayad, Youssef
Kamal, Mohammad Nagui, and Mohammad Said, and the sculptor
Mahmoud Mukhtar. Most of these artists went on to pursue their
studies in Europe.
On returning to their own country, these artists constituted
a movement deeply aware of its role in the emancipation of
modern Egypt, and from 1920 on participated in the "Nahda"
(renaissance) symbolized by the statue of the same name sculpted
by Mukhtar, a key figure in the artistic awakening of Egypt
in 1928.
From then on, Cairo became the cultural and artistic capital
of the Arab world. The teaching provided by the Cairo Academy
of Fine Arts attracted many future Arab artists, particularly
those of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Some of these artists were
instrumental in setting up schools of fine art in their own
countries.
The teaching propagated by these schools, the establishment
of artists' associations, and the proliferation of local artistic
outlets powerfully contributed to the emergence of the first
generation of modern Arab painters.
The precocity of this plastic expression, the beginnings of
a process of assimilation during the first half of the 20th
century, meant that Western influence was to be expected,
both on the technical and the stylistic level. However, these
artists asserted their ability to represent their society
in their own terms. Their wish at this time was to turn their
backs on the exoticism of the Orientalists and, by returning
to their roots, discover their own authentic voices in the
idiom of modern art.
Many pioneering artists manifested the same wish to affirm
their own rootedness, such as the Daoud Corm and Khalil Gibran
in Lebanon, Jawad Salim and Faik Hassan in Iraq, Mahmoud Jalal
and Nacer Shoura in Syria, Mahmoud Racim in Algeria, etc.
Each in his own fashion, these artists were able to build
the premises of an aesthetic philosophy on the foundations
of their new artistic activity, despite the presence of a
European artistic community whose ephemeral success at the
beginning of the century, based on a representational and
academic exoticism dominated by genre scenes, was soon to
be supplanted by intellectual and aesthetic revolutions in
Europe.
FROM HERITAGE TO MODERNITY
In the Arab world, however, the plastic arts must submit to
the vicissitudes of history. Struggles of liberation, culminating
in independence for one land after another, were accompanied
by self- searching and national affirmation. Ever since the
"Nahda", Arab intellectuals had constantly been searching,
each in his own manner, for a form of cultural and artistic
expression adequate to the historical periods to which they
belonged.
The desire to create an original form of aesthetic expression
impelled certain artists in Egypt in the 1930's to distance
themselves as much as possible from their immediate predecessors.
On the fringes of fine arts academia, the surrealist current
influenced certain intellectuals and artists who created in
Cairo the group "Art and Liberty, " which from 1937 to 1945
galvanized Cairo intellectual life with its outrageous activities,
at first through the publication of numerous articles and
later through the founding of journals and the organizing
of exhibitions. Ramses Youan, Fuad Kamal, and H. El-Telemsany
adopted surrealism in order to achieve a more liberated style,
which seemed to them a decisive step in the struggle for cultural
emancipation and modernity.
Other movements appeared in various counties. In 1949 the
school of Tunis was founded, which marked the birth of modern
painting in Tunisia and nurtured its vigorous development
over the following decades. This movement included painters
of diverse origins and styles, who were soon joined by Ali
Bellagha, Yahia Turki, Amman Fathat, Jalal Ben Abdullah, etc.
These artists differed from the Orientalist school in that
they favored the representation of ordinary activities and
traditional life. A decade later the School of Tunis consolidated
this vision by finding new ways of representing both the real
and the imaginary life of Tunis.
Much more intellectually engaged, the Group of Modern Artists
in Baghdad was born in the 1950's and immediately involved
itself in the cultural and artistic life of Iraq. It advocated
a modernity which was open to the world but did not renounce
its roots. This movement engendered not only painters but
also theorists and critics. It manifestos and critical writings
on contemporary art provided the movement with a solid theoretical
base and the sense of a coherent vision, quite rare in the
Arab world at that time. One of its most observant and perceptive
members, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, gives a good summary of the
group's philosophy:
In their attempt to resolve the dialectic of the old and the
new into a viable synthesis, the Iraqi artists and their defenders
opened the way to a modernism which daringly emphasized its
paradoxical nature, which no doubt explains its peculiar power.
It is probably also the reason for the pre-eminence that Iraqi
painting seems to have acquired in the wider currents of contemporary
Arab art.
In the 1960's, the return of certain visual artists to their
own countries after living in various Western capitals also
favored the emergence of new artistic orientations. In Morocco,
for example, the painting teachers Belkahia, Chebaa, and Melehi
formed a group at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca which
led an intensely active cultural life, with the aims of furthering
the contribution of the visual arts to the redefinition of
"cultural identity" and the integration of the arts with social
life. Other painters, as well as writers poets, architects,
etc., pursued ways in which art could be a vehicle for reflection
and culture. This period in Morocco was notable for the opening
of many art galleries, the creation of cultural journals,
and the realization of a wide range of other innovative projects.
Also in the sixties, Lebanon saw the birth of innovative artistic
practices and the flourishing of numerous art galleries, of
which the most influential was undoubtedly Gallery One, founded
by the poet Youssef El- Khal and his wife Helen. At about
the same time, Janine Rebeize and a group of other Lebanese
intellectuals created the Dar- El- Fan, which was destined
to play a major role in the artistic life of Beirut. An exhibition
space, it also became a meeting - place for exchanges between
artist, intellectuals, and art-lovers. The gallery contact,
with a wider base, exhibited artists from other counties in
the Middle East, notably Iraq. This new dimension would serve
to give Beirut a pivotal role on the contemporary Arab art
scene.
TOWARDS A CONTEMPORARY ARAB ART
During the 1970's, Arab visual artists recognized the need
to join forces in order to establish an inter-Arab domain
of creation and artistic exploration through cultural conferences
and group exhibitions. Shared questions concerning the role
of the visual arts in the future of Arab culture, and the
contradictions and tensions stemming from historical circumstances,
led artists to organize activities of this kind.
Thus, in 1971 the first congress of visual arts in the Arab
world, held in Damascus, met this need for pan-Arab co-operation.
A year later, in April 1972, the Al-Wassiti Festival in Baghdad
brought creative artists from many countries face to face.
The same year, at Hammamet in Tunisia, a colloquium was held
on contemporary styles in Arab visual arts. These activities
led to the first pan-Arab Biennial of visual arts in Baghdad
in 1974, followed by a second one in Rabat in 1976. These
successive activities, which brought together artists and
art critics from the Middle East and North Africa, providing
them with the opportunity to exchange and confront individual
and collective experiences accumulated over the years, served
to create bonds, and to nurture the reciprocal exchange of
currents and influences, both stylistic and conceptual.
Amid the diversity of inspiration during this period, it was
the sense that Arab artists shared a common destiny which
led to a real awakening of consciousness. Since then, there
has been a certain relapse, which has not however prevented
artists from getting together to participate in a concerted
way in inter-Arab activities such as the Asilah Cultural Festival,
the annual Kuwaiti exhibition of Arab artists, and the biennials
of Cairo and Sharjah, etc. TOWARDS A
CULTURAL MODERNIZATION
The development crisis faced by Arab countries today originated
in the unequal assimilation of modern products and values.
The exhausted state of many modernizing industrial projects
in certain developing countries demonstrates the limitations
of strategies designed in economic terms, with little attention
paid to cultural matters. The true and comprehensive modernization
of a society must go by way of the modernization of the culture.
However, the lure of a cultural and artistic renewal, held
out so temptingly at the onset of independence, and strongly
marked by legitimate questions concerning cultural identity
(and in the seventies by collective inter-Arab research),
has been called into question by those who would seek their
identity in traditional values. The problem for the Arab world
lies in finding an appropriate response to this dilemma, and
not foundering on a stubborn rejection of "the Other." Witness
the generation of the 80's, which replaced attempts at collective
effort with various individual itineraries and the multiplication
of artistic exchanges and confrontations.
Though the infrastructures related to cultural life may be
lacking, imagination and diverse private initiatives are alive
and well. Rather than attempting a general survey of the state
of contemporary Arab art, we should emphasize its creative
power and its effectiveness as a tool of social transformation.
In Jordan, for instance, it was the creation of the Royal
Institute of Fine Arts by Princess Fahr-El- Nissa Zeid in
1976 which promised to contribute actively to awakening curiosity
about contemporary art in Amman.
After a distinguished artistic career in Europe, Princess
Fahr-El-Nissa Zeid returned to live in Jordan. She then decided
to share her passion and her experience with a handful of
students. Far from the well-trodden paths of conventional
academic instruction, the Princess introduced her students
to what had been her motto throughout her career: "Listen
to your own interior song."
It was not long before her inspiration bore fruit. Four years
later a new generation of artists came to occupy the forefront
of the Jordanian artistic scene, and in 1980 Princess Wijdan
Ali established the Jordan National Gallery, a museum housing
permanent collections and galleries for temporary exhibitions.
But the most striking event of this last decade was the creation
by the Shoman Foundation of the Darat al Funun, a centre for
contemporary art which is the first of its kind in the region.
The Darat al Funun is dedicated to promoting contemporary
creativity in the widest possible sense, bringing various
forms of artistic expression together and relating creation
and formation to each other. In ten years of intense activity,
it has become an essential venue for all those interested
in contemporary Arab art, as well as a meeting-place for intercultural
dialogue. Through its many exhibitions devoted to the most
innovative Jordanian, Palestinian, and other Arab artists,
and through its diverse cultural activities, the Darat al
Funun vividly manifests its desire to reveal the creative
dynamism of contemporary ideas and forms, and to contribute
to the nurturing of a contemporary Arab culture.
AESTHETIC RESPONSES
It is in this general context that contemporary Arab art evolved.
It would be difficult to give an inventory of all the approaches
taken up by artist since the 1950's. Among the principal trends
which seek to provide aesthetic responses to the problems
posed by the visual arts, several options can be distinguished
which co-exist and inter-relate.
FORMS
OF FIGURATIVE ART
Modes of figurative representation are many and diverse. They
vary according to their terms of reference and their sources
of inspiration. One tendency draws its motifs and themes from
social life. It refers, more or less allusively, to lived
reality. There are many artists, Palestinians and others,
who give prominence to scenes and types taken from social
life and historical events by means of figurative signs capable
of drawing attention simultaneously to the realities of the
world and to their symbolic representation.
The painter Ismail Shamout, whose figurative images are placed
in the service of the Palestinian cause, and Soleiman Mansour,
and Ahmed Nawash, who paint allegorical scenes with a great
liberty of interpretation, all adopt a signifying figuration.
Imbued with an expressionism abounding in energy, the work
of Paul Guiragossian expresses the human condition, projected
onto the canvas by way of representations of the body in motion.
Another figurative tendency borrows various formal and stylistic
elements from antique patrimonies, such as Pharaonic art in
the cases of Adam Henein and Nada Abdullah, or Babylonian
and Assyrian art in the work of the Iraqi artists Ali Talib
and Ismail Fattah, but also the art of the icon, as with the
Syrians Fateh Moudarres and Elias Zayat, as well as the Palestinian
Vladimir Tamari, whose native Jerusalem has inspired many
of his watercolours with their iconic and spiritual resonances.
Other artists reveal their attachment to their lands through
a manner based on the observation of their patrimony or landscapes,
such as the Jordanians Ali Jabri and Ammar Khammash. Others
find their inspiration in popular imagery, such as the visual
universe of the Tunisian Gouider Triki, whose work is based
on a poetics of the image where the worlds of humans, plants,
and animals are fused in an atmosphere of signs and colours,
as if there were no limit to the artist's imagination. Finally,
certain other artists of this persuasion deploy an imagery
where the links with the real world are like distant reminiscences
a stage of creation where the integration of forms and signs
expresses the complex idea of a social, cultural, and psychological
situation. Halfway between the figurative and the abstract,
artists such as the Moroccan Kacimi and the Syrian Marwan
(among others) translate their profound sensibilities, beyond
any form of mimesis, and reveal their human experiences to
us through formal speculations and metaphorical detours.
ABSTRACT ART
Abstract, or rather non-figurative art, operates by creating
a synthesis between visible reality and the artist's interior
experience. In the work of the Lebanese artists Chafic Abboud
and Saliba Douaihy, purification and filtration lead to an
abstract imagery, while in the art of Fahr-El- Nissa Zeid
one sees lyricism of content and forms linked to temperament
and creative power> This link is also visible in the work
of her disciples Hind Nasser, Rula Shukairy and Suha Shoman.
In Suha Shoman's works, a painterly informality, inspired
by material qualities imbued with earthiness, emerges from
deeply rooted cosmic landscapes. Indeed her work, dedicated
to the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, in a species of communion
supplies not only an evocation of its memory but also the
resonances of the self upon external objects.
Lyrical abstraction incarnates an undeniable plastic force
in the work of the Palestinian Nabil Shehadeh and the Syrian
Assad Orabi, while Najia Mehadji chooses a conceptual approach,
seeking an equilibrium between formal purity and what she
calls "le diagramme sensible."
Ziad Dalloul, painter and printmaker, excels in the union
of two areas of expertise, and explores a domain where the
figurative is cloaked in the abstract. In the work of Rashid
Al Khalifa, one is instantly beguiled by the disposition of
allusive, richly coloured forms, which give his paintings
an emblematic density. We should also mention Khalid Khreis,
whose gestural images are controlled by brush-strokes which
often cover parts of the canvas monochromatically. Finally,
the Sudanese artist Mohammad Omar Khalil explores the world
of the print in which he is an acknowledged master, thanks
to his work in America on images that have been becoming more
and more informal, giving scope to the intrinsic values of
black, of light and the texture of the paper. These are large
prints where unadorned graphics and the movement of the forms
generate abstract expressionist landscapes.
Among the younger generation, Ghada Dahdaleh is notable for
the way in which a subtle and suggestive script translates
the symbolism of Palestinian culture into an utterly personal
idiom.
THE SCHOOL OF THE SIGN
Deeply aware of calligraphy as they are, Arab painters have
sought some form of specific plastic expression by synthesizing
traditional and modern forms. This quest, which has allowed
them to establish a dialogue between the specific and the
universal, delves into the primal sources of calligraphy and
the symbolic signs of popular art. Arabic calligraphy, with
its aesthetic, semantic, and philosophic - mystical dimensions,
has led many painters to make the Arabic alphabet the object
of artistic exploration.
Some artists, like Etel Adnan, have introduced the letter
into their works while still retaining its visual aspect and
its linguistic function. As for the Palestinian artist Kamal
Boullata, throughout his exile in the U.S.A. he has never
ceased to explore the visual memory of his native culture
and to extract from it the "intimate geography" which keeps
him in touch with his homeland. This link is the Arabic letter,
which occupies a central place in his work, deriving its origin
from that symbiosis where pictorial space is transformed into
an inscribed surface and where linguistic significance and
plastic expression are inextricably intermingled.
Other artists, like the Iraqi Dhla Azzawi, have exploited
the letter as form, detaching it from the language in order
to confer on it an autonomous aesthetic existence and thus
create compositions where the sign is manifested principally
as a visual reference. Finally, there are other approaches
in which gestural and graphic expression make allusive reference
to writing, as in the remarkable poetic evocations of the
Palestinian Jumana Al Husseini.
Parallel to this formal investigation, a theoretical reflection
can be seen in the works of the Iraqi Shaker Hassan, who founded
the movement known as "Uni-dimensionalism," whose manifesto
was published in 1971, redefining spirituality in art and
revealing the correspondence between painting and writing
as the unique dimension "linking man to God in infinitude."
It sets gestural calligraphy in a communicative relationship
with the formless matter of walls subjected to the violence
and despoilment of history.
Traditional signs and symbols have also attracted the attention
of several artists who see this legacy as an important source
of inspiration. In their artistic activity, they investigate,
in varying degrees, the formal elements and the symbolic dimensions
of this inheritance. Certain North African artist, for example,
mine traditional Berber art for signs which they might use
as structural elements in their works, amplifying some and
reinventing others, as in the work of the Algerian Rashid
Koraishi.
One should also mention the extremely interesting cases of
those artists who associate the search for vocabulary with
the bedrock of traditional materials, such as the use of leather
by Belkahia in Morocco and Faisal Samra in Saudi Arabia.
Art And Space
Faced with the iconoclasm of Muslim culture, sculpture seems
to have been totally eclipsed in the Arab world. But it is
re-appearing, though slowly, as an active element of modernity.
Ismail Fattah works with every kind of material - plaster,
wood, stone - in order to give vent to his passion for self-expression
and his brusque vision of forms and beings, just like Tayseen
Barakat who burns his wood, or Samer Tabbaa who works with
local stone in the manner of a mason: he sculpts it, brushes
it, polishes it, to bring out its rich plasticity and impose
on it a new force and a new glow.
As for Mona Saudi, she makes of sculpture a means of personal
expression and of struggle, and at the same time a kind of
mirror where passion and desire can be perceived. In recent
years, her orientation has been towards monumental works integrated
into the cityscape.
Recently, other artists have explored the new medium of installations
which reintroduce meaningful objects into a mise en scene
in space. This is the case with several Palestinian artists,
whether they have remained in their homeland or been forced
into exile, whose installations bear witness to the vicissitudes,
both intimate and social, imposed by history.
Mona Hatoum, who remains one of the few Arab artists to attract
attention on the international scene, has evolved a conceptual
oeuvre in which ethical, political, and aesthetic premises
are interfused. As for Khalil Rabah, he attempts to "transfigure
the banal into metaphor." And finally Nasser Soumi composes
his art from ordinary objects in the form of metaphorical
assemblages.
Another form of consciousness arises for those artists who
pose the problem of creativity in terms of liberties, the
liberty of creation in relation to the individual and his
sensibility, which is how all human experience can be made
manifest. In this way they open up new paths and undertake
new experiments in their search for an accomplishment which
is their own.
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