Contemporary Arab Art – Legacy and Modernism – Omran al-Kaissi

MODERNISM IN ARAB ARTS- LEBANON AS A PRELUDE (Extract)

No talk about any future for arts could be made without going to, better still regressing to, the past which formed the real foundation for the first bonds of art. Consequently, we see that the best in-depth researchers of the art's history and development are obliged to revert to the oral origins of descriptive literature considering that these descriptive literary works form a characterized and effective fertilizing condition of human memory during a certain time period.

A live confirmation, offered by researcher Louis Gustave, about the vital development of narrative pictorial arts, also the Flemish Bruglian School or the narrative semi-surrealist horizons in the world of Hieronymus Bosch, 1450-1516, unfold that any expression of popular thoughts could not advance in its preliminary stages except through the oral context of the descriptive literature. However, with the city development, this popular literature, which fed on mythical legend during the Middle Ages, had instead to extract from the literal text its pictorial images, within the frame- work of a reflexive state in which the audio text is transformed into visual. Here those researchers narrate the resurrection stories, not according to the theological text, but to the popular presentation where exists the intended exaggeration in the fantasy atmosphere and the issue of pain.

We notice the same thing in the emergence of many Arab arts that developed the anecdotes of al-Zir Salem, Antara al-Absi, al-Zainati, al-Hilali, also some stories in the Holy Quran, and the innate art lying between the Eastern miniature and iconographic construction.

During the stages of founding Lebanese art, when art served pure religious purposes, the ecclesiastical religious text was the intellectual background standing behind the graphic text. Even if we review the book History of the Times by Estephan el-Douaihy, 1630-1704, we feel the impact of the text emanating from the liturgy of the Lebanese eastern ecclesiastical tradition on the descriptive text inscribed on the walls of many monasteries and churches in Mount Lebanon.

This explanation is strengthened by the events of 1587 A.D. when Father Antoun el-Gemayel decided to build the Church of Mar Abda in Bikfaya village in Metn. He entrusted Elias el-Chidiak el-Hasrouny the task to illustrate it. The illustrations came richer than the traditional iconic works. Here began the eastern iconographic spirit. An in-depth study of the murals of Qannoubine Monastery in Mount Lebanon showed a sort of separation between their upper and lower parts. The upper part was a replete of western influences while the lower part was an eastern explanation of the Virgin's Annunciation. The historian Philip Hitti affirmed that Lebanon witnessed a serious influence from the School of Rome. The first delegation of missionaries studying religious paintings in Rome went in 1460, when Franciscan monk Friar Gryphon, who lived in Lebanon between 1450-1474, sent two of his students to study in Rome, one of them Gibrayel Ibn al-Qila'i al-Lahfady who died in 1516. Besides, Lebanon was the first mid-eastern country to inaugurate a Maronite College in Rome in 1584 and Maronite College in Ravenna in 1635 to which al-Akouri bequeathed huge endowments.
Therefore, the founding past served to enrich the intellectual text and to make a healthy move towards the graphic text. For this reason, we study the Lebanese renaissance generation starting from the first decade of the seventeenth century (1602). We discover that Youssef al-Bani dated his fresco mural in the Monastery of Lady of Qannoubine in 1602 and that Abdullah Zakher, who established the first printing press in the Middle East, transformed Mar Yuhanna al-Sayegh Monastery in Khinshara to a studio for his works between 1675-1748.

Among the most prestigious names that left behind their artworks during the eighteenth century, Francis al-Kifa'i (works dated 1704), Ibrahim Kerbage (painted between 1705 and 1746), Boutros Koborsi (painted between 1703 and 1744), Estephan Daou (1724-1814), John the Armenian (works dated 1745), Nestor Medlej (second half of the eighteenth century), Mansour Kamel (works dated 1793), Youssef Sakr (works dated 1797), also Moussa Dib who died in 1826, and many others. We should admit of the shortage in recording biographies and names of the artists at that particular stage. However a meticulous study of the work of art should uncover the date of the execution, the basic identity and to a certain extent the personality of the painter.

Nevertheless, the period of formation and the spontaneous revival imposed themselves through the efforts of artists, who asserted their creative choice by their drawings. They lived their artistic time based on many facts that crystallized in the nineteenth century at the hands of a group of impressionists who originally studied drawing for topographical reasons or for Ottoman military reconnaissance services. Many of those artists became pictorial artists charmed by the secrets of the relations between the sea and the mountain.

That period knew many names like: Kanaan Deeb who died 1873, painter Abdo Boutros al-Musawwir who executed some wooden murals in Beiteddine Palace in 1831, Chukri al-Musawwir, 1865-1935, Ibrahim Serbei born in 1850 who became famous by virtue of his paintings recording the visit of Emperor Guillaume the Second to Beirut in 1899, Najib Kikano, 1867-1927, Najib Chukri, 1872-1922, Ibrahim al-Jarr, 1873-1936, Hassan al-Tannir (works dated between 1890 and 1898), Najib Bekhazi, 1914, Dimashkieh (works dated 1883), Raif Shdoudi, 1872-1914, and Ali al-Jammal, in addition to many artists who lived and produced works inside and outside the country and whose works remain unknown till today, due to the absence of specialized institutions and museums to safeguard this legacy from destruction, loss and neglect.

But the most serious move shall start with the early academic founders who form a golden square, the pillars of which are: Daoud Corm, 1852-1930, Habib Srour, 1860-1938, Khalil Saleeby, 1870-1928, and Philippe Mourani, 1875-1970. The exceptional importance of those founding artists lies in their being the first who followed the path of academic specialization in the career of drawing art, meaning that each one of them possessed his artistic period and consecrated his presence to this aesthetic career. That issue had great semantic connotations particularly during the founding stages, in view that, at that stage and at the hands of those founders, art left the circle of hobbyist and religious practice to enter in the professionalism circle. Some opened painting studios to teach painting to the students. The studio of Habib Srour, which was within the properties of the notable Alfred Sursock in Sursock district, later known the Aero Club, is considered the first school for teaching painting and drawing. Khalil Saleeby opened a workshop in Bliss Street, opposite the main gate of the American University of Beirut (AUB), while the house of Khalil and his wife Carrie, became the meeting place of the elite among his friends and acquaintances.

Moreover, those artists studied art in integrated academic courses in many world painting academies. They managed to link these academies with Lebanon whether through maintaining connection or by way of sending number of Lebanese students to study there. But more importantly the golden square, more than any other predecessor, were contemporary. They introduced a cultural tradition into the cultural circle in Lebanon, being the art exhibition. It became a space for the various social classes of people to look at the artwork executed by these artists, who deserted the religious pious arts to indulge themselves in the secular painting, dealing with live subjects, mainly nature and man. Corm and Srour realized as well several works of religious nature.

I wonder whether we are in front of the first good seed of the academic spirit in the Lebanese art. If so, what has each one of those artists offered to be inscribed in the founding entrepreneurship?

Daoud Corm

Upon studying Daoud Corm, by focusing on his artistic production in the first place, we would come across a bold academician who studied painting in Rome. He learned to control the dissection within the form and to establish the relation between quietude and movement by what we may call taming the hand in order to become responsive to memory and sight. As an outcome, two basic orientations in painting will be at hand. The first, the religious painting, which resembles in general the paintings prevailing in Rome, capital of Christianity, where playing on the emotionality role of light and its several sources transforms the plane surface into an impressionist construction comprehensive of a group of terms that could be read within the general context of the painting. The second, the independent painting with particular inspirations. But there are new additions like making the written Arabic text part of the formation. We point within this context to the angels of The Sacred Heart of Jesus painted in the Church of the Jesuits-Beirut in 1880, to Our Lady of Victory existing in Our Lady of Victory's Monastery in Ghosta-Keserwane, painted in 1887, and Saint John the Baptist at the Saint John the Baptist Church, in Zouk Mosbeh-Keserwane done in 1923. The most prominent religious work, abounding with neoclassical rhythm, complying with the game of light playing havoc with the form, is the work expressed in the painting of Saint John the Baptist existing in Saint John the Baptist Church in Achkout made in 1890. Also, the one of Saint Sarkis and Bakhos Mounting their Horses found at Fatka, Keserwane, and painted in 1891.

Habib Srour

Habib Srour represented the phenomenon of the artist who took art as a career and made it his daily job, dedicating his graphic capability for the production of a painting that responded to the taste of the other. He also introduced a distinguishing path line when he strengthened the tradition of the studio, based on the development and raising of promising artistic capabilities. It is not strange that the artistic capabilities of Mustafa Farroukh, Saliba al-Douaihy and Rachid Wehbe grew and exploded in his own studio. Consequently, the role of the professor or the teacher will emerge as the beginnings of the Lebanese studio, during the first stages of its founding.

But Habib Srour, the academician denoted to ancient classical lines, was also among the first to exercise their free departure from the ordinary and the routine after having lived basic experiences, one in Rome where he moved with his parents at the age of 10 and where he completed his academic studies, then in Egypt where he lived during an important stage of the artistic renaissance known by the School of Alexandria. His return to Lebanon in 1890 consecrated him as a fundamental artist and an educator teaching in the Ottoman Sanayeh School.

LEBANESE IMPRESSIONISM AS A PREAMBLE TO MODERNITY

The group of early founders of the pure artistic state is the founding group or the generation of masters of the Lebanese art. Through their studios, which became a characterized state in the nascent cultural circles, they were closer to the civilizational growth of the central city of Beirut, although Lebanon was under the yoke of Ottoman occupation. That occupation, despite all what was said and written about it, had its cultural symbols as well. They were reflected in the writings and paintings of a great number of Lebanese artists who studied art in Istanbul.

Khalil Saleeby

The phenomenon of Khalil Saleeby, 1870-1928, deserves reflection. He was the only one who, by being dramatically slayed by his relatives, created one of the conditions that impressed this artistic revival by a stamp of challenge.

He was born in Btalloun village in Mount Lebanon and obtained his early education in the village's school. He was enrolled in 1886 in the Syrian College in Beirut, to be known later as the American University of Beirut.

In the year 1890 he traveled to England and headed to Edinburgh where he met painter John singer Sargent, 1856-1925, the painter who researched in the aesthetics and secrets of the East. The British artist acquired much from his Lebanese friend knowledge. He enriched him in return with art fundamentals and secrets. During that period, he got acquainted with his future wife, Carrie Aude, an American descendant of German origins. He traveled with her to America, England and France where he indulged deeply in studying the color technology, knowing that he joined the studio of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the well-known artist in the Parisian art circles, where he also met the impressionist artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

However, his return to Lebanon was interpreted by many researchers as the artist's yearning to light and the overwhelming color in his home country, also the nostalgia toward his mountainous village and its distinguished seasons. Returning to Lebanon was not a break with the West and its advantages, but was the beginning of establishing the Lebanese art studio, open to embrace all promising talents. From his studio emerged two artists, founders of the Lebanese impressionist current, Omar Onsi and Kaisar al-Gemayel. Saleeby's painting is distinguished by the firm stroke and its abundance in color, but is also characterized by an awareness of the sensitivity of excellent color distribution. In his paintings, light interactions and the color that has no rigid limits form together a self content drawing, almost suggesting that it has created itself by itself, or without the need of the artist not necessarily seeking that outcome. Thus were the drawings made by his friend Renoir, who was famed by this unique characteristic, also those of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1824-1898, who bade farewell to the nineteenth century, by a chromatic uncovering concerning the complementary color painting based on a background of the brutal stroke. We are speaking of a strong artist who has self-confident, and who dealt with the composition where the figure painted becomes captive of the renewed chromatic relations in every stroke and angle. For this reason we find that his painting Nude, most probably of his wife Carrie, is based on the same composite equation where two forces meet, the expression of a figure, overflowing with forces and light elements, and the background, possessing a chromatic absorption that serves the figure's movement and presence. The painting of Khalil Saleeby is part of a stern and resisting voice that penetrates toward graphic values directly and without a secondary prelude. However he would not, as a confident photographer, be satisfied with the image having similarity with the figure. He goes further toward the additional powers of the color, which has the most important and crucial value.

Here the following matters ought to be remembered:

First - Khalil Saleeby did not practice or perform religious arts in view that he was not in need to enter the niche of art through the gate of religious piety gates.

Second - With regards to his portrait, Saleeby did not paint the character for its own sake or as a substitute for the photographic picture; he rather considered it a subject through which he expressed himself, using the picture in a manner that transcends the personal painting.

Third - Saleeby was a particular artist in the stage of formation. He was a creative entity of his own, dealing with art as a given creativity, isolated from any aspect of material gain.

Philippe Mourani

The Eastern World represented for artist Philippe Mourani, 1875-1970, a basic source for inspiration and revelation. Consequently, we see him engrossed in the process of uncovering the secrets and aesthetics of that part of the world. The painting, according to the artist, is an aesthetic revelation of the eternal place, a lyricist formation through the clever shaping of the eye and taste. It is not strange for an artist of this caliber to be characterized by the attribute of general favoritism toward extraordinary places, that carry the scent of the past, and which form a certificate of belonging to originality, that many artists in the world still seek to acquire.

The strength of performance and the solidity of formative consciousness possessed by Philippe Mourani made him an artist capable of reaching to the core of the romantic equation, which was based on the ascent of formative skill and accompanied by the power of the styling purpose in painting what represented the first composing value. However, paintings of that artist, characterized by their scenic reality, were marked, in addition to their wide area, by a measure of mitigated recounting.

Philippe Mourani studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris (1892-1895) and settled in Paris as of 1901, feeling at all times the nostalgia to live in an Orient that never left his imagination. He was characterized by huge scenic panoramic works, the most famous being to Her. The artist attention was drawn towards everything transparent and changing in nature, focusing on the conviction that the value of colors is underscored by the light that they receive. The value of colors is not fixed, as seen by classical artists, but changes in accordance with the change of light, for colors are pertinent to the things themselves and do not exist as self-produced colors.

Lebanese impressionism

Lebanese impressionist school, as we are able to watch by sight and feeling, rose basically from the principle of departure from the studio to nature and practicing painting as an emotional state via the surrounding that influences simultaneously the entire artist's senses. Such kind of departure necessitated a new concept for both the graphic performance from one side, and the renovated view of the Lebanese nature itself from the other. Graphic performance came then to the scene, among which the aquarelles that possess were differentiated from all other colors used inside the studio and in particular oil colors, because they can play their transparent role in the interior lighting over and above being absorbed by the paper. That made the boundaries of the form melt in the other chromatic background, let alone the fact that the state of graphic composition was based on a singular capability in direct, coloring fully confident of results.

The Lebanese expressionist movement, realized by way of water colors, was also reinforced by poetic coloring with the pastel material. Colors became the expression of the cohesion of pictorial surface and an amount of poetic lyricism, in the presentation of the form emerging from the light pit and illuminating over the darkness expanse. In addition, it was a local expressionism founded on two basic pats. The first, the changing Lebanese nature according to seasons and locations, the second the inspirational literary vision of the lyrical subject. That fact pushed more than one researcher to link between the lyrical stage in the life of Lebanese literature and poetry and the emergence of that current, influenced originally by the Paris School which was living the glory of impressionism.

Within that context, there comes forward the triangle formed by Gemayel-Farroukh-Onsi, knowing that many other artists practiced impressionism in different degrees of professionalism. We mention of them Toufic al-Baba, 1889-1958, Saadi Sinevi, 1902-1987, Makaroff Fadel, 1910-1945, Maroun Tomb, 1912-1981, beside a number of foreigners who resided in Lebanon, like Georges Cyr, 1881-1964, Boris Novikov, 1888-1966, Fernando Manetti, 1899-1964, and Olga Limansky, 1903-1988.

Modernity, an ongoing outcry

Artistic modernity in Lebanon is more of an endless outcry because it raises up to now many questions and does not offer answers except for a few. If art is really an active reply to the greatest question in the foundational meaning of visual culture, then the Lebanese art, as we should acknowledge, remains a state of exposure for the new, rather than a state of innovation. It prefers to play the role of a vital messenger between what is there in the West of innovation and renovation and what is there in the Arab World and Lebanon of understanding the new. Consequently, we see that the Arab artist, even if he has passed all his life in the West like Chafic Abboud, Farid Aouad, Mounir Eido and many others, remains attached to this umbilical cord of narrative rhetoric that satisfies and may relate to his Eastern Lebanese roots.

Thus we witness a generation who is aware of the contemporary art as well as its creative presence within the country. This fact shall lead to the crystallization of fundamental art trends of this generation. Some choose a painting that derives the components of modernity from European echo inlaid with local effects. Others choose to develop a Lebanese painting and to create new hypostases for it. Starting with the fifties and sixties, the Lebanese plastic art begins to be transformed into an empirical phenomenon, where art products are presented by way of a new generation of artists who have completed their academic studies in Lebanon and the rest of the world, and have indulged in seeking answers to many fateful questions. Maybe the most prominent is the issue of interconnection between art and literature. We find, in many of the trends prevailing in the art in Lebanon, rhetoric cultural trend which transformed the painting into a visual echo of all that prevailed in revolutionary, contradicting or even absurd thoughts. The span through which passed the Lebanese art movement, following the World War II and during the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century, was characterized by two fundamental issues: first its closeness to the prevailing European rhythm in the great capitals of art like Paris, Rome, London and Madrid, second, its cohesion with cultural trends prevailing in poetry, theater and the novel. Because, inasmuch as surrealist or abstractionist currents were spread, the painting became the echo of that emancipated poetic world. Also, inasmuch as the theater headed toward experimentalism transcending the familiar dramatic language, the painting headed toward experimentalism and exploded its expressionist power chromatically or in composition. We witness a painting realized by diverse materials. The sanctity of the unique matter fell down and the Lebanese painting became part of the vast technical knowledge which every artist should master in his capacity as a smart researcher.

The Lebanese painting which experimented, through the active empirical group, all sorts of rhythm, had to pay attention, through this generation, to the Arab or Oriental legacy, in order to restore it once again in the light of a new abstractionist explanation, rising from the given, the letter or the sign.

But with regards to the founding role in the cultural edifice, the painting became its visual frontage. The painting entered, through the critic or the analytical studies, which mushroomed in number in Lebanese newspapers and magazines, as part of prevailing daily cultural margin, to the extent that the gallery stopped being a neutral exhibition of artworks but more of an innovative approach to what actually exists in Lebanon and what ought to be, in the light of the artworks prevalent in the world.

The Lebanese painting took its place in the outside world through seasonal participation in many international biennials, as well as local and international fairs, even through the travel of many Lebanese artists abroad to present their works worldwide. The fifties and sixties formed a qualitative transformation in concepts, in the means of production and even in the depth of the artist culture, where such culture formed the basic background for Lebanese artistic works.
But the greatest paradox for modernity in Lebanon shall rise undoubtedly following the end of the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted between 1975 and the early nineties. The Lebanese society regained its unity and momentum after the end of the war. The artistic movement became revitalized even beyond the expected, presenting works of Lebanese young artists of the post-war generation. This generation presented a quite different painting from what had previously prevailed, surpassing all the afore given facts about the plastic art. Of course, this generation was not seeking to be unique but to be differentiated from the past. It realized that what the previous painting presented in creative unfolding was nothing but a delayed echo of the prevailing schools in the outside world. The age in which the new generation lived, paved the way broadly in front of various discretions, to an extent that permitted the use of all materials. Accordingly, the post-war generation was charged with severity and anger. His painting was not neutral and mostly not detached from a great crisis, represented this time by the controversy of the relation between the Lebanese youth and the outside world.

However, was that painting or the composite artistic work, or the carved statue with conceptual specifications, a critic of the world as lived? Or was it the echo of the world which that generation felt?

To answer such a question, it is imperative to visually review the works of young artists who do not appear to be either responsible or obliged to present the explanations sought by the observer. We have to visually review and sentimentally co-live with these works that are as diversified as what have been presented of interpretations by diverse names. Here we reach an important and crucial research reality, based on the fact that the artist of that generation has become overwhelmed with independence and self-confidence in playing both, the role of the founder and the role as a distinguished artist. But what characterizes the rhythms of this generation? To answer such a question we have to refer to the central concept of the artwork, where we discover that there is no one single idea, but a split into many ideas or pits which perform in their totality one of the formulas of the covert system that determines the work character. Consequently, the central concept of artwork is not distanced from the contemporary understanding of modern art, as presented by those references which consider the modern painting a product of an unrestricted idea diversified material.

We are therefore witnessing a generation which has built an intellectual bridge between its rhythms and the outside world. This generation has come to see the world more of a universal village, the artistic space, though large, smaller than the area of a postage stamp and the revolt issue not a figurative problem rising from the core of schools, but a departure from all schools and a determination to invent a personal state which allows anger and revolt against all previous trends.

Post-modernity in Lebanon

Post-modernity is not a wave but a different path if not new. And if we want to know the difference between the wave and the path, we have to study both concepts the sustainability and the initiation. The wave is a repetition of a cancelled novelty, while the path is a road, having a beginning and an end, a march with a target. Thus, we deal with the appearance of conceptual arts in Lebanon from the perspective of the founding role where we shall discover a generation of young artists who start to build other objective realities for arts, fully in harmony with the age spirit and with the idea of interface, as a must in the ages of communication, with the new concepts of the art. But what does the new artist seek to realize in the light of the huge variables that hasten the pace of the world at all levels? There are those who seek to affirm a philosophical intellectual equation in art, others who seek to uncover the truth underlying the appearance and its matter, but at the end we find ourselves facing an equation, with art as its main component. It is the consecration of the reality lived by people, which artists consider a must to cohabit with it. The basic usage of this trend rises from the thoughts that are embodied through composition or mostly from a video filming, where artwork is transformed ultimately to an intellectual analysis of the expressionist state. The artist seeks in this case to realize visually, still with an intelligent turn, what writers and thinkers have succeeded to transform into words.

We are witnessing an artist who has reduced the artistic time to a corner that claims to be the time in its totality, while the remaining is that extra that could be peeled in order to reach the core. The core here is the truth in its deadly absence. For this reason, these artists invent the outlet of a presumptive question that demonstrates the existence of truth, provided that this truth emanates from the art which is the purest aspect of existence.

Among the prestigious names in this field we mention: Imad Issa, Walid Sadek, Tony Chakar, Rita Aoun, Bilal Khbeiz, Dima Raad, Marwan Rachmawi, Nadine Touma, Jacko Rastikian, Anita Totikian, Naji Zahar, Khalil Joreige, Joana Hadjithomas, Akram Zaatari, Rabih Mroueh, Jalal Toufic and Lamia Joreige. This trend has appeared with the outset of the nineties of the twentieth century and has succeeded to assert itself nationally and internationally through several participations among which, the September Festival, the activities of the Society Forms and Colors at the local level, and through Fairs dedicated for Lebanon held by pioneering institutions at the international level like Tabis Institution in Barcelona and Vit.D. in Rotterdam. It is worth mentioning that the international magazine Parachute, the most prestigious in covering the modern practices of the contemporary art, consecrated in 2002 a complete edition about Beirut City, in view of what its modernist artistic expanse has excelled in terms of activities and innovation. Number of this generation's artists continues to offer developed works, with an exciting expressionist rhythm, such as the fast and touching movement of the female artist Dima Raad and the steep transcendence of the rhythm of Jacko Rastikian.

A summary of the basic image of the Lebanese art modernity will arouse many questions on a ground not fertile with answers. This Lebanese artistic creativity has become captive of personified experiences, which might be difficult to have them transformed into a comprehensive national artistic project, however they may bring to the limelight important Lebanese artistic affiliations, provided they get detached from the Lebanese context.