In 1907, Oskar Kokoschka (1886­–1980) was commissioned to create an illustrated fairy tale for the children of Fritz Waerndorfer, founding member and financial supporter of the Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna’s premier design workshop. In Die träumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Boys, 1917), Kokoschka produced a haunting narrative poem about the awakening of adolescent sexuality, set on distant islands, far removed from modern city life and bourgeois society. His meticulously crafted text draws on familiar tropes from classical and contemporary literature, including works by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Viennese writer Peter Altenberg. While nostalgia is an essential trope of the Romantic period, Kokoschka’s work subverts this emerging canon. His work transforms what should have been a Romantic-style evocation of nostalgia and passes traditional wisdom through myth into a critical dismantling of such a gesture. The designs in the artist’s lithographs exemplify the prevalent decorative style of fin de siècle Vienna, showcasing his adept integration of various “primitivist” trends in European art. This is evident in Die träumenden Knaben’s cloisonné-like outlines, unconventional perspectives, and flat color planes.

Aside from the aspiration to awaken emotions across a vast geography, Romanticism was hardly a united cultural movement. Poets and writers such as Alexander Pushkin in Russia and Lord Byron in Britain were immersed in rethinking histories of imperial conquests and state-building. The emerging heroism of national liberation movements after the collapse of Napoleonic imperialism in Greece, for example, served as the utmost inspiration for Romantic literary mythmaking. Creating poetry out of the heavily imagined past while weaving new mythologies through it as a powerful embodiment of the Romantic style. Goethe asserted that “the highest lyric is decidedly historical,” alluding to the power of synergy between fact and fiction in shaping the ideological foreground of discourse through literature.¹ In the age of economic rationalization, Romanticism stood as a mystic guard of the unyielding power of subjective imagination. Applied to actual historical narratives, it became a powerful tool in constructing political imaginaries.

In 1818, Lord Byron published Mazeppa, a narrative poem introducing Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), a political leader of borderland Ukraine who, a century before, had stood at the fateful historical intersection between the warring Swedish and Russian Empires. Undoubtedly, Hetman Mazepa played a crucial role in the war as custodian of a borderland; however, the exact details of his actions are disputed, leaving an empty vehicle for Romanticist imagination. Mazepa is known for changing allegiances, but the precise circumstances of his shifts are apocryphal. He initially supported Russian emperor Peter I (r. 1682/1721–25) but later defected to the side of Swedish king Charles XII (r. 1697–1718). As little is known about Mazepa from historical sources, Byron had the freedom to experiment with sentimental inventions. In Mazeppa (1819), he portrays the hetman (commander) as a youthful hero, a romantic soldier of fortune famous for his aesthetic tastes, and a supporter of arts and culture. Ten years later, Russian Golden Age poet Alexander Pushkin published, like a delayed “rhapsodic battle” with Byron, his own interpretation of Mazepa’s story in Poltava (1828–29). In Pushkin’s poem, the hetman is portrayed as an ailing traitor of the Russian Empire, a ridiculous and horrible old man.

Ukrainian artist Mykola Ridnyi (b. 1985) has revived the Romantic-age rivalry with a transhistorical twist, revealing how a core stylistic element of Romanticism lingers in contemporary times, namely in the form of an uncompromising agonism. In his video work The Battle Over Mazepa (2023), commissioned jointly by Pushkin House in London and John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, Ridnyi cast spoken-word artists from around Europe to stage an actual rhapsodic narrative battle of rendering and creating subjective takes of Byron’s and Pushkin’s stories. Referred to by the artist as a “rap battle,” the medium is more akin to the practice of the ancient Greek aoidoi (Attic bards or storytellers) who performed poems as narrative stories. While Ridnyi bridges the ancient and contemporary forms of weaving the narrative, Byron’s and Pushkin’s respective storytelling can be considered “a narrative digression,” or parékbasis in Attic, the important bardic strategy in which the narrator intentionally alters details of the story to deliver a moral, ethical, or political “lesson” to the audience while retaining recognizable fundamentals.

Ridnyi’s video reveals the transhistorical nature of political agonism by layering ancient tradition, Romantic source material, and contemporary style. The concept of agonism is rooted in the works of Nazi political scientist Carl Schmitt, who insisted that binary conflict is a natural state of the political animal—and that winning by any means is the only way to ensure survival.² More recently, political theorist Chantal Mouffe has developed agonism into a more general paradigm of looking at conflict as a healthy state of affairs and mitigating it as a fundamental task of the political system. Mouffe has criticized the possibility of post-conflictual mediation societies, which she thinks only serves to bury the conflict temporarily and, in effect, to create a ticking time bomb. The essential point here is that while agonism is discussed as natural, assigning roles in a friend-enemy distinction is highly volatile depending on the evolution of the context.³

In casting spoken-word artists as contemporary bards, none of whom were previously familiar with Byron’s Mazeppa or Pushkin’s Poltava, Ridnyi focused on the diversifying representation of those who contemporaneously weave the historical narratives anew, indicating the enduring relevance of re-rendering stories in modern political and culture wars. Before filming, the bards participated in a workshop led by Susanne Strätling, professor of Eastern European studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Mediated by Ridnyi and Strätling, the artists read Mazeppa and Poltava, and each formed a subjective interpretation of Mazepa’s character based on the literary portrayals—choosing their side (for or against the hetman) in the process. Mazepa served as source material in the agonistic setup for the artists in the video—reminiscent of contemporary tendencies of turning cultural memory into a site of an emotive battle of subjective truisms.

The 20-minute-long film, shot in 4K in a Berlin warehouse on a hot summer day, showcases rhapsodic battles against a pitch-black background. This staging recalls Kokoschka’s illustrations in which the baroque complexity of the Romantic backdrop is nullified by the flat, color-saturated figures set against a black background, highlighting their presence and accentuating the agonistic tension between them. In the film, the camera moves between pairs of poets performing the twisted verses inspired by Byron’s and Pushkin’s texts. The action is framed by chanting extras, who evoke an ancient theater choir. These singers carry meme-like banners and flags akin to the frequently posted short opinion statements on social media.

In their respective epochs, Kokoschka and Ridnyi each subverted the aesthetics of Romantic storytelling: They stripped the beautifying surroundings and focus on the essence of the brutal agonistic argument in place. They effectively challenged not only Romanticism as a literary and artistic movement but the act of romanticization of anything—and this leads to a fundamental questioning of the attitudes of the material and immaterial cultural heritage in the past, present, and future. The transtemporal relevance of this comparison stands by the essential question that pierces through the epochs: Are we continuing to romanticize Romanticism itself?

For the exhibition curated by Elena Sudakova at Pushkin House, Ridnyi developed a newspaper-like leaflet that presents a Wikipedia-style introduction of Mazepa’s character, somewhat mocking the possibility of arriving at truth through describing him. It is framed similarly to Kokoschka’s illustrations. Both artists emphasize temporality rather than constancy, the relativism in the narrative construction. Visitors to the exhibition could take home a copy of the one-page agitprop publication. Ridnyi’s video enlivens the message with new media energy and breathes dynamism into a rhetorical battle.

While Kokoschka challenged the use of folklore in reaffirming traditional values, Ridnyi has refused to take a side, to choose one or the other portrayal of Mazepa as more probable and outrightly highlighted the subjective nature of any possible reading and interpretation of the character. Both artists’ works boldly subvert the romanticization of generic conventions, “bastardizing” their elevation to the level of sanctity. They did not need to invent the methodology from scratch; rather, they employed ancient techniques of narrative speculation from rhapsodists of the deep past. With equally vivid energy, both challenged the norms of accepted discourse that preclude conformism to authorial position or its binary, agonistic opposition. Kokoschka dove into the psyche of his adolescent readers, offering them introspective agency in the face of the demanding regulations of the world around them. At the same time, Ridnyi emphasizes the artificiality of the restriction in the political stances on Hetman Mazepa offered to the passive spectator as if from a menu of acceptable positions. The works differ in style, but they are comparable in their seeming attempts to subvert the essence of the respective narrative in affirmation of the sociopolitical order and naturalness of agonism.

The creative impulse is comparable to how the ancient Greek rhapsodists, for example, wildly rendered folk stories and their characters. We have so many versions of Heracles, Dionysus, and other mythological characters, sometimes radically different depending on the author narrating them. Paradoxically, the creation of a myth was a demystifying gesture. The multiplicity of possible versions and the constant introduction of new portrayals of characters and new readings of storylines prevented them from fossilization and invited the dynamic approach to the social identity–affirming lore. The eternal and static become impossible, while dynamism and change characterize the necessary reaction to essential change with the constant transformation of the community. Unlike the Romantic search for fundamental, unchangeable wisdom and permanent cultural codes embedded at the beginning of time, the rhapsodic attitude to rendering the story invites the propositions of reformation, vital critique, and opposition. In this spirit, Pushkin and Byron can be seen as creators of entirely different characters in parallel literary realities. This assumption counters the historizing attitude of Romanticism and redefines the scheme of approaching storytelling at large as narrative speculation or a field of essential, dynamic digressions.

Shaping collective political memory is essential to legitimize contemporary forms of universal imperialism and its primary adversary—a particular nationalism. While the weaponization of cultural heritage in the political struggle is ubiquitous, Ridnyi’s film epitomizes the critical function of narrative digression, namely subversion. “Subversion,” rooted in the Latin verb subvertere (to overthrow), refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system are contradicted or reversed to sabotage the established social order and its structures of power, authority, tradition, hierarchy, and social norms. Kokoschka and Ridnyi have approached subversion from opposite ends, but they both aimed to achieve the same effect of critical confusion in their respective audiences. Kokoschka challenged his client’s expectations by subverting the fairy-tale genre as a vessel in which to preserve bourgeois norms and values and instead focusing on the realness of the experience of growing up. This strategy sparked effective intergenerational agonism instead of creating repulsion for the abnormal and a reverence for conservative ideals—as was desired by the party that commissioned the work—thereby introducing a speculative artistic agency. Ridnyi has thrown off presumed determinacies of the correct or incorrect political position by subverting agonism itself, equalizing the perceived real and the possible speculative. While the approaches to the subject differ, both artists have focused on subverting the status quo by addressing the normalized in a way “that is just human nature” agonism. They transform the gesture into effective and potent criticism by making the sociopolitical construction and conditions of agony visible, registrable, and estranged.

Ridnyi’s video challenges the audience to step back from choosing sides—and to focus on dangerous oversimplifications as a fundamental source of naturalizing fiction. The Battle Over Mazepa, the first video in a planned trilogy, restages Romantic agonism and demonstrates its actuality in the present—against the backdrop of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It also reveals the tendency of contemporary art to reaffirm the subjective, oversimplified battlefronts through aestheticization—as in the case of Romantic legacies. Like the meme-banner holders in the video, the artist with a political agenda draws the frontiers to the agonistic battle lines, reaffirming the distinction between friend and enemy.

As David Graeber and Nika Dubrovsky argue, Romanticism sanctified the nation-state as the church waned.⁴ It legitimized the state as an absolute arbiter of ethical and moral judgement. As such, it materialized a political imaginary. While French philosopher Auguste Comte insisted on the “rationalization” of society through the nation-state, Romanticism in fact remythologized society anew.

The work of Kokoschka critically addresses the emerging bourgeois conservatism, which aimed to rearrange society’s new boundaries of restrictions as the power of the church vanished—and in that, to tighten the screws on the imagination of possible alternatives from the early childhood period. In challenging his commissioner’s intention so radically, Kokoschka revealed the intention behind the supposedly apolitical gesture of producing a piece of “edutainment” (educating entertainment) for children. Ridnyi, in his interrogation of our permacrisis-branded contemporaneity, spearheads our time’s burning ontological cleavage—normalization of the subjectivity of political agonism, in which the temporary arrangements and interpretations are communicated by power and perceived by the public through the lenses of multiple media channels as natural, eternal, and unchanging. This is among the feeders of the resurgence of new fascisms and other forms supposedly abandoned by the “never again” humanism’s progress, abominations as the solution offered is “final” and “simple.” The Wikipedia-style leaflet in the exhibition at Pushkin House and the one-line-slogan carriers in the video embody the rising number of these agents of further naturalization of agonistic battle.

The problems Kokoschka’s and Ridnyi’s works address intend to reaffirm the stance of historical truism beyond critique, nullifying or conveniently ignoring the context in which it emerged and removing it from the contested speculation space. Such conservative discourse contributes to the problem of “romanticizing Romanticism”—not actively challenging its positionality within “the greatest of eras” and as the source of nostalgic pride—which continues to emphasize the ethereal materiality of ghosts from the past. At the same time, it naturalizes and fixates as permanent the dynamic boundaries of agonistic struggles, presenting figures and ideas about the good and the bad as ontological categories, though they are, in fact, products of the sociopolitical context of their time and their power relations. The subversion and “bastardization” of Romantic tradition through critical speculation, as seen in Kokoschka’s drawings and Ridnyi’s video, show us a potent example of shaking up normality at a moment when reality starts to appear everlasting, futureless, and disjointed from its surroundings. Both works, though separated by age, demonstrate a successful multimedia address of the transhistorical challenge. Amplifying the messages conveyed in these works and further igniting the spread of their approaches is relevant in any time—but specifically in the present.

The post Political Agony and the Legacies of Romanticism in Contemporary Art appeared first on post.

This picture is a thirst trap, a clusterfuck of Day-Glo-dipped lucky charms that you just can’t look away from. Everything seems to swirl around a bull’s-eye target rendered in neon red. You are told that this is a “chair” and that this chair is “empty,” which is an implicit invitation to take a seat. Two feet (actually, wooden shoe trees) positioned on either side of the circular form provide a rough guide for how to orient yourself in relation to the picture. You must straddle and squat, assume the position. In the middle of the target—right at the bull’s-eye—there is a disk-shaped piece of coral, perfectly round, puckered, and rimmed with jewels, resembling a royal-class anus. The anus punctures the chair. It carves out an orifice, a squinting, portal-like hole seemingly held open by four rusty nails that have been hammered into the bejeweled perimeter. What is this anus to yours? Will they kiss in your mind-space?

Empty Chair or The Last Colonial (1969) reframes the act of looking as an act of intimate communion—both spiritual and bodily. Alfonso Ossorio (1916–1990), the artist who created this picture, compared this mode of looking to that of peering through a telescope or microscope: “It is flat but it is also transparent and enables you to see more than you would with your naked eye. That is the way the picture plane should be looked at in most of my work. The surface is very much there, it is emphasized with protuberances, but it is also meant to be permeable. It is dense and permeable.”¹

This paradoxical approach to modernist picture-making was shaped by a similarly paradoxical set of life experiences. Alfonso Ossorio was born in the Philippines in 1916 to a wealthy mestizo family that would soon become central players in the local sugar industry. But he would leave the country as a young child to study abroad, eventually gaining US citizenship. During the ’40s and ’50s, he moved between North America and Europe, establishing himself in the vibrant avant-garde art scenes of New York and Paris—as an artist, collector, and cultural mediator—and maintaining especially close relationships with artists Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) and Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985). It is easy to see the formative influence that the aesthetic philosophies of Abstract Expressionism and l’art brut had on his work. But despite his deep involvement, we imagine that Ossorio must have been a particularly queer figure in relation to these muscular Euro-American formations, difficult to fully assimilate both socially and artistically. Besides being extremely wealthy, a diasporic Filipino, and persistent in his devotion to explicitly Catholic themes, he was also, in fact, homosexual or bisexual. After going through a failed marriage, he met male ballet dancer Ted Dragon (1921–2011) in the summer of 1947, and they remained together until the end of Ossorio’s life.²

The psychic tensions resulting from this particular confluence of ethnicity, class, spirituality, and sexuality can be sensed as aesthetic tensions in Ossorio’s work: Density and permeability. Protuberances and orifices. Often there is a complicated interplay between looking as an act of penetration and looking as an act of being penetrated, giving and receiving. Not surprisingly, Ossorio professed an interest in both Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis.³

As you approach the Empty Chair more closely, various phallic objects seem to aggressively thrust toward you, jutting perpendicularly from the picture plane—a thick and veiny piece of driftwood in the upper left, a slim red stick with a smoothly rounded head in the lower right, and more. The picture delivers a variegated set of libidinal triggers, each object yielding its own erotic texture: The driftwood and the stick offer totally different thrills, as do the jewels, the nails, the shoe trees, the seashells, the bones, the glass eyes, the machete, and the lobster claws that are dripping with red paint. How will you receive these things, and how will they receive you? A skeletal foot appears to be nailed in place above the royal anus, recalling Christ’s divine suffering. Pain and pleasure bleed into one another in an orgy of polymorphous perversity.

Ossorio called these kinds of works “congregations,” implying a sense of spiritual purpose that couldn’t quite be captured in the more familiar “assemblage.”⁴ He began making them at the very end of the ’50s, after a period of producing thickly impastoed gestural abstractions, and he described how they developed organically from this prior series of works: “Then slowly objects started to get imbedded into the impasto until I had to make a choice whether I would give up doing this or use a medium that was more suitable.”⁵ Objects for his congregations were sourced from urban junk shops and remainder stores selling army, navy, or industrial surplus. They were foraged from the beach, from the taxidermist’s workshop, from his circle of friends. “Kind ophthalmologists would send me crates of glass eyes.”⁶ Distinctions and hierarchies between the natural and the synthetic, the functional and the decorative, the banal and the precious, were dissolved. Everything could be integrated because everything mattered. This was, in many ways, a culmination of his artistic commitment to tracing a continuum between materiality and divinity, which had driven his practice since the beginning: “It is simply that it is all one unity. Even a little waste piece of plastic or a bone is just as much alive as the abstract concept of God, which is meaningless unless it is incarnated.”⁷

Ossorio commented that his lifelong investment in religious matters stemmed from “a continuing interest in problems, which religion covers, such as birth, death, sex—these particular aspects of humanity.”⁸ Clearly, he liked to speak in terms of big, universal themes, a sign of the extent to which he had absorbed the values of Western humanism through his upbringing and education. And yet confronting the specific tensions in Empty Chair seems to elicit a more historically bound reading, one that rubs against the artist’s universalist proclamations.

You are told that this could be an “Empty Chair”—or that it might be “The Last Colonial.” The alternative title dangles like a piece of bait. There is a teasing suggestion here that the pains and pleasures embedded in this congregation of objects are not just “aspects of humanity” but rather aspects of a perverse historical encounter. The work was, after all, produced in the late ’60s, a volatile moment of sociopolitical reckoning charged with the energy of recent revolutions and anti-colonial liberation struggles, when the civil rights and antiwar movements were radically reshaping the public sphere in the US. In a 1968 interview, around the time that he would have been producing Empty Chair, Ossorio noted that he was “a conservative person in many ways” and that “one has to allow things to change if you want to keep essentials the same.”⁹ And yet his response to a question regarding the relationship between artistic practice and the intense social upheavals of that era seems to hint at an unconscious insurrectionary drive: “On all of this the artist has to focus in the way a lens focuses a ray of sunlight to make the thing underneath burn.”¹⁰

Look again at the anus. It seems to be clenched with tension, as though struggling to hold the entire picture together, as though it might burst wide open at any moment from the sheer excess. What divine state waits on the other side of this impending explosion? Will it feel like freedom? If it is possible to transcend the brutal histories that bind us—histories of invasion, rape, enslavement, genocide—surely this will only come through a violent process of sacrifice. And since these histories have soaked through to the very core of our being, this process must ultimately be one of self-sacrifice. In this war of independence, you too must assume the position. The picture sucks you into a sadomasochistic kind of role-play, but one in which there are no preestablished boundaries, no safe words, only encrustations, penetrations, oozing. “In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red-hot cannonballs and bloody knives.”¹¹ Your attention lingers on the two wooden figurines stationed at opposing corners of the picture, tourist-kitsch memorials to the indigenous cultures that have been dismembered and degraded over centuries. They seem to be suspended in a state of dreaming. Outside of the picture, history continues to unfurl, never quite arriving at the moment of transcendence but still holding open its possibility.

The post Revolutionary Anus: On Alfonso Ossorio’s <i>Empty Chair or The Last Colonial </i>(1969) appeared first on post.

Muslim gravesite-shrines dot the rim of the Indian Ocean, where they lie nestled in the culturally and geographically textured meeting point of water and land. This essay is concerned with the shrines that connect the Malay world, across the vast oceanic expanse, to southern Africa. The Malay world, in this instance, is the archipelagic region constituted by Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The essay highlights shrines to two individuals in particular—Habib Noh in Singapore and Tuan Guru in Cape Town—and explores them as visual markers of sacred geographies and histories.

As is the case with other Muslim shrines, the figures they honor are regarded as awlīyā’, the term in Arabic for those who enjoy a closeness to God and serve as the guardians of believers. Many attribute the power of mediating between mortals and God to a walī (singular of awlīyā’). Hence, the term is frequently translated into English as “saint.”

Habib Noh and Tuan Guru are also both looked upon as keramat. This Malay term is derived from the Arabic karāmah, or the miracles attributed to a walī. Keramat means an otherworldly potency in Malay and refers to both the figure buried in the grave and the site itself. For centuries, Muslims as well as people of other faiths have offered votive prayers at such potent gravesites. Belief in awlīyā’and keramat draws from Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and is popular among Muslims but viewed with caution by religious authorities.

Built Archives

Keramat can be regarded as the built archives of both sacred geographies and histories. Geographically, they serve as built archives because they mark in the landscape a form of popular veneration. The shrines draw the eyes of viewers to low-lying visual markers of long-standing sacred sites that are human in scale rather than monumental as in the commemorative structures of nation-states.

Historically, keramat are the built archives of migration and exile in the Indian Ocean. Habib Noh and Tuan Guru began their journeys from the west and east, respectively.¹ The former arrived in Singapore in the nineteenth century as part of the Hadrami diasporic networks that expanded out of Yemen into the Indian Ocean. Tuan Guru was forcibly shipped from the island of Tidore, in eastern Indonesia today, to Cape Town by the Dutch East India Company in the eighteenth century. When Tuan Guru and other political leaders were exiled to southern Africa, they brought with them the practice of keramat veneration.

Keramat become visually compelling built structures when they are regarded not in isolation but rather in close relation to the landscape. Habib Noh inscribes histories of popular veneration and oceanic journeys amid the tall and hypermodern cityscape of Singapore while Tuan Guru inscribes the same in the natural landscape that rises dramatically around Cape Town.

Tuan Guru

The music begins with gentle and soft notes on the piano and is soon met by drumbeats that gradually make their presence known. Abdullah Ibrahim, the Cape Town–born musician, is on the piano and gradually builds up the pace and intensity of his playing. The drums fall into the background before returning in a rapid and vigorous battle march; they take center stage. The piano steps up its pace on an ascending scale to spar with the drums. Both instruments play to the finish, and the piano brings it all to a close softly, before coming to an abrupt stop.

Abdullah Ibrahim’s “Tuang Guru,” a variation of “Tuan Guru,” is a jazz composition created in the mid-1980s and synonymous with the Islamic leader who was exiled to Cape Town.² The Dutch met with resistance as they expanded eastward into the Malay Archipelago in the competition with other European powers for control over the spice trade. Tuan Guru and the other leaders who opposed the Dutch were removed to Cape Town, the Dutch outpost at the southern tip of Africa, to keep them at a great distance. Abdullah Ibrahim’s composition is not always an easy or melodious listening experience as it sonically re-creates the forced exile of Tuan Guru and the remaking of his life in another world.

Tuan Guru (1712–1807) played a foundational role in the establishment of Islam in his place of exile and came to be commemorated as a keramat after his death. He established the first mosque in Cape Town and transcribed several copies of the Qur’an from memory for the use of Muslims.³ Besides these and other accomplishments, he is remembered for the miracles he performed.

The visual experience of Tuan Guru’s keramat is closely tied to that of the striking landscape of Cape Town, as the shrine is located on a hill above the city center, facing the iconic Table Mountain to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the west (figs. 1, 2). This is the setting of a notable number of paintings and photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, some of which were reproduced on postcards that were widely circulated.

The shrine once had a thick, low white wall with corner pillars along its perimeter, like a miniature fortress, with trees around it (fig. 3). At present, the wall has been replaced by a half-built brick structure that recalls the pyramidal tombs of eastern Indonesia, where Tuan Guru came from. A few palm trees are found nearby. The shrine has retained its human scale throughout the changes it has undergone.

The aesthetic of the gravesite is inseparable from the cemetery in which it is located. Tuan Guru’s shrine comes into view upon stepping through the arched concrete gateway into the burial ground. Countless gravestones dot the hillslope that rises up from the gravesite; these are very old as it is the site of one of the earliest Muslim burial grounds in Cape Town. The cemetery is aptly named “Tana Baru,” or “New Land,” in Malay.

Tuan Guru’s gravesite contrasts with the understated Muslim gravestones on the hillslope beyond, some of whose inscriptions are no longer legible and others that are practically submerged in the earth (fig. 4). The keramat serves not only to commemorate Tuan Guru as a pioneering Islamic figure but also to offer a collective name and visual marker to the forgotten dead, many with origins in the Malay world.

The presence of the keramat in the cemetery overlooking Cape Town is not only a visual and historical marker of the forced transplantation of Tuan Guru and countless others. The gravesite is within reach of the people who reside in the area and thus also a place where they are able to pay their respects to their forebear.

Habib Noh

Like Tuan Guru, Habib Noh was buried on high ground overlooking the sea. The latter is said to have chosen the particular spot in Singapore because it was where he often spent time in contemplation before his death in 1866.⁴ The British East India Company established an outpost on the island in 1819 and, in time, decided that Mount Palmer, the hill that once rose above Habib Noh’s favorite spot, was suitable for the construction of fortification for the defense of their harbor town. The British leveled part of the hill for this purpose, leaving the area around Habib Noh’s gravesite untouched.

According to one hagiographic account, Habib Noh was born in 1788 on a ship from the Hadramaut bound for Penang.⁵ People of Hadrami ancestry, like him, were part of multilingual and transcultural diasporic networks and became well-known religious adepts, miracle workers, traders, and diplomats across the Indian Ocean. Many were descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and thus carried the honorific “Habib” before their names. Their skills and exalted genealogy had been highly valued by a number of coastal polities of the Malay Archipelago for a couple centuries already. Thus, Habib Noh arrived in a world in which he cut a somewhat familiar figure.

Habib Noh is believed to have come to Singapore in the year the British established their trading outpost, and over time, he developed a reputation as an Islamic ascetic who through his extraordinary devotion to God, was given the gift of performing miracles. He is said to have used his powers to assist the sick as well as the seafaring merchants and crews of the bustling harbor.⁶ By the time of his death, Habib Noh had become well-known not only in Singapore but also across the Malay world, and people visited his gravesite from far and wide out of veneration.

The motif of a keramat overlooking the sea was idiomatic of awlīyā’ across the Indian Ocean. Habib Noh’s gravesite thus symbolically connected Singapore to an expansive sacred geography across the watery domain. An early twentieth-century image of the keramat shows a seascape with ships in the distance. The seascape disappeared from sight when land reclamation works were undertaken in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a highway was constructed in the late twentieth century; the maritime connection to the expansive sacred geography was thus severed.

The architectural features of the keramat are a blend of the cultural influences that have been present in Singapore since the nineteenth century. The large dome at the top is representative of Islamic architecture across the Muslim world, and the columns recall classical European buildings (fig. 5). In broad terms, the structure today remains the same as it was more than a century ago. However, the louvered wooden windows and what appear to have been whitewashed walls have been replaced by glass shutters and olive-green tile walls.

The visual experience of the keramat has changed radically in the past 150 years. The infrastructural expansion begun in the nineteenth century has been carried on into the twenty-first century. The cityscape of Singapore—a wall of concrete, steel, and glass—fills up the sky near Habib Noh, and today, the shrine sits on a small plot of land with the highway on one side and a train system under construction on the other (fig. 6).

The spot where Habib Noh chose to be interred has remained in place in a landscape that has probably seen some of the most radical transformations in Singapore’s recent history (fig. 7). It is located on a knoll, which once abutted Mount Palmer on the southern coastline of the island, and a short distance from the buzzing financial center. Mount Palmer has been mostly leveled, and the historical harbor Habib Noh once overlooked has become reclaimed land. The keramat is the only remaining visual marker of a sacred geography and oceanic history whose traces have been erased.

The persistence of the shrine might perhaps be attributed to the respect with which it was held by British and Singaporean authorities. Rather, the stories that circulate by word of mouth and appear in hagiographies attribute its persistence to miraculous powers. For instance, heavy machinery is said to have failed when, in the 1980s, construction was begun on the highway to pass through the sacred site.⁷ Work resumed only after a ritual was performed and the highway was redesigned to skirt the keramat.

The Sacred in Our Times

Tuan Guru and Habib Noh lie on opposite ends of the Indian Ocean, separated by thousands of kilometers, and their biographies and historical contexts contrast sharply. There would appear to be little reason to compare the two. The transplantation of the popular practice of keramat veneration from the Malay world to southern Africa, however, allows us to view the disparate sites within a single frame.

Set against Table Mountain and the hypermodern cityscape of Singapore, respectively, Tuan Guru and Habib Noh are visually striking built archives of popular Islam. The focal points of these contrasting landscapes are the keramat themselves. Each is only a speck in the landscape on the scale of continents and oceans, but each is nonetheless potent. The keramat are repositories of devotion to God and miracles as well as oceanic histories whose visibility in the landscape matters. Whereas the sight of a mosque could inspire piety or awe, seeing a keramat is to connect with memories of a gifted human being, one who offers intercession between mortals and God.

To write about the sacred geographies and histories of keramat is not to claim primacy for them by privileging them as a particular set of built archives. Others have walked the earth and sailed the seas before them in Singapore and Cape Town. Tuan Guru and Habib Noh inscribe in the landscapes of these cities a time in the last millennium when the popular veneration of Muslim shrines was as ubiquitous across the Indian Ocean as Islamic networks were. The keramat are visible representations of this long-standing sacred geography and history within urban landscapes that have been transformed as radically as their political and social lives by colonial and national states.

Tuan Guru and Habib Noh open the doors of our imagination to other ways of understanding human relationships with the world, and to a much-needed mitigation, if not rethinking, of developmentalist ambitions. The sacred thus continues to assert its presence in our times.

The post The Built Archives of Popular Islam in Singapore and Cape Town appeared first on post.

The album War was created by the Russian avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) with the poet Aleksei Kruchenykh (1886–1968) at the onset of World War I.¹ Between 1914 and 1915, Rozanova worked on the album in her hometown of Vladimir, a city located east of Moscow, while Kruchenykh composed the verses in the Caucasus during a deferment from military service.² Published in early 1916 in Petrograd, the album contains a letterpress–printed table of contents, fifteen sheets of linocut Cubo-Futurist illustrations, Suprematist collages, and poems in the transrational language of zaum’ (a neologism meaning “beyond the mind”).³ Inside War, images of harrowing battle scenes, cannonballs being barreled into cities, soldiers being pierced by bayonets, and free-falling airplanes alternate with poems that fire a barrage of unorthodox language, syntax, and semantics unique to Russian Futurist verse from anthropomorphized battlefields. 

Rozanova and Kruchenykh met in 1912 and began collaborating the following year with various artists and poets including, among others, Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, and Velimir Khlebnikov, producing nearly a dozen illustrated books and albums not long before they worked exclusively with each other.⁴ Their collaboration stood the test of war as they worked separately and remotely on the album by exchanging letters with each other as well as with the financier of the album and noted proponent of Futurist books, Andrei Shemshurin. The artist-poet duo, whose creative and romantic partnership continued until Rozanova’s death from diphtheria in 1918, tell the story of war that is simultaneously imagined and real, mythical and historical. More than a denunciation or celebration of war, the album is an exploration of war when it is agonizingly present and yet also distant, for the artist and poet living away from the frontlines.

War combines collage elements with linocuts made using sheets of mass–produced linoleum flooring, adopted by artists as an alternative to traditional methods of printmaking, and printed in red, green, and black ink. The album’s frontispiece shows an unfurled banner with the word voina, Russian for “war,” hovering above a triumphant woman brandishing a sword and trumpet (figs. 1–2). This call to war conjures mythic and modern visuals and semi-scrutable verses meditating upon the cataclysmic forces of modern war technology that is to come in the album. With its small distribution of one hundred copies (two of which are in MoMA’s collection), the album likely reached a close-knit audience of artists, poets, and collectors, which lends itself to an intimate affect. At the same time, as a work of art that combines the separate arts of printmaking, collage, and poetry into a unified whole, it embodies the Wagnerian notion of Gesamtkunstwerk, or a total work of art. The album’s interplay between media, it can be said, presages the multimedia print publications incorporating photomontage and photomechanical reproductions that flourished in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution in the Soviet Union and abroad. Out of this synthesis of the arts, the album’s iconography and style further contribute to another totality known as “total war.” A concept that gained popularity during World War I, “total war” was understood as mobilizing all aspects of society to partake in the war effort. In effect, the war unsettled the emotional distance between home and frontline, combatant and civilian, to produce what literary scholar Mary Favret describes as “wartime affect.”⁵ Such affect can be observed in the letters exchanged by the artists and their relatives and colleagues. In one letter addressed to Kruchenykh, Rozanova anguishes over the possibility that his position on standby could change into ready reserve, catapulting him to the frontlines.⁶ Such documents reveal that their wartime experiences fell several removes from the frontlines, rendering the couple physically far but psychologically close to the conflict.⁷

Following the call to war, civilian spaces are rendered fair game in Destruction of the City (fig. 3) as cannonballs level buildings in an unidentified city. Similarly, the collage Airplanes over the City (fig. 4) depicts fatal clashes, in linocuts, of propellers, airplanes, and a body with shrapnel-like shapes cut from paper and glued to the sheet. In these figurative and abstract forms, Rozanova may be seen as negotiating the means of representation when one bears witness to the traumas of war. During the production of the album, Rozanova experimented with a nonobjective idiom of painting and contributed work to the landmark 0.10 (Zero-Ten): The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting in Petrograd in December 1915.⁸ The search for a visual form to communicate the horrors of war is matched in an alliterative onslaught of abstracted verses in Kruchenykh’s “Jump from an Airplane:”

The poem combines fragments stemming from the Russian words gryzt’ (to gnaw or devour) and batalon (battalion) in an attempt to construct a new language to describe the nature of war.⁹ The irregular spacing of one line advancing and another one retreating further evokes the movement of a battalion on the frontlines. 

In another poem that diverges from the indeterminate zaum’ verses, Kruchenykh delivers a cacophony emerging from the battlefield using conventional Russian:

Through the alliteration of Russian consonants, the poet anthropomorphizes iron, which played a major role in the production of weapons during the war, as offering a plea for life. The scabrous green lettering in the linocut further enhances the sonic effects of the verses and evokes script styles found in Russian woodcuts known as lubki or, the singular, lubok (fig. 5). While the illustrations and poems alternate in a rhythmic pace—with several verses printed in the table of contents—two sheets include text that Kruchenykh extracted from a newspaper bulletin that Rozanova then rendered in the illustrations (fig. 6). One of these sheets contains an image of a German soldier stabbing an opponent with a bayonet while the text reads: “With horror he recalls personally witnessing those crucified upside down by Germans.” In addition to references to the unfolding war, Rozanova intersperses classical motifs throughout the album, such as the horse and rider, which symbolize an aesthetic and spiritual confrontation, appearing in the illustrations of fallen equestrians in Battle, a transcendent face-off between fighters on rearing horses in Duel, and bayonet-wielding equestrians charging at helpless figures in Combat in the City (figs. 7–9).

Such spectacular, if not sublime, visuals of battle rooted in both a mythical and historical moment, along with the anthropomorphized battlefields in Kruchenykh’s verses erupt across the album’s final illustration, titled Battle in Three Spheres (Land, Sea, and Air) (fig. 10). The red outlines of man, machine, and nature collide into one totality that creates, perhaps, the clearest visualization of “total war.” Here, the boundaries of figures with weapons, the propellers and wings of aircrafts, a stylized sun and smoke clouds are brought into a fractured whole. The echoes of the trumpet pressed against the lips of the powerful female warrior from the beginning of the album comes full circle via its sounds reverberating across land, sea, and sky with a resounding quandary. Do we heed the call of the trumpet to pause or do we take irreparable action with the sword? The album emerges as an unconventional war story of those living through but away from war, told with varying degrees of proximity to the violence of the frontlines.

The post Away from the Frontlines: Olga Rozanova and Aleksei Kruchenykh’s 1916 Album <em>War</em> appeared first on post.

The title of Liubov’ Popova’s painting Objects from a Dyer’s Shop (Fig. 1) prompts the viewer to decipher the work’s imagery as a collection of fabrics, threads, and other objects, such as gloves and newspapers, piled on a table. The painting pays homage to both French Cubism and Italian Futurism and exemplifies a high point of Russian Cubo-Futurists’ absorption of both.¹ In her autobiography, Popova distilled her artistic concerns: “The Cubist period (the problem of form) was followed by the Futurist period (the problem of movement and color).”² The painting’s still life—supplemented by isolated floating letters (П Е Р), a newspaper recognizable by its title and font (Rannee Utro [Early Morning]), (Fig. 2) and an illusionistic tassel—constitutes an overt tribute to Cubism. Yet what strikes the viewer most is not the work’s ostensible subject matter but rather its dense accumulation of shapes, colors, and textures that appear to be swirling in a shallow space. Sharp diagonal lines pierce the mass of colors and forms, structuring the work’s alternating volumetric and flat surfaces while contrasting with the painting’s curvilinear lines, such as the wide colored ribbons, enhanced by a strong chiaroscuro. The visual sense of overcrowding is further heightened by the bright and unnatural colors: blue, pink, orange, and, especially, yellow; the title’s explicit reference to a dyer’s shop—krasil’nia, also inscribed on the back of the stretcher—foregrounds Popova’s deliberate experimentation with color. Equally important is the play of disparate textures: one can guess the curly gray shapes might refer to woolen threads, but the brown fibers of the table subvert any resemblance to perceptible wood and highlight its material properties instead, in sync with the preoccupations of Popova’s fellow artist and studio neighbor, Vladimir Tatlin.³ Rather than dissecting the composition into formal elements, Popova actively constructed it. Densely populating a shallow space with swirling objects of varied textures, she gave dynamism to form, masterfully combining the findings of both Cubism and Futurism and beginning to develop her own pictorial idiom.

Popova was an avid learner, and her privileged background (she was born into a rich and educated merchant family highly interested in the arts) gave her an early and diversified exposure to the arts. By 1912, when she was 23, Popova had studied Old Master paintings and Italian Renaissance works at both the Hermitage Museum and at sites in Italy during a family trip there in 1910. Moreover, she had carefully examined medieval Russian paintings in situ while visiting a number of old Russian cities and had methodically studied the Post-Impressionists she thought most important: Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and, especially, Paul Cézanne. Between December 1912 and May 1913, she immersed herself in the cosmopolitan Parisian avant-garde, studying with Henri Le Fauconnier and Jean Metzinger at L’Académie de La Palette and befriending numerous French, Russian, and Italian artists and critics. Back in Moscow, Popova fueled artistic exchange, working in shared studios alongside Tatlin, Nadezhda Udal’tsova, Aleksandr Vesnin, and other ambitious vanguard artists. (Fig. 3) In March 1914 she returned to Paris and travelled on to Italy, together with her sculptor friends Vera Mukhina and Iza Burmeister. There they studied the Italian Renaissance and absorbed the advances of the Italian Futurists, visiting 15 cities before the outbreak of World War I.⁴

Popova first exhibited Objects from a Dyer’s Shop at the First Futurist Exhibition of Paintings Tramvay V in Petrograd in March 1915. The painting was listed in the exhibition catalogue as Object from a Dyer’s Shop and was preceded by another Popova work entitled simply Object (Predmet). The painting’s next known showing was at Popova’s posthumous exhibition of 1924, now titled plurally Objects from a Dyer’s Shop (Predmety iz Krasil’ni) and followed by a sketch for it (now lost) in the catalogue. The painting is visible in the installation photo alongside a number of formally similar works. (Fig. 4) (Two visually comparable examples among her preserved works are Italian Still Life (Fig. 5) and Objects (Fig. 6).) Tramvay V was an important turning point in the history of the Russian avant-garde: there Tatlin showed his first abstract reliefs, while Malevich exhibited paintings he called “alogical” and accompanied them with a handwritten sign on the wall that read “the content of the works is unknown to the author.” Tatlin and Malevich were then on the brink of abstraction, which they would present on a large scale at the famous Last Exhibition of Futurist Paintings 0.10 in December 1915.⁵

While Objects in a Dyer’s Shop shows Popova as a diligent student of European avant-gardes, it also reveals the rigor of her pictorial practice that soon led her to create her own distinct abstract visual language. As she described it, “The principle of abstracting parts of an object led, by logical necessity, to the abstraction of the object itself—this is the path to nonobjectivity. The problem of representation is replaced by the problem of construction of form and lines (post-Cubism) and of color (Suprematism).”⁶ Popova’s precise articulation of the inner logic of her artistic evolution revealed the complementarity of the methods developed by Malevich and Tatlin, which were polarized by their rivalry into Suprematism and “Tatlinism.” Popova’s next step was to take her keen sense of faktura⁷ and color into three dimensions. In 1915, she made an abstract Volumetric-spatial Relief (Ob’emno-prostranstvennyi Rel’ef) (Figs. 7-8), and at the 0.10 exhibition she showed works subtitled “plastic painting” (plasticheskaia zhivopis’). These works integrated a sensibility to faktura and space with a keen sense of color and pictorial planarity.

Through a gradual process of abstracting from objects and focusing on the construction of an integrated pictorial form, Popova developed a unique and compelling abstract idiom, which reached its peak in her series Painterly Architectonics (Zhivopisnaia Arkhitektonika) (1916–19) (Fig. 9) and Spatial-Force Constructions (Prostranstvenno-Silovyie Postroeniia) (1920–21). (Fig. 10) Just as she wove together the principles of Cubism and Futurism from 1912 to 1915, later that decade she successfully synthesized the essential attributes of Suprematism and Tatlinism—their focus on color and plane, materiality and faktura—thus exposing the formal commonalities between these important trends. Always valuing artistic exchange, Popova worked closely with Tatlin from 1913 to 1914, then with Malevich and his group of Suprematists during 1916 and 1917, and then joined the emerging group of Constructivists at GINKhUK (the State Institute of Artistic Culture) from 1920 to 1921. She went on to pioneer Constructivist theater design with Vsevolod Meyerhold and, finally, moved into production before her sudden death from scarlet fever in 1924. Her artistic path was in tune with the most vanguard ideas of her contemporaries, while also being confidently independent.

The post Liubov’ Popova’s <em>Objects from a Dyer’s Shop</em>, 1914 appeared first on post.

In the installation shots of past MoMA exhibitions dedicated to abstract art and the Russian avant-garde, Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition: White on White(1918) and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s Non-Objective Painting no. 80 (Black on Black)(1918), both in the Museum’s collection, are inseparable. The importance of MoMA’s exclusive opportunity to display these two paintings side by side, thus reconstructing “an original installation” from the Tenth State Exhibition: Nonobjective Creation and Suprematism (1919), is accentuated by Aleksandra Shatskikh in her book Black Square: Malevich and the Origin of Suprematism (2012).¹ Yet in the current hanging at MoMA, White on White and Black on Black (which are part of Malevich’s larger White on White series and Rodchenko’s Black on Black series, respectively) are split by Lyubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonic (1917), prompting a reexamination, on the centennial of the Tenth State Exhibition, of the relationship between white and black paintings, including their historical and cultural contexts.

Varvara Stepanova, whose diary is a unique source for this endeavor, assessed the Tenth State Exhibition as “a contest between Anti [Rodchenko’s pseudonym expressing his nonconforming stance] and Malevich. The rest is nonsense.”² In this categorical summation, she dismisses the other participants’ works, including her own, for the sake of the approbation of a black-and-white dialectic. Denying Rodchenko’s black paintings their own meaning, she adds, “Anti wanted to hang . . . his black things next to Malevich . . . so that these blacks do not go to waste.”³

Malevich first used the term “nonobjective” in his brochure “From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism” (1916), writing in advance of—but also as though about—his later white paintings: “I transformed myself in the zero of form and emerged from nothing to . . . nonobjective creation.” This endorsement of a ground-zero regime of painting amply corresponds to a post-revolutionary atmosphere marked by erasure of the toppled political system, including its cultural institutions. It also explains why the phrase “nonobjective creation” was adopted by avant-garde artists. Under this banner, which synthesized both a worldview and the role of experimentation in nonrepresentational art, they ascertained their identity in the newly established state. 

This broader and more politically potent meaning of post-revolutionary nonobjectivism, which in turn implies that painting was near its exhaustion, was endorsed by Stepanova after the opening of the Tenth State Exhibition. “Nonobjective creation,” Stepanova wrote, minimizing (like Malevich) the use of the word “art,” “is not only a movement or a tendency in painting, but also a new ideology born to destroy philistinism of spirit, and maybe it is not for the social system, but for the anarchic one and an artist’s nonobjective thinking is not limited to his art, it enters his entire life, and under its flag all his needs and tastes proceed.”⁴ Stepanova’s reading of nonobjectivism as a synthesis of formalism and politics promises a means of identifying an alternative subject for post-revolutionary nonobjective practice in general, and for the white and black paintings in particular. 

Malevich and Rodchenko produced their respective series between mid-1918 and the beginning of 1919, a period of violent social and political ruptures in modern Russian history. The October Revolution, World War I, in which Malevich served, and the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, made it impossible for the two artists to remain nonpartisan. Avant-garde literature has routinely positioned the two as supporters of the Bolshevik regime.⁵ However, as Stepanova suggested, the theoretical basis of post-revolutionary nonobjectivism may in fact be rooted in anarchist aspirations, which is indeed confirmed in Rodchenko’s first contribution to the newspaper Anarchy: “We are coming to you, beloved comrades, anarchists, instinctively recognizing in you our hitherto unknown friends . . . The present belongs to artists who are anarchists of art.”⁶ The section “Creation,” established in Anarchy for artists’ writings, avoided old terminology associated with fine art, and in this, went against the newly established Department of Visual Art in Narkompros (under the People’s Commissariat for Education) established on January 29, 1918. The title “Creation” specified that the true objective of contributors Aleksei Gan, Malevich, Aleksei Morgunov, Rodchenko, and Nadezhda Udal’tsova was to defend artists’ rights to freedom of expression, which they felt were equally threatened by the prerevolutionary institutions and the newly established commissariats. Their goal was to achieve unmediated creations that would replace any form of “prostituted”⁷ art. Above all, they thought, artists should pursue their own revolutions against artistic conventions and restrictive institutions. The Soviet government’s later repressive cultural policies proved that this early concern with freedom of expression was prolifically critical. 

Manifesto-style texts such as Rodchenko’s “To Artists-Proletarians” and “Be Creators!,” and Malevich’s “Declaration of Artist’s Rights,”⁸ all three of which were written for Anarchy, positioned artists as an oppressed and enslaved class akin to that of the proletariat. Rodchenko’s terminology, including “creator-rebel” and “revolution-creation,” radicalized the creative process and shifted it from an isolationist practice to a socially active one. Malevich’s text is more concerned with practical aspects such as the protection of artists’ work spaces and their right to maintain control over profits from sold art. Malevich preferred public collections to private ownership. 

Equally oppressive for both Malevich and Rodchenko was the view held by some critics at home and abroad that Russian modernists “imitate[ed] the West!”⁹ Malevich’s term “Suprematism,” coined to describe flat geometric painting, encodes an assertion of originality and preeminence over Western movements.¹⁰ Yet some nonobjectivists, including Rodchenko and Stepanova, resisted Malevich’s claim for “supremacy” in nonobjective circles by reason of suspecting him of mysticism,¹¹ and they were unwilling to accept his Black Square (1915) as their trademark. However, Rodchenko’s desire to free himself from the cultural bondage of the West outweighed this kind of issue with Malevich, as he realized that cooperating with him would guarantee the formation of “an entirely original identity in Russia’s art” and position them as “the first inventors of the new, as yet unseen in the West.”¹² Pledging to be Russia’s “own art,” and thus a national style, it asserted a competition with the West and, significantly, declared a position of difference from a Bolshevik internationalism that is embodied in, for instance, Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1920).

Initially viewing the anarchist groups as allies in the fight against the old regime, by the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks were ready to dissolve them and their critical forum Anarchy.¹³ Shatskikh dates “the emergence of white Suprematism” from this time.¹⁴ This means that Suprematism was conceived when Malevich could no longer write for Anarchy, and when the possibility of a “working anarchism” had dissolved. A retreat to “pure anarchism,” that is, “abstract, utopian, and realized only on paper,”¹⁵ was the only remaining option. White paintings were as pure and nonconventional within the conventions of modernist painting as Malevich could come up with. He succeeded in producing a work “as yet unseen in the West.”¹⁶ He also constructed a visual metaphor of an unmediated, autonomous creativity, which he had defended in Anarchy. But the subject of white paintings is additionally discernable from Malevich’s text “Declaration I,” written on June 15, 1918, around the time Malevich executed them. In this text, he describes the current state of Suprematism as a blend of formal and political concepts—a “Suprematist federation of colors of colorlessness,” and a “new symmetry of social paths;”¹⁷ and he sees “socialism illuminating its freedom to the world,” and “Art falling in the face of Creativity.”¹⁸ The result is a fervent socio-formalist concoction that, mirrored in white Suprematism, once again positions art and creativity as opposing concepts: the former systemic and institutional, the latter unmediated and under artists’ control. 

This new model of post-revolutionary Suprematism—and the creation of White on White—was Malevich’s act of spite toward Black Square, a trademark of pre-revolutionary Suprematism that had begun to alienate him from the Moscow nonobjectivists. In White on White, Malevich bleached Black Square, turning it into a pale shadow hardly distinguishable from its white background. The remaining black outlines around the square function as a referent to the subject of contention. Skewed, and edged closer to the picture frame, White on White upsets the steely stability of Black Square, moving toward new borders that are beyond painting. 

By the end of 1918, Rodchenko had definitely seen Malevich’s white paintings. He wrote, “Malevich paints without form and color. The ultimate abstracted painting. This is forcing everyone to think long and hard. It’s difficult to surpass Malevich.”¹⁹ Rodchenko’s statement confirms his acceptance of Malevich as a guru of “the new,” and an artist who is hard to outdo—and with whom he himself now wanted to collaborate. “Malevich and I decided to write and publish as much literature as possible,”²⁰ he wrote regarding the content of the catalogue for the Tenth State Exhibition. Rodchenko’s genius lay in realizing that all he had to do was invert Malevich’s new creation: to come up with a concept that, together with Malevich’s series, would construct the dialectical condition rife with overcoming negation. With this in mind, Rodchenko flung himself into hyper production, and by New Year’s Day, 1919, he had done “[a]bout twenty-nine to thirty new pieces.”²¹

Rodchenko painted Black on Black during this marathon, yet he commenced his contest with Malevich with a retort not to White on White, but rather to Black Square. This made White on White a dialogical painting, synthesizing nonobjectivists’ voices of discontent toward this passionately debated canvas as anti-painting, as “nothing,”²² “philosophy of a square,” “a graphic scheme.”²³ Rodchenko ignored Malevich’s defensive warning that it would be impossible to avoid the square’s effect, and “destroys”²⁴ it by swirling its shape, rounding it off, and replacing the Suprematist trademark with a circle. Rodchenko turns Malevich’s “color realism” —“a smooth coloring in one paint”²⁵—into “painterly confusion,”²⁶ destroying the divided positions that the black and white colors have in Black Square. His palette in Black on Black reverberates his excitement about being able to buy “a few tubes of marvelous oil paints, including “black, ocher . . . whites,”²⁷ luckily obtained amid the “constant looking for food”²⁸ that was necessary during the Civil War. The fortunate abundance of painting materials (Rodchenko also obtained fifteen stretchers) resulted in an “exhaustion from painting” that Rodchenko described as “the most pleasurable thing.”²⁹ Black on Black exudes, to paraphrase Roland Barthes, “the pleasure of the painting.”

Yet some sections of this work contradict this kind of painterly sensation; these are covered with an unmodulated, dull black color, at times applied thickly, and like Black Square, full of craquelures. It is this “most unthankful”³⁰ form of the color black at which, to rephrase Rodchenko, color and brushwork die, that he employs in order to create the ultimate color reverses to Malevich’s White on White paintings. These are monochromatic compositions nos. 81, 82, and 84, for which the collective title Abstraction of Color and Discoloration, under which Rodchenko listed his black-on-black series in the Tenth State Exhibition’s catalogue, is particularly apt. Rodchenko describes them as “Black on Black. Elaboration of one color by means of different surface conditions. Destruction of color for the same material treatment of monotonality.”³¹ These canvases lack painterliness and gesticulation, and they offer no visual pleasure. They are not photogenic. The color black is a priori more aggressive than white, and perhaps this is why Rodchenko compensates this cold color with warm forms of “ovals, circles, ellipses”³² (similar shapes, can be found in Malevich’s white paintings now in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). 

Black-on-black’s antagonistic aura served “Anti” well in his anti-Western agenda and also in his goal to create an artwork that no one would deem an imitation of Western art. Stepanova affirms Rodchenko’s success, saying that he “gave in the ‘blacks’ what the West has dreamt about, a true easel painting brought to the last point . . . one can now speak about new painterly realism.”³³ “The peculiarly Russian conceptions of faktura [texture],”³⁴ which preoccupied many leading avant-gardists in Russia, played a role in Rodchenko’s achievement. In fact, Malevich’s indifference to the effects of faktura was another reason why nonobjectivists criticized his work. This continued with the White on White series that, to them, lacked textural interest. Instead of painting, they said, Malevich covered works in paint. In contrast, in the black paintings, Rodchenko charted gradations within a single color by rendering it “shining, matt, faded, rough, smooth.”³⁵ This “triumphed”³⁶ faktura, and created a more complex relationship with the viewer. Stepanova observed that during the Tenth State Exhibition, “More serious [viewers] were less resentful of the black [paintings], which they perceived as something particularly abstract or maybe they simply did not see them.”³⁷ Presumably, viewers were not always able to focus on the black paintings due to the lack of familiar pictorial characteristics, in the absence of which, the paintings merged into actual space, revealing the objectness (predmetnost) of nonobjective forms and alluding to the end of painting. 

Unlike Malevich’s White on White series that I earlier referred to as an allegory of autonomous practice, the Black on Black paintings were not. This is because they were conceived within the logic of supplementarity in relation to White on White paintings. However, while making many black canvases, Rodchenko also conceived of his own example of pure anarchic creation. These are white sculptural objects, described as Assembled and Disassembled, that originated Rodchenko’s three series of “spatial constructions” and launched the laboratory period of Constructivism. It is conceivable that in his Assembled and Disassembled objects, Rodchenko was reacting to Malevich’s non-geometric and even non-Suprematist forms, which are rendered in a different shade of white (I am again referring to the paintings from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam), this time recognizing the sculptural potential he fulfilled before Malevich made his “architectons” (1920). Stepanova describes Rodchenko’s state of joissance from process rather than product: “Anti is constructing sculpture, he loves it . . . it takes nothing for him to break everything and make the most amazing thing again. . . . he is so confident in the power of his creativity.”³⁸ For Rodchenko, the “game”³⁹ (his expression) of the materialization and dematerialization of an aesthetic object raised the degree of creative anarchism that he and Malevich propagated in their writing for Anarchy. Their shared platform of anarchist utopia allowed them to reconcile their differences with regards to nonobjective practice, establishing a dialectical and agonistic relationship. Malevich seemed to agree that the two-color match ended in a draw. “We should appear together,”⁴⁰ he proposed to Rodchenko after the exhibition’s opening.

Rodchenko’s comrade Osip Brik, a formalist critic and editor of the newspaper Art of the Commune, visited the Tenth State Exhibition and, according to Stepanova, the “‘Blacks’ brought [him] into amazement.”⁴¹ Perhaps Brik’s keen, leftist eye (brilliantly conceptualized by Rodchenko in an unpublished cover of LEF in 1924), observed a looming transition from faktura to factography in Rodchenko’s black paintings.⁴² Indeed, his later street photography, such as the series of images of the Building on Miasnitskaia Street (1925), the Brianskii Railway Station (1927), and Pine Trees (1927), filled Rodchenko with an unbounded sense of independence and creative freedom, as he wandered the streets of Moscow, climbed rooftops, and lay on the ground in resistance to photography’s conventional belly-button perspective. On becoming a commissioner of SVOMAS (Free state art studios), where Malevich already had a studio, Brik invited Rodchenko to join. For both artists, the school’s agenda of “maximum freedom for artists,”⁴³ the availability of work space, and the independent teaching curriculum, complemented their model of liberation from institutional constraints, middlemen, and anxiety over the production and distribution of art objects. “Nonobjective painting has left the museums, it is—the street, the square, the city and the entire world,”⁴⁴ asserted Rodchenko in 1920. With this statement, he reaffirms Malevich’s craving for an objectless avant-gardism, which the latter expressed two weeks after the Revolution, when he said: “I decided to declare myself the chairman of space. It makes me at ease, withdraws me, and I breath freely.”⁴⁵ Such a fantasy of nonobjective creation without borders was also invested into the white and black series, making them a symbol of the gap between what Malevich and Rodchenko had imagined and what the Bolshevik apparatus was preparing for them.

The post The Subject of Nonobjective Art appeared first on post.

The proliferation of diverse photographic practices across the world soon after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 is by now well-known. For example, Deborah Poole’s pioneering work on the early history of photography has shown that the movement of photography between Europe, North America, and Latin America constituted the making of a transcultural visual economy, one that was very much about deploying the “truthful” optics of the camera to justify discrimination and imperialism.¹ Photographed people became visual data in the making of modern scopic regimes of difference. For example, photography made race a visible “fact,” and slaving societies, such as the United States, used photographic representation to legitimize slavery and later segregation. But photography also engendered unforeseen horizons of visibility and agency. Portrait photography as an expressive force of modernity was embraced by many. By the 1850s, commercial photography studios could be found all across the globe, including in Buenos Aires, New York, Shanghai, Cairo, Bombay, and Accra. It is striking that in all of these cities, many separated by two oceans people posed for similar portraits, often holding identical standing poses in front of standardized backdrops. Yet rather than being peripheral simulations of the European experience, these pictures are representative of a complex web of connected, yet different image worlds.

However, what is much less known is that eastern Africa, especially the Swahili Coast, was also a fulcrum of the consumption and production of photography. Here photographs did not connect to local practices of picture-making, as in Asia, West Africa, and the Middle East. In fact, Swahili Coast culture was generally aniconic before the nineteenth century (although sculptors did create low-relief semiabstract zoomorphic carvings in architectural settings). This suggests that not all histories of photography are about pictorial illusionism and the mimetic capacities of photography. Rather, photography’s role as a thing in the world, as matter and materiality, played a significant role.²

The Swahili Coast of eastern Africa is one of the most fluid nodes of the Global South, where people, ideas, and materials from all over the world converge and intermingle. A Muslim cultural complex, its ports have acted as intersections of vastly different social and economic systems for more than a millennium. The region has long connected the African heartland to places across the Indian Ocean, especially to the coastal regions of South Asia and the Middle East. As a result, local people are masters of the in-between, easily negotiating between different worldviews and cultural traditions. The second half of the nineteenth century marks a watershed moment in a long history of transcontinental connectivity. The North Atlantic world, including would-be colonizers and capitalists, increasingly focused on controlling the trade and resources of Africa and the Indian Ocean world. When Zanzibar became the seat of the British-backed Busaidi Sultanate of Oman in 1837, the entire region became the center of competing imperial projects. While its main port towns, such as Zanzibar and Mombasa, have always been vanguard places, during this time, new technologies and infrastructures of movement, communication, and mass media rapidly accelerated transcontinental exchange, contracting space and time with unprecedented intensity.

By the 1870s, photography, one of industrial modernity’s most revolutionary mediums, was essential to local aesthetic practice. The first photographs likely arrived in markets of the region’s port towns from Bombay and other South Asian and Middle Eastern trading centers, although Zanzibaris had already been photographed in 1846, when a visiting French naval officer created a series of anthropological daguerreotype plates. Initially, locals did not have access to original photographs but rather to mass-produced picture postcards, or cartes de visite, and chromolithographs. Photographs were printed onto card stocks and paper using various photomechanical processes. By the 1900s, such small-format cards were circulating in the millions across the Indian Ocean and along the caravan routes of eastern Africa. As elsewhere in the world, photography was about both oppression and liberation in myriad ways.

While some locals had the ability to commission their own portrait photographs, many more could buy photographs of strangers, along with other cheap commodities, which were flooding the local markets at this time. Small, mobile, and easily amassed and collected, these pictures connected to older traditions of displaying transoceanic commodities in one’s home. For local consumers, photographs were tantalizingly exotic, endowed with a foreign materiality that made them perfect artifacts for display and pleasure.

By the 1870s, commercial photography studios also proliferated, serving a diverse clientele. At first, local photographers primarily catered to European immigrants, colonial officials, and Omani Arabs, but by the turn of the twentieth century, mainland Africans, Swahilis, and South Asians all frequented them to have portraits made or to buy images of others. Goans, who were Christians and Portuguese subjects, opened the first commercial photography houses in Zanzibar and Mombasa. Although it is often assumed that they came directly from present-day India to the Swahili Coast, many had been living in other ports of the western Indian Ocean. For example, A. C. Gomes first opened a studio in Aden (in present-day Yemen) in 1869, where he also served as a photographer to the British government. He and his family migrated to Zanzibar sometime in the 1870s, when British interests in the Indian Ocean region shifted from the coastal towns of the Arabian Peninsula to the Swahili Coast. In fact, Goan photographers also sold affordable imports, including textiles, household wares, and fashionable items of adornment, such as jewelry and perfumes. They were key agents and purveyors of the commodity culture of the Indian Ocean.

During their early history, studio photographs functioned as portraits and also as objects of good taste. In fact, the ruling elite and wealthy merchants often displayed framed studio portraits of their family members in carefully curated domestic spaces. The photograph in figure 1, for example, shows an interior view of a multiuse room in a large mansion in Stone Town. The room is filled with European glass chandeliers, Middle Eastern carpets, Goan furniture, export-ware porcelain, and German factory-made chairs. Studio portraits are also central to the room’s decorative program. Three large, mounted, and framed portraits of men in Omani dress are set on the ornate Indo-Portuguese cabinet in the right foreground of the image, and another occupies the small nightstand next to the bed. Versions of this photograph exist in many archives across the world, and it was published in a British book in the 1890s, where the byline noted, “The conflict between Oriental and Western civilization is clearly discernable in the decorations of the chamber.”³ Yet this layering of diverse cultural strands in Zanzibari homes did not represent a conflict to locals. The young man sitting in the center of the room, his name no longer known, exudes confidence and authority. His body language is relaxed as he leans against the curve of the chair’s back, extending his legs slightly before him. The carefully arranged collection of prized furnishings and objects d’art reflects his globally inflected aesthetic sensibility. Here photographs, although certainly portraits of family members, also worked in tandem with the collected items that filled this room, to create a layered space of exotica.

For more than one hundred years, until around the 1990s, locals avidly posed for (fig. 2), collected, and created elaborately staged studio portraits of themselves and others for an array of reasons. The great majority of studio photographs from Africa still in circulation today, especially those in European and North American private and public collections, are the historical picture postcards that fall in the “native studies” category (figs. 3-10).⁴ The postcards themselves are very much part of the leisure and collecting culture of Europeans and North American audiences; although, most feature photographs taken by the most successful commercial photographers of the Swahili Coast, including A. C. Gomes, Pereira de Lord, and J. P. Fernandes. They simply sent their photographs to Europe, where they were reprinted as picture postcards, which were then shipped back to eastern Africa to be sold to visitors, who in turn sent them back to Europe and other places overseas. As postcards, local photographs circulated across oceans with unprecedented ease. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, a regular schedule of steamships connected the main ports of the Indian Ocean with those of Europe, including Hamburg, London, and Marseilles. Interestingly, before the 1890s, the majority of Swahili Coast commercial studios worked with German postcard printing houses, especially those located in Hamburg.⁵

Studio prints and postcards depicting local people wearing elaborate costumes and holding contrived poses were especially popular during the colonial period, when the coast was part of the British protectorate (1890–1963). Many show local young women, because they evoke a much-loved phantasm of exotic feminine sensuality. The women’s bodies and clothes are sometimes hand colored in luscious hues (figs. 4, 5, 7-9), endowing them with a compelling realism. Clearly, many compositions met the desires of North Atlantic audiences, although scholars and oral histories suggest that postcards also featured photographs that locals had commissioned of themselves; it seems that commercial studios had portraits reprinted as postcards, likely without the permission or knowledge of the sitters. We cannot be sure which photographs were once personal mementos because locals also sometimes posed and dressed in ways that played with North Atlantic photographic tropes. In fact, through photography, diverse clients mixed Swahili aesthetics of self-display, local rules of public propriety, colonial categories of race and identity, and modern notions of the individual.

Although today we have access to thousands of picture postcards in both private and public archives, the lives of those photographed remain largely opaque. We also can only guess about the kinds of negotiations that took place between photographer and photographed.⁶ The majority of postcards, especially the nameless “native type” postcards, show poor people and young women, who were likely hired or forced to perform in front of the camera. Especially the most Orientalizing and seductive compositions (fig. 6) are part of a long history of transforming people into pretty pictures and delectable objects. Today we like to imagine that the sitters in these photographs had some agency in their self-presentation. We see something confident and powerful in these women (especially figs. 4 and 5), believing that they are somehow subverting the oppressive force of the colonial and male gaze defining them. Because of the mimetic realism of photography, we interpret gazes, postures, and gestures as intimating a trace of a sitter’s inner and intimate life. In fact, in many cases, the people who could choose to remain invisible had a great deal more autonomy than those pictured in such postcards. This does not mean the pictured women do not require our serious consideration. They lived complex lives and struggled for self-determination in ways that these photographs can never reveal. Yet, paradoxically, they are also often all that remains of their historical selves, and as such, archival traces of their lived experience. Reading such postcards against the grain of objectification is an important project.

Tourists who bought and sent picture postcards likely did not consider the sitters’ subjectivities or life worlds, but rather saw them as souvenirs, or nameless bodies. As postcards, they are comfortably distant and purely ornamental. The desire for pleasing ornament was why many postcards featured theatrical arrangements of women’s bodies, which were transformed into striking arrangements (figs. 9 and 10). The captions never provide the names of the subjects, but instead a more generic description, such as “Swahili Beauties” (fig. 10), for example. Some reference to “beauty” is printed on many postcards (fig. 8). The subject’s individuality is subsumed by their perceived visual attractiveness; each person is transformed into a pleasurable component of a composition. These postcards are in many ways exemplary of the violence of photography, pandering to the voyeuristic desire of viewers for possession of and power over others.

Many of these women, and also young men, were vulnerable to other forms of violence, including economic, bodily, and sexual violence. These photographs perhaps do not overtly suggest extreme subjugation, but without a doubt, many of the sitters were touched by the violence of slavery. It was a local tradition for retinues of bonded or enslaved women, wearing elaborate costumes, to perform pleasing dances in public. Their dress and jewelry spoke of the wealth and good taste of their enslavers. They often wore matching turbans, body skimming caftans, and tight pants, as seen in figure 10. There existed even a specific category of enslaved women, wapambe, which means “the ornamented ones,” whose primary role was to beautify parades and festivals. Also, as historical recent research has shown, enslavement and its many legacies shaped daily life in myriad ways for decades after the Abolition Decree of 1897.⁷ Abolition was especially ambiguous for women. For instance, the decree officially offered freedom to all, except women categorized as concubines. In fact, many powerful locals declared all enslaved women in their house to be concubines to forestall their manumission.

These postcards therefore hint at the continuation of extreme injustices and hardships, even as the sitters’ smiles and delightful poses suggest play and fun. They very much reveal something about local histories and legacies of violence and are not just about the predations of colonialist photography. They certainly continue to reverberate in Zanzibar today because painful questions about who enslaved whom still shape local interpretations of the nineteenth century.⁸

Clearly these postcards are complicated objects. They are not simply about the North Atlantic taste for exotic bodies, although that is their most obvious role. They are also composites—“local,” “Western,” and “colonial” —all at once. The camera turned living people into mediated effigies, objects that adopted the shape of human beings, that in turn could be shipped across oceans in mobile postcard form. But they also hold onto real lives and specific histories, histories that suggest individual experiences of dehumanization—not just photographic violence.

The post Subjects and Subjugation: Swahili Coast Studio Photography in Global Circulation appeared first on post.

Art and Arab Life, a Questionnaire

“Where do our arts stand with regard to the consciousness that is blossoming in the Arab nation?” This question was posed in 1956 in a questionnaire on “Art and Arab Life” that was circulated to artists in Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria in a special issue devoted to the arts of the Arab world of the Beirut-based, pan-Arab journal al-Adab, which was established in 1953 as an outlet for politically engaged thought and cultural analysis. The resulting answers reflect a diversity of viewpoints on the status of the arts vis-à-vis burgeoning independent nations, cultural heritage, and historical tradition, as well as on the legacies of colonial artistic influence.

The questionnaire, here represented in full, was excerpted for the 2018 publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents. To access a PDF of the original roundtable in Arabic and other sources translated for the book, please visit the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey (AMCA) website.

Art and Us

In presenting this special edition, we are led to ask ourselves about the state of art in the Arab world in this period in which a true awareness is violently impelling us to renew our strength and exploit our potential. There is no doubt that the answer to this question will point to the state of the artistic sense within our being, indicating whether it is healthy or ill, whether it is active or ailing. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the artistic sense of a particular nation is a measure of its quality of life and its ability to create a civilization.

To what extent is this artistic sense healthy within our being?

Upon reviewing the state of contemporary Arab arts—including painting, sculpture, photography, music, singing, dance, theater, and cinema—those who know a bit about culture will find no difficulty in recognizing that those arts collectively inspire a sense of reassurance, and may promise a better future than their current reality.

Without fear of generalizing, we can say that all of these arts suffer, first and foremost, from the fact that they have not found a distinctive personal style, a style that would convey their characteristics. These arts have nearly lost their character, and for this reason, they are on the verge of being exposed as unworthy of immortality.

There may be individual painters who have found a particular style that reflects the integration of a character with clear features. However, they are all a long way from making painting an art with distinctive traits that are the result of inspiration from the geographical environment and social milieus, and from the historical heritage. It is rare that we find in the effects of our painters a focused direction, whether psychological or social. Although there are ties that could bind a number of these painters together to form a group, these ties generally fail to indicate a clear trend, let alone an outlined school. Perhaps the most prominent shortcoming that appears in painting in our region is that many who practice this art form are more likely to incorporate the characteristics of foreign schools of art—at the expense of seeking vibrant and genuine inspiration from the reality of their own lives and the lives of their people. Such painters do not have proper awareness of the issue of content, for if they did, they also would have proper awareness of form. Let any one of us question, upon seeing Surrealist, Cubist, or abstract paintings, the value of the psychological and artistic development that their creators went through before reaching this stage in their production!

We might not be wrong to say the same about our region’s sculpture, which is the brother of its painting. Most works produced in sculpture have, until now, been limited to statues of great, important, and notable figures; rare are the works that are produced by an “idea,” or that depict a “condition,” or denote a “trend.” Rather, in all cases they remain linked to the principle of commerce—a principle that is forever fated to corrupt the artistry of any work that seeks to be artistic. Among the reasons for this—or the results of this—may be the fact that we have yet to have the chance to see exquisite sculptural work that aspires to stand before one of those foreign works carved by nervous, creative fingers through whose veins runs the essence of sacrifice and burning inspiration.

As for instrumental music in our region, it verges on being absent. We cannot find a single Arab musician who has tried to compose a complete piece of music that expresses a thematic unity, such as the well-known classical works that, based in science, enjoy undisputed aesthetic value. It is almost strange that our modern musicians evidence such shortcomings in musical capacity, and that their utmost in composing is to make melodies to accompany the genre of poetic material being sung. As for sung music, it falls into one of two categories: The first is popular music, which may have personal characteristics. However, it is nearly petrified, for it is not developing, and it remains in a primitive state insofar as it is not following a course to becoming art. The second illegitimate form, in its claims to represent a renewal, is dependent on stealing foreign melodies without even attempting to be influenced or enriched by them, or to draw from them.

Whether this music is instrumental or sung, it has created for itself, within the realm of expression, a suffocating framework in which melodies and tunes revolve only around the subject of bemoaned love. This music is guilty of the greatest negligence in attempting to emulate the consciousness that the Arab nation is struggling to bring forth.

In terms of dance, I believe that no country has seen a deterioration like the one that has occurred in our countries. Individual dancing, almost entirely restricted to silly bodily movements based on repetition, shaking, and vibrations, lacks any artistic flair. Indeed, this dancing aims to arouse the senses in a superficial manner incapable of producing any refined pleasure. As for popular group dancing (folkloric dancing), it is virtually nonexistent, and there is not anyone who attributes any artistic value to this dance in its modern form.

Theater and cinema are what remain, and they are—outside of Egypt—nearly nonexistent. Within Egypt, the former has made significant headway but it has been unable to reach an artistic level that would satisfy an informed intellectual. We do not need to stop too long to consider cinema, as its value is deteriorating in all aspects. As such, it is no exaggeration to describe the cinema as being in a state of decline.

Now then, I am not painting a bleak picture of art in our region, but rather detailing the reality of the situation. What can we conclude from this review? Is our artistic sense ailing? Or has our ability to produce beautiful works of art disappeared, or at the very least, been reduced?

I myself am not able to answer these questions, for to do so would require that I study the subject more faithfully than I have—despite the fact that I consider this quick overview to be close to the truth, for it represents what many believe to be true, even though they may disagree as to why.

However, I believe that publishing this special issue on the arts, both Arab and Western, is a broad way of posing the questions: Where do our arts stand in terms of the consciousness that is blossoming in the Arab nation in this period? Is it possible for us to discern from the current state of these arts anything that points us away from pessimism and toward more positive signs about the future, in either the short or long term?

I doubt that the literature of our region, in terms of poetry and the novel at least, finds itself in a better state than that of the plastic arts. In order to experience a civilizational renaissance that is fruitful and productive, we should be provided with this important aspect—the artistic aspect—in the life of every idea. This art must be maintained at a high level to ensure that our artistic sense is alive and well.

—Souheil Idriss

Artists’ Questionnaire: “Art and Arab Life” (1956)

Modern Arab societies have gone through important periods of development and growth, to which numerous factors have contributed—and art has been one of these driving, influential factors. What role has art played in the field of your specialty (painting, music, theater, cinema, etc.) in terms of its impact on Arab society, and in terms of the impact of Arab society on it?

al-Adab posed this question to a group of people working in art in different Arab countries and received from them the following responses:

Response of Mr. Moustafa Farroukh (Lebanon)

If we examine the truth of our artistic production, and its relationship with our reality and our lives, we find that everything connected with culture in the Arab world is unconnected to anything of our reality. We find that chaos, unbelief, and turmoil dominate our reality and that the Arab thinker “lives in one valley” while the rest of the Arab nation lives in another completely.

Art, as one of the elements of culture and guidance, is rarely linked to our current reality. It fumbles about in the chaos of different foreign artistic currents. It is not inspired, whether in small or large part, by personal or national feelings, with the exception of certain phenomena. Most of this art was transferred or copied from foreign arts.

And we can see that art in Lebanon—which we might claim to be more developed than the other Arab countries due to its antiquity as well as for other reasons—is for the most part a copy, an imitation, and a repetition of foreign arts. Rarely does it express its reality, or derive from its surroundings and history or from personal feelings.

I do not wish to narrate events or to disclose certain artistic scandals; this is not my goal. Instead, I will leave this to time and the people’s cultural development, which will guarantee that all of it comes to light.

In sum, the dominant spirit of art in our region is a spirit of commercialism and the endless pursuit of money. Any careful observer will note that the jealousy, animosity, disaffection, and loss of communication between artists all comprise irrefutable evidence of the soundness of this statement. Thus, one does not hope that present-day art will undergo improvement or revival, for art anywhere in the world—and including in Lebanon—must be based on a spirit of love, and an artistic work must be for the sake of art and nothing but that.

As for the state of art in the rest of the Arab countries, it is no better off. Most of this art is based on copying and imitating art movements established in Europe, without making any attempt to deny this or to draw inspiration from the present realities and exigencies of Arab countries. At the same time, the mission of art, as we know, is the truthful expression of the feelings and reality of the nation.

For all these reasons, I am of the opinion that true artists must move away from the idea of commercialism and work solely for the sake of the art. They must seek inspiration from within themselves and from the nature of their countries, clearly after studying the principles and laws of art in proper art schools. Then they must leave behind the idea of commercialism and the acquisition of wealth, for art has never, throughout its long history, been a means of acquiring money and wealth. Finally, the adherents of art in our countries must not let envy permeate their being. Instead, they should possess a beautiful spirit and a good character, for this is the fertile soil in which true art can be established, and from which it can carry out its noble mission.

Response of Mr. Kaiser al-Jamil (Lebanon)

There is no relationship between our current reality and our artistic production. The artist has lived throughout the ages in a world of pleasure, pain, and imagination. He has lived among the people, with legends and the gods of legends. He, like the poet, if shaken by a sudden real event, will resort to symbolism to express his feelings.

Our social reality is not devoid of alluring novelty. If an artist is affected by this novelty, and if it penetrates the depths, he will transform it into a painting or sculpture, or compose it into a poem. However, adherence to reality limits the imagination and results in codification, which the artist’s nature abhors and to which it refuses to submit. I wish to say that the value of the subject of a painting is very insignificant, for the painting is in itself an independent artistic work—it is the world of the artist, in which he gathers his things, orders them, and then bestows on them from his mind and heart what tinges them with this strange hue that is what the tune is to the string, what the scent is to perfume, and what love is to the heart.

Response of Mr. Rachid Wehbe (Lebanon)

It is well known that art is considered the truthful mirror of every people. Indeed, it seeks inspiration from images of its past and its heritage, and it expresses its present and portrays its desires and hopes for the future. As such, art is a symbol of the spirit of that people. It echoes their responses to their environment and times, and in doing so presents a vibrant picture of life over time. If we search in the light of this truth for the relationship between our artistic production and our current reality, we will not find it to be a closely linked relationship. This is because, if we mention certain artistic works that attempt to approach this reality, and its stamping by national traits, we cannot forget that our present artistic production is represented by the theory of “art is for art’s sake,” where art exists in its ivory tower, far from the environment and the people; and literary ideas remain secondary to formal considerations, which center artistic value around the creation of a harmonious composition of volumes, lines, and colors.

Even though this theory enjoys a great deal of support from international artistic circles, we should nevertheless take into account our specific circumstances, as a people who are building for history, and ensure that we improve the alignment of the pillars onto which our solid edifice will be raised, so that our works present a true picture of what we feel and experience. Art is one of the most prominent of the intellectual aspects that accompany the renaissances of nations. The true artist is the person who lives in his environment, searching and inquiring in order to convey the feelings and impressions that influence him. Art in our region suffers from the foreign influences that nearly divert it from its ideal direction and separate it from our current realities. In many cases, our production comes as if it were another image from those schools whose artistic principles we have borrowed or taken. Drawing from others is necessary to develop our artistic culture, yet there is a major difference between consciously drawing from another’s work and adopting his ideas to the point of becoming lost in his personality, estranged from our context and our environment. Here, in order to successfully navigate this critical stage of our artistic life, we should work to liberate ourselves from all that obstructs our proper nationalist direction, in order to be rid of all foreign influence on our artistic thinking and to establish sound foundations for the independence of our artistic personality. We must search for this personality in our Eastern, Lebanese surroundings, which are full of vibrant, exciting light, as well as in our glorious national heritage and in the subjects that have value for us. We should remember that these surroundings have already enchanted Western artists and served as a source of innovation and inspiration for them. What would be more appropriate for us, as we revive these surroundings, than to draw from them the impetus for an elevated artistic production, consistent with our environmental circumstances—which we sense more fully than anyone else. Let us adopt them as a basis on which we plant the foundations of our artistic renaissance, that very renaissance we are working to bring about. And let us move forward by its light with strength, determination, and faith.

Response of Mr. Fouad Kamel (Egypt)

The art of Mahmoud Said is considered the first stage in the history of modern Egyptian art. He who researches Said’s two paintings zhat al-jada’il al-zhahabeyya [The One with Golden Locks] and ad-da’wa ila as-safar [A Call to Travel] will see in them the logical and emotional development of an artist who wished to link his studies of Western composition—including of light, shadow, and perspective—to the heritage of Coptic and Islamic art, so as to grow with his art in terms of humanism and populism.

Just prior to 1940, sets of liberated ideas began to be formulated, based on a social awareness built on a material and psychological understanding. The magazine at-Tatawwur [Development] and then al-Majalla al-Jadeeda [The New Magazine] continued to publish these ideas, alongside the activities of the Art and Liberty group, who organized exhibitions of free art. We saw for the first time in modern history a union between art and literature, for the sake of achieving a revolutionary social language. Egypt read the poetry of George Hanin, the stories of Albert Cossery, and the articles of Anwar Kamel, Hussein Yousef Amin, and Yousef al-Afifi. It also saw the images of Ramses Younan, Kamel al-Telmasany, and Fouad Kamel. A revolutionary spirit filled the air, denouncing the facts of this corrupt life. Images and hopes of a new life were crafted out of the symbols of this dream.

Yousef al-Afifi and Hussein Yousef Amin made a significant contribution to the field of art education by developing the “New Awareness” current, and especially when Yousef al-Afifi dedicated himself to establishing the Higher Institute of Art Education for Teachers. A generation, led by Mahmoud Y. el-Bassiouny, Hamdy Khamees, Saad al-Khadim, and Latfy Zakki, completed their studies abroad. They resumed the work of spreading artistic awareness by forming art schools in public education.

The Contemporary Art group, established by Hussein Yousef Amin, drew from Egyptian legend and popular literature as the basis for its philosophy. It also took the tools used in daily life as forms for its artistic composition. Myth emerged for the first time from the literary domain into the realm of form and color. We find in the art of Aj-Jazzar and Hamed Nada a trend that is more compatible in this respect, while we find in the paintings of Samir Rafa’, Ibrahim Massa’ouda, Kamel Yousef, Mahmoud Khalil, and Salem Habashy certain subjective, rational, or poetic traits that are the result of the encounter with world cultures. As for art criticism and its value in defining and creating artistic currents, there was no clearly defined dogmatic criticism prior to the writings, lectures, and discussions of George Hanin, Yousef al-Afifi, Hussein Yousef Amin, Erik de Ghosh, and Cyril de Bou. This criticism and argumentation was only rarely published in the press. Rather, it was circulated within the art community and at private events. These discussions played an important role in forming and developing numerous artistic personalities.

We cannot ignore the importance of the attempts of Ahmed Rassem, who wrote for the first time to the Arab Library about modern Egyptian art in its first stages. We must also note that Rassem was interested in presenting the art of Kamel al-Telmasani in a lengthy article in the al-Ahram newspaper.

It was necessary for critics to emerge to re-create the history of Egyptian art and awaken the youth to its treasures and sources. Philip Darscott wrote and provided general images in which he chronicled and critiqued modern trends, yet he did not adopt a specific viewpoint, in contrast to the critic Aimé Azar, whose book The History of Modern Art in Egypt is comprised of six parts. After establishing a philosophy and objective for the book, Azar gathered together an assortment of modern Egyptian art. We should mention the crime that is committed by the Egyptian press today against these rising generations through its atrocious disregard for art criticism—or its recourse to personalities who are not knowledgeable or studied in either the origins of criticism or providing guidance. Numerous artistic personalities attempt to continue producing art, and they come together or split apart when showing their works. We find Yousef Sayyeda, Taheyya Haleem, Hassan al-Telmasani, Hamed Abdullah, Fathi al-Bakri, Ezzeddin Hamouda, Saleh Yosri, and Walim Ishaq, and yet this is an irresolute and ambiguous continuation.

Since 1953, Egyptian artists have felt the need to establish more vibrant arenas in which to display their developing art. Discussions in some of the newspapers have begun to ask about the role of art in relation to society, and debates have been initiated regarding the methods of realism in art—thereby following the current trend of freethinking that began with the establishment of the Art and Liberty group. Today we see that the Egyptian artist is nearly suffocating in his own art. If he does not set out for new horizons, armed with a progressive awareness of art and science, this artistic generation will be doomed to annihilation, and Egypt will continue to wait for another new generation to hold its dreams in their minds and hearts. These new horizons are the mural arts. And fortunately, the modern Egyptian artist has a long artistic heritage at his disposal, beginning with cave paintings from the prehistoric era and including pharaonic art and the art of churches and mosques. These different images and various materials can well serve as a fertile source for study, revival, and development. The Egyptian artist may be assured that the mural is also found in modern artistic heritage, as in the creations of Mexico’s artists such as [José Clemente] Orozco, [Diego] Rivera, and [Rufino] Tamayo, which occupy government buildings, halls of science, theaters, restaurants, and all the popular institutions. These are tall, broad pages, on which developed, modern artistic principles may be manifested in murals, without slipping into prevalent academic taste.

Today’s insightful critic senses the seeds of this art in the works of Hamed Nada in its latest phase.

The collective dreams of today should push beyond the limits of the frame and the salons, to be rejuvenated and to live under the sun, before the eyes of millions.

Response of Mr. Hamed Abdalla (Egypt)

Art and society simultaneously influence and are influenced by each other. The true artist takes reality as his raw material. He does not convey this reality literally, but rather revives it through his whole living being, “viewing it from within” as he creates it anew as a more vibrant reality. Society is also impacted by art and responds to its inspiration. For this reason, the content of art is the content of life.

As for the artists who, adhering to pure formalism, imagine that pedantically creating empty forms is art, or the artists who imitate external reality or depict it in an anecdotal manner, considering art to be a means of comprehension and not an actual modality of knowledge, or who create art for the purpose of propaganda in any of its forms—those artists represent superficiality and stagnation in art, for they are only grazing the surface of life.

We note that every phase of society’s development is also a phase of the development of art and all sorts of ways of thinking. We find in Egyptian society’s phases of struggle—in the middle of this century, for example, for the cause of independence—that modern Egyptian representational art has been liberated from the influence of Western art and has been guided to its correct path: connected with its ancient, inherited past, and with the well of the art of the people and their traditions, adopting the principles of the artistic origins of the ancient East without imitating them, in contrast to the artistic origins of the West, which observe the rules of perspective painting, or the personification through the Modèle or Modulation. Those original principles of the West aimed to depict objects as seen by the eye without regard for their truth, and constitute a certain submission to the false appearance of nature—the principle that the contemporary West rejected when it abandoned easel painting for wall painting.

Response of Mr. Hamdy Ghaith (Egypt)

I would like us first to agree on the concept of the word theater, which is contained in the question. The theater, as I understand it, is this work or that artistic phenomenon that we see in the Dar al-Ta’lil and that comprises the literary text as well as production and acting in all their elements of movement, gesture, rhythm, music, sound, silence, lighting, and decor. In this way, theater becomes the complete dramatic act, not just the written play—for the written play, as long as it remains such, is not a theatrical act but merely a literary work.

If we understand the word theater in this way, then we are able to say that theater cannot influence nationalist thought, because it is, by nature, a result of this nationalist thinking, meaning, it follows from it rather than precedes it. If theater in Egypt (as opposed to Egyptian theater) has influenced nationalist thinking, this influence is reflected only in the men behind it, in that the producer and the actor have surpassed the playwright. This is because theater in Egypt began through the translation of Western literature. As such, its sole influence is in having established the art form of drama in Egyptian literature. If we wish to speak about theater in terms of the literary text that we call the play, it cannot be said that theater has influenced or been influenced by nationalist thought. This is because nationalist thought is a continuous current that takes on various forms, including the novel, poetry, photography, and plays. It cannot be said that the novel, for example, has influenced nationalist thought or been influenced by it, as the story itself is among the forms of this thought.

Thus, it is not possible to speak about the extent to which Egyptian theater has influenced or been influenced by nationalist thought. However, we can ask whether Egyptian theater has moved in pace with nationalist thought, or lagged behind it.

The nationalist thought contemporaneous to the establishment of Egyptian theater was itself what paved the way for the revolution of 1919. It preached political and social liberation. As for Egyptian theater, we unfortunately have to affirm that it has always lagged behind nationalist thought. In political terms, Egyptian theater did not play the same role as that played by other artistic and literary forms. Theater was never an expression of the Egyptian revolution; rather, it was surprised by it. Theater’s only role was to cry out in the wake of the revolution. The theater was highly insignificant on the battlefield, as the revolution’s events were always greater than it.

As the theater was mired in the melodrama that was translated or composed and that overran the Ramses troupe, Egyptian literature took a different course—a new path blazed by Taha Hussein, al-Mazni, and al-Aqqad. Though romantic theater may have been considered an expression of the middle class, meaning a natural expression of the Egyptian political and social revolution, it was incapable of comprehending this awareness; instead it took melodrama itself as a means of expression, but of what?

Perhaps we know that the melodrama was a theatrical expression of the regret of the collapsing landed gentry and its sense of doom in the face of the revolutionary tide of the middle class. In this way, the theater—represented first and foremost by the work of the Ramses troupe—was reactionary and misleading. This is absolutely clear not only from nationalist novels, but also from the novels that address social problems. We can take as an example of this the issue of women’s liberation, which has pervaded nationalist ideas in Egypt from the beginning of this century. On this issue, Egyptian theater adopted a reactionary position that, expressed in novels such as Zawgatina [Our Wives], asserts that the natural place for women is in the home.

All of this applies to Egyptian theater in the period in which we are living. The theater until now remains unable to adapt to new nationalist thought, for many reasons that cannot be mentioned here. While the realist school emerges in Egyptian literature, theater remains stuck in melodrama and vaudeville. And while Egyptian society is shaken from time to time by political and social uprisings, the theater is always surprised by these uprisings and never joins the calls for such uprisings in anything more than—in the best of cases—a weak voice that is quickly drowned out by these decisive popular movements. This is because the theater dealt with and continues to deal with political and social matters in an unsophisticated manner—rather than undertaking a real analysis and coming to a clear understanding of the truth of these matters in terms of their economic and social aspects, instead of solely within a socially regressive framework.

Finally, I wish to say that Egyptian theater has not been born yet, even if many signs indicate that its birth is not far off.

*Mr. Ghaith restricted his response to Arab theater in Egypt, due to its connection to his particular experience and his depiction of the general characteristics of theater in other Arab countries.

Response of Mr. Khalil al-Masry (Egypt)

Many researchers differ in their views of the arts in general, and of music in particular. Some say that art leads to renaissances. Others assert that art follows renaissances or, more clearly put, that art is a depiction of these renaissances, and that true art gives us a true picture. Since our views of this picture may differ, we may think of it as a point of origin, one that influences and guides society. Yet the meticulous researcher does not overlook the fact that this so-called true picture is merely a copy of the original, which is society. As such, art is but a chronicler of history, not an instigator of renaissances. If we accept this position, we find that Arab art has been able to depict the renaissances of its peoples and, with its limited or local capabilities, to give us a true picture of their prevalent anxiety. Arab music was influenced by Turkish music when the Turks had a say in the rule of our country, and it was influenced by the Western music that was present among us when we looked to the West and moved toward it. However, Arab music did not become completely devoted to the West, nor did it lose its identity and its ancient civilization. Rather, this influence embellished and enhanced Arab music, and moved it toward becoming a global art.

However, many factors existed in Arab countries that led to the decline of the arts, two of which are extremely important and thus worthy of mention:

1. Most funders in these countries are not from these countries.
2. These countries were struggling under the yoke of foreign occupation.

These two factors caused feelings of inadequacy among the Arab people and divided them into two groups, which moved in opposite directions. The first looked to the West, believed that Egypt was capable of rising to its level, and demanded the highest degree of freedom possible. The second was oriented toward the East, struggled to admit its own inadequacy, and clung to the flimsy threads of its Eastern identity—it called for conserving this identity by imposing strict censorship.

Despite this there is significant evidence today that Arab music is responding to and being influenced by the renaissances of the people. However, I disagree with those who say that Arab music is the creator and inspiration behind this reawakening.

Response of Mr. Maher Ra’ef (Egypt)

The West came before the East in revolting against men of religion—not religious teachings—who, without good intentions, appointed themselves the protectors and advocates of religion, after placing stumbling blocks on the road to the progress of civilization for so long. The impact of this was that the West made great strides in the fields of science, discovery, and invention, which with the East has been unable to keep pace. The West thus extended its authority over the East and launched a siege to prevent it from progressing, and even to block it from freedom. This became clearer than ever in art in general and particularly in the plastic arts, which are the topic of this discussion.

If art is the equal of science in the field of human progress, then we attempt to understand the truth of our external reality through science and to probe the depths of our internal reality through art. The two are linked in a way that reveals the extent of the importance of art to human life and the extent of its influence in the field of human progress.

The East, led by Egypt, has attempted to awaken from its ignorance and to cast off the effects of the political occupation and the foreign monopoly on Eastern thought and taste. By the East, I mean the Arab East. The effect of this revolution against this occupation and monopoly emerged in the field of plastic arts. And if it was right for us to keep pace with the West’s scientific progress and to take from the West its latest inventions, we do not have the least right to keep pace with the West in terms of its art, for art has a nation from which it must spring forth. And it has traditions, customs, and norms associated with a group of people who define its form and subject, and even the direction of its development. Those who attempt this not only carry within themselves the tools of their own destruction and the obliteration of their identity, they also help the West to directly or indirectly solidify its hold on the East.

Currently in Egypt, there are those doing all they can to embrace artistic trends to liberate Egyptian art from its slavery to foreign art, and even from a return to ancient Egyptian art—despite the fact that others claim the latter would return originality to Egyptian art. Yet this is not in accordance with the social environment, which defines the general image of art, even if the geographical environment is the same in both cases.

These modern trends have succeeded. In art, more or less, those embracing them have achieved their objective through their dedication to the principle upon which these ideas are based and through their keenness to expose themselves to modern global culture, which is necessary for the contemporary artist to be successful in realizing his mission. That he shares in abundance in addressing subjects related to social life in Egypt, with a view permeated by the logic of modern thought.

If the Egyptian public as a whole does not appreciate works of modern art, it is because these works are not as familiar to them as the thousand varieties of art presented to them by foreign artists and by teaching professors who took art from the institutes of Europe and circulated it, or worked to circulate it, in our region.

Response of Mr. Jewad Selim (Iraq)

In any time or place, all important and good artistic production is a mirror that reflects the reality in which it exists. How we perceive this product—whether it is truly human, and how it can be a genuine and powerful expression—all this is related to the freedom of the artist to express his surroundings. This is simultaneously an intellectual freedom and an economic one. There are hundreds of “shoulds” and “musts” that are repeatedly mentioned in our newspapers and magazines, and in most cases the writer is attempting to express his own superiority or the nobleness of his ideas, trying to extricate the artist from his stupefaction or backwardness. This generally indicates the presence of old commonplaces in new molds. Most authors who are agitated with lofty human ideas are quick to offer guidance to writers or artists, even when they themselves do not know or intentionally forget the contents of museums and books, and all the art that humanity has produced that restores our trust in humanity’s goodness.

Response of Mr. Hafidh al-Droubi (Iraq)

Our reality suffers in its appearance, but not in its essence, from the dominance of European character. Our way of life has taken on affectation in order to fit with European life. Local dress is on the verge of being swept aside by European styles as we leave the countryside and move to the cities. Moreover, there is a great contradiction between our core equilibrium as Eastern people and these almost completely false and affected appearances. This is in terms of our reality. In terms of art, the problem is different, for art in our region suffers from Western domination in both its essence and its external forms. In other words, the contradiction mentioned above is nearly nonexistent, for art in our region is in fact Western in its entirety. The reason for this goes back to the fact that painters, and Iraqi painters in particular, had their artistic beginnings and studies in Europe and in the style of European schools, and as such their views of things became that of a Western person. In addition, there was a dark period that cut us off from our heritage—whether ancient or Islamic civilizations—following which Iraqi artists opened their eyes and saw nothing but mature European art before them. As for our civilizational heritage, it remained concealed until only recently, when museums were established. As for local art, it is extremely simple in impression, so much so that is difficult to use it as any kind of basis. Another thing is that the local art market is invaded by an artistic culture with a European art affect, whether in in inquiry or in outline. We have barely any access to authentic Eastern art—such as Indian, Chinese, and Japanese art—despite the fact that the West has also been influenced by it, and despite its maturity and importance.

Today, we feel intense pain at this move away from local reality and national character. Most of us attempt and endeavor to establish an art that represents this reality, that influences it and is influenced by it, and each of us seeks to achieve it according to his specific point of view. Some deal with line and composition, attempting through them to claim something of the Assyrian and Sumerian spirit, yet they remain European nevertheless. Yet these artists try—always, they try.

Others continuously call for a specifically Iraqi art, yet they themselves have not found such a character. One of the Europeans who said that “dusty colors are of an Iraqi character” may have been mistaken, for Iraq is never dusty. And these are our colors. And this is our sun.

There are artists who consider their attempts to be Iraqi art, even as they follow the direction of the modern European school, and the French school in particular. This is because France had a major educational influence on these artists.

As for me personally, despite the fact that I continually endeavor to paint Iraqi subjects, on the basis of my upbringing in a purely Iraqi context, I continue to think of the work of European painters when picking up the brush and painting. As such, I continue to consider myself to be playing the role of attempting to establish a modern Iraqi school. Even though I have at times proceeded along the lines of the ancient Iraqi way, these were an imitation and nothing more.

As for how this relationship should be: we believe it should be a close relationship. Artistic tendencies are not subject to logical controls, but rather to the circumstances surrounding the art, the abovementioned factors, and other factors. These current schools will endeavor to create a sound, strong connection with reality, which continues to develop, and to strive to find its particular character.

Response of Mr. Ismaeil al-Sheikhly (Iraq)

For a long time, the Arab world has lagged behind the rest of the world in scientific progress as well as in social and political spheres. The inevitable result is a backwardness that is reflected in our social reality and that has led to a backwardness in thought, literature, and art.

The Arab world has been isolated from the rest of the world and thus rarely influenced by the intellectual currents that affect our times. The Baghdad school of painting under Abbasid rule deserves mention, although it ended with the Abbasid era. Al-Wasiti was one of the most prominent painters of this period. Yet throughout the last fifty years, the experience from which Iraq and the other Arab countries have suffered due to their contact with the civilized world—and to its innovations in the fields of science, industry, and thought—has led them to “borrow” from it. I doubt whether this assimilation of Western intellectual and artistic currents is deep and true, as our regressive reality is different from the natural, progressive reality of the West. For example, the appearance of Cubism in the Western world is justified, as it is an artistic form that evolved from previous artistic forms. We can say the same about the other artistic schools in the West. The Cubist trends in our country, however, fail to represent a genuine reality not only in terms of the type of production, but also in terms of our present historical circumstances. Owing to this, the artistic movement in Iraq has yet to acquire distinguishing characteristics and a clear identity in either form or content. The truth is that the artistic movement in our country represents nothing but confusion and turbulence resulting from the underdevelopment of the Iraqi identity in terms of expressing its condition, environment, and historical circumstances.

However, Iraq is on the verge of making major social, economic, and cultural progress, which will surely impact the production of our artists. Iraqi artists must seek inspiration from this new life, yet imbue it with their own particular Iraqi character. In my opinion, Iraqi artists should work toward establishing a connection to the public, for the purpose of developing the artistic taste of its people. This will not happen unless artists channel public concerns and feelings, through the expression of public and private subjects directly related to daily life, and unless the public acknowledges its own reality. However, at present this production carries no more than the purpose we envisage for it, which is only the development of artistic taste, a sense of beauty, and the artistic feelings of the public. The natural relationship between the artist and his audience will undoubtedly influence both the quality of artistic production and the public’s taste. Indeed, one of these factors will affect the other until art takes on an authentic form or many authentic forms that express the needs of the people and are simultaneously understood by them.

Response of Mr. Atta Sabri (Iraq)

Artistic production and reality have been interrelated since time immemorial. The first humans expressed the shape of animals due to their dire need for those animals and in order to cast away the dangers posed by them. Later came arts that expressed the ancient civilizations, such as in China, followed by those in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia. In Mesopotamia, art represented power, might, and the conquests that were undertaken, such as the Lion of Babylon, the winged lion, and the reliefs that represent the kings of Assyria and others in their wars and conquests.

If we move on to thirteenth-century Baghdad and its famous artistic school, we see that the painter [Yehia bin Mahmoud al-Wasiti], in his illustrations of the Maqamat of al-Hariri, held today in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris, realistically depicted views of human social life in the form of large drawings that remind us of wall reliefs. He depicted thirteenth-century Arabs in mosques, in the desert or field, in libraries, or in inns. Another famous manuscript, Kalila wa Dimnah, was painted by other artists to express their social circumstances and events through pictures of animals.

Moving ahead to Europe, particularly the age of the Renaissance in Italy and other countries, we see the artistic productions of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci in paintings such as The Last Supper by Leonardo, The Resurrection by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, as well as his great sculptures of Moses and David, and Raphael’s many paintings of the Virgin and Christ. Then came [Francisco de] Goya in Spain, who expressed in his paintings the atrocities of the French and their occupation, as well as the scandals of war.

If we move forward to today’s era, we find that the chaos, decadence, confusion, moral collapse, and apathy that followed the two [world] wars have had a major impact on artists. We find them defeated by reality and moving in different, confused directions. Their artistic production was in ebb and flood, until artists in some domains arrived at Social Realism and began to assert their social and political opinions in murals that gave expression to the working class, peasants, and others. This is what happened in Mexico at the hands of the artist [Diego] Rivera and others.

Here we see that the state entered the field and supported and directed artists, or imposed its will on them, so that these artists give voice to their society or political regime, either directly or indirectly. Whereas [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, with his regime known as the “New Deal,” moved to encourage artists materially and morally and left the field open to them with complete freedom of artistic production, the dictatorships prior to World War II imposed restrictions and conditions on the kinds of art permitted.

As for today in Iraq, following a long period of stagnation, we have embarked on a new and blessed artistic movement, initiated about a quarter of a century ago with our deceased artist Abdul Qadir al-Rassam, the “artist of Tigris and Baghdad,” who captured peaceful views of the landscape in his oil paintings. Then, after 1930, artistic missions began to go to Europe at the behest of the Iraqi Ministry of Education, and returned to their homeland after lengthy study in a new mold and with a European character. These new Iraqi artists, and their students after them, began to look to Europe as a source of revelation and inspiration for their artistic paintings and even their subjects, which became Leda and the Swan, flowers, landscapes, etc. They forgot all but a very little of their surroundings and the environment in which they lived.

Others then emerged who conducted their artistic experiments in the manner of the European artists who were prominent between the two wars, with distinguishing circumstances and causes. They began, in painting their pictures and images, to adopt the schools and methods of Cubism, Surrealism, or abstraction, regardless of the reasons that led European artists to use such modes of expression in their own paintings. As such, they imitated [Pablo] Picasso and others in order to be “modernized” painters. The truth is that we today are facing social, economic, and political problems and circumstances and going through new developments that differ completely from those of European artists.

We noticed that the exhibition of Indian art held in Baghdad three years ago bore a distinctly Indian character, and was tending toward the formation of a modern Indian school. Undoubtedly, that had a pronounced effect on the psyches of Iraqi artists and on a majority of those who visited this exhibition, thus prompting Iraqi artists to think about new and prospective ways to arrive at an Iraqi artistic school, or create a local character, or to form a style that represents Baghdad. Yet this cannot be attained in a single day, or even in a year. Rather, writers, literary figures, and artists must unite to establish the solutions and capacities for attaining a local character, with connection to the international artistic movement.

The new generation in Iraq today has begun to appreciate art in a very encouraging manner for this goal. For we must present more art exhibitions, with facilitation from the Ministry of Education via the Institute of Fine Arts, so as to connect with foreign countries and bring art exhibitions to Iraq, whether of the old works by their masters and schools or of the contemporary. And I think it is incumbent for artists to work to create an artistic and literary magazine to consolidate a public of readers who are thirsty for arts and literature.

Iraq today is going through the birth of a comprehensive architectural and industrial movement. As such, our architects must open the field to painters and sculptors to create murals and bas-relief sculptures on the walls of these buildings, and particularly government buildings, so as to be completely integrated. On the other hand, attention must be paid to commercial art, so that it can meet the needs of the country’s industrial production for images, advertisements, and other commercial art forms. Art must also be used for social purposes, such as social services and other uses. The new and expansive squares and open areas to be created upon completion of Baghdad’s city planning will be among the best arenas for sculptors in our country to erect monumental statues, which will become a Ka’aba for visitors and for excursionists who seek an escape from the people or fill their free time, just as in the squares of Rome, Paris, and London.

Our artistic production should be a true expression of our current reality. It must reflect the pains of the people as well as their joys, in social and popular subjects. The artist faces an open field, for these subjects have not been addressed previously. Art today is moving toward a kind of new realism, by which it is possible to record daily life in our country in tremendous, expressive paintings.

Response of Mr. Fateh al-Moudarres (Syria)

The Arab arts have suffered through a long period of decline, from painting to styles of buildings, from metal engraving to textiles, and even popular traditions of dress and song. In addition, a permanent religious opposition, combined with the shallowness of the scientific culture, and the lack of genuine, constructive attempts by Arab governments to revive popular Arab heritage—all this has led to the obliteration of what remained of a distinctive artistic heritage.

Along with all these urgent ailments, European imperialism arrived to spread distortion and poverty and poisoned relations between the remaining religious sects so as to politicize them. All this destroyed the last remaining bastion of Arab art in the East, and it remains in ruins.

If we wish to define a character for any Arab artistic production, or if we wish to find a link between any such production and our reality, we will fail. If a European critic today were to view any painting by an Arab painter, he would not find anything but a Turkish fez, the face of a dome, an ancient minaret, a strangely designed water pipe in a carnival of cafés, or a piece of embroidery from a worn-out Shiraz carpet!

The modern concept of contemporary realist Arab art is difficult to define, as the nonexistence of inherited artistic features has, to a great extent, rendered our Arab artistic production weak in terms of its identity. Indeed, the contemporary art of each state in the world is based on substantial inheritances. In India, we see in the paintings of modern artists clear references to the ancient Indian artistic heritage. The same is true of modern China, as well as Japan. We see in the exhibitions of all the nations an originality and differentiation that indicate that this painting is Indian or that painting is Chinese or Finnish. However, the painting created in the Arab East has no identity, for its character is lost, its originality erased, and it consists of a distorted, mixed-up imitation of the European schools. We can thus assert, for all the preceding reasons, that Arab artistic production has no relationship at all with our reality or our renaissance.

In order to bless contemporary Arab taste with a truly Arab art that interprets its reality and its social struggle on all fronts, we must begin a new “renaissance” era—meaning an era based on the rebirth of ancient Arab art, grafted to current modern concepts, in a light rich in distinctive color and inherited, authentic designs.

The reasons for the chaos to be found in the exhibitions held in Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, and Baghdad have become clear: There is no close coordination between governments and painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, and authors. Nor is there even a sense that this collaboration is lacking.

Come with me: Stand next to me before an Arab painting, and let us assume that its creator has called it an Arabic name meaning “Awakening” or “Revolution” or “Protest.” What would you find in this painting? You would not find anything except a carnival of influences, firstly because the artist has no personal style. You would not find any colors from the East, nor would you find that authentic effort to highlight originality in the orientation of the design and the subject as a whole. Perhaps the reason for this goes back to the fact that Arab history is not studied, on one hand, and on the other to the dearth of understanding of common artistic schools. Thus, painters, sculptors, musicians, and architects are unable to establish a distinctive character by which they might define their place in the ranks of universal art.

The development of the artistic understanding of a contemporary people is not incompatible with the inherited ancient values that have a unique character. If you were to take even the most contemporary of schools, such as Surrealism, and if you as an artist fervently cling to your Arab nationalism, you would be able to render an original expression from your lines. And even if you were an advocate of the abstract or the nonobjective schools, you would be able to maintain a distinctive Arab character. This matter is inevitable for modern architects who insist on taking from the style of Le Corbusier! Indeed, if Le Corbusier had been Eastern or Arab, he would have given his school a distinctive character, while still observing the latest requirements of the age, because comprehending character requires it, and national pride as well!

I visited Europe this year, and found a unique character in every country I visited. When the steamer docked us back on Syrian shores, the absurd hodgepodge became apparent in the buildings, the music, and all signs of life—even in people’s faces! The East appeared before me as if it had been hit by a hydrogen bomb! How, then, can we respond to the original question: Does contemporary Arab artistic production have a connection to our reality—apart from what we have said in the preceding lines?

Our situation is disgraceful, our values cheap, and our confidence nonexistent. As such, our distinctive Arab identity is also absent. If we have been allowed to stand among the many nations, it is only because we have not yet died out completely.

Look: This man is Chinese, that one is Siamese; this man is Filipino, that one is French—and who do we have here? Tell me, by God, who is this strange creation who wears a fez on his head and on top of that a hat, and below them a tie, and on his shoulders an overcoat, and over that an abaya, and on his feet crepe-soled shoes. He speaks in a language that is neither Arabic nor Chinese nor Siamese, nor anything recognizable—his language does not even resemble the language of the birds! Now look at his face, and you will not even find distinctive Eastern features in it! After all this, how does your stomach accept and digest the painting the Arab holds in his hands, as if he were a beggar holding out an empty bowl, begging for the peoples’ sympathy before they judge him with sweeping verdicts, but not daring to reveal it! How do we accept to call this a painting? Such an Arab, when standing among the ranks of nations, should bow his head in shame.

We can lie to ourselves, but the matter is different in the eyes of others, who must see us as we truly are—who must see that our pride in our distinctive values has ceased to exist.

If we wish to have a modern Arab art, we must initiate an era of rebirth for all that has become extinct. We must build it up and graft to it what we will, according to what the old outlines will accept in terms of new turns and appearances. As I say this, regret fills my heart, because the matter applies to my own work as well!

Response of Mr. Munir Sulayman (Syria)

The question about art and its link to our Arab reality is frequently repeated, and the people respond to it with a host of different answers. The most important of these answers is that the greatest purpose of art is to express the features of life in its various aspects. In all Arab countries, art remains far from this. If you were to see a painting that represents a landscape or face or still life, you would feel that there is a dense veil blocking you from seeing the truth of these objects or separating you and the life that pulses within each of them.

The important thing in painting is that people see in every canvas something of themselves, something of their hopes and dreams for life. Even more, the artist seeks to depict through his painting the life that is lived by the people, as well as the hopes that stir in his heart and in theirs. The artist succeeds to the extent that he expresses these dreams and makes them speak in his painting with a power to affect the people, even influencing the simple souls among them who have not had the good fortune to enjoy a culture of art.

The function of art, whatever its color and whatever its form, is to serve life. A beautiful painting—whether of a river, or the breast or legs of a beautiful woman, or the shoulders of a man of great stature, or his arm—is beautiful because it suits its organic function, and its concept is nothing but the elevated rendering of our many needs. Indeed, it is the perpetual extension of these needs, meaning that the concept distills the future of these powerful, unrestrained needs and makes it evident, just as the flower and the fruit condense the tree, promulgate it, and extend its life into immortality.

Yet this eternal truth remains unfamiliar to artists in all the Arab countries. For this reason, we cannot claim that there is art in the Arab countries, and we will remain far from it so long as artists are distantly removed from the essence and secret of art, and even from its fundamental components.

“I have seen a vibrant genius and an innovative Arab sensibility”: Visitors’ impressions of the 1933 Palestine Pavilion at the First National Arab Fair

The texts below are entries taken from the 1933 guest book from the first solo exhibition of the work of Zulfa al-Sa‘di (1905–1988), a young Palestinian female artist, held in the Palestine Pavilion at the First National Arab Fair, organized in Jerusalem under the auspices of the Supreme Muslim Council. Al-Sa‘di, who had studied with the renowned “Jerusalem School” icon painter Nicola Saig (1863-1942), exhibited a range of work: oil paintings of landscapes, still life compositions, and portraits of Arab heroes as well as contemporary cultural and political figures—the latter, such as King Faysal I of Iraq, which is illustrated here, drew on the photographic sources then circulating in the expanding print media—alongside applied arts such as embroidery works.

Hundreds of visitors signed the guest book, many of them identifying hometowns and origins from across the Arab East. Entries are predominantly in Arabic, but also in French and English. The remarks offer a window into a moment when even the format of the solo art exhibition held a kind of modern novelty, demonstrating visitors’ searches for appropriate vocabularies to articulate their responses to al-Sa‘di’s work as well as a common impulse to express national pride.

Four of these entries were selected for translation and inclusion in the 2018 publication Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents. And in this online format, we are pleased to make five additional entries available in translation to readers interested in the development of artistic discourses around the world. To access a pdf of extended guest book entries in their original languages, please visit The Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab world, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA) website.

Guest book entries for Zulfa al-Sa‘di (1933)

The fine arts leave a fine impression on the soul, and the work I’ve seen here has left a deep impression on my soul. I can’t help but rejoice for Miss Zulfa, for this work has amazed me and my companions.

From Gaza, July 22, 1933

Have you heard the lovely melodies? Have you experienced how they make you quiver in delight and arouse sweet hopes and desires in you? This is how a person feels when he sees the refined lady Zulfa al-Sa‘di. The wonderful handicrafts on display in the Arab exhibition stir up great hope in the spectator—the hope that our women are on their way to a renaissance through such beneficial work. This brings us pride and joy.

Tanious Naser, newspaper owner, 1st day of the month of Rabi‘ II, 1352 [July 24, 1933]

We should have great admiration for the skillful hand that produced everything we saw in the first Arab exhibition—the hand of Miss Zulfa al-Sa‘di, who truly counts as one of the treasures of the artistic renaissance in Arab Palestine. We plead to God for more women like Miss Zulfa, so that the men of this nation can come together to revive the glory and civilization that has been wiped out. God bless.

Abd al-Ghani al-Karmi and Muhammad Taha, 1st day of the month of Rabi‘ II, 1352 [July 24, 1933]

I am very proud of the artisanal renaissance that is being carried out by young Arab women in Palestine. I was delighted by the work I saw during my visit to the Arab exhibition, which demonstrates Miss Zulfa al-Sa‘di’s excellent taste. Hopefully the young women of the future will follow in her footsteps. Bravo, Miss al-Sa‘di, and cheers to her work and to all who follow her example—onward until we acquire independence.

Abu Khaldoun, Tulkarem, July 26, 1933

Art expresses the purity and delicateness of the soul and the refinement of morals and excellence. The wonders of Miss Zulfa’s art are a source of pride for Arab handicrafts. She deserves our appreciation, and we commend the precision of her art and wish her brilliant success in her quest.

Omar al Saleh, lawyer, July 27, 1933

The works I found here in this room are truly the best I’ve seen in this blessed Arab exhibition, which is a good start for Arabs in general. The fair hands that worked at night to create these things are a testament to the Arab renaissance of the future. The hands of Miss Zulfa al-Sa‘di will be the best means of spreading the Arab renaissance in the future. Good luck.

[Name illegible], July 27, 1933

I have seen a vibrant genius and an innovative Arab sensibility in Miss Zulfa al-Sa‘di’s exhibited handicrafts. These works demonstrate precision and creativity. May God grant her success—I hope one day she becomes the director of an artisanal school for women, so that future young Arab women can benefit from her singular genius and her innovative taste. Many thanks to her.

Abd al-Raziq Mayri, Aleppo, Syria, July 27, 1933

Zulfa is a wellspring of verse and oratory, for poetry is nothing but tireless effort. Take a look at your creations, Zulfa: they’re marvels, the best on display at the Arab exhibition. The creation of Zulfa, is there wonder in magic? For the magic it contained, bewitched those who beheld it.

Yes, this is truly magic, and a wonder—or rather, many wonders: such extreme precision in the embroidery, such marvelous mastery in the craftsmanship, and such superb representation in the paintings, beyond even the skill of professional painters. When I saw her miraculous paintings, and in particular the one of the cactus fruit, I couldn’t help but try to grab one of the fruits and eat it!

This genius, this lady’s brilliance, is something every Arab can be proud of. It is fair to say that Miss Zulfa’s works are innovations to which nothing can be added—one is left speechless, for such creativity is unprecedented.

Al-Afghani, July 29, 1933

I visited the Arab exhibition, and the truth is that I couldn’t find anything that demonstrates more genius and artistic taste than Ms. Zulfa al-Sa‘di’s handicrafts, oil paintings, and other works. I am truly proud that someone in my dear country has achieved such status in the world of art, for I am but one of that country’s servants.

Akram Abd al-Salam al-Husseini, Ahmad al-Farjouli [?] Raouf Darwish [?], Adnan [illegible], Jerusalem

—From the guest book of Zulfa al-Sa’di’s 1933 exhibition, accessed from the research files of Rhonda Saad, departed colleague of the editors of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, who was preparing a study of Palestinian art and its publics until her unexpected death in 2010. Translations from Arabic to English by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

On the Concept of Painting and the Plastic Language

By Mohammed Chebaa | 1966

In Morocco in the mid-1960s, the National School of Fine Arts in Casablanca offered a new cohort of avant-garde thinkers—including artists Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chebaa, and Mohammed Melehi—a platform for developing new models of decolonized, integrated artistic practice. Such an agenda is set forth in this position statement written by Chebaa on the occasion of the three-person Belkahia, Chebaa, and Melehi exhibition at the Mohammed V Theatre gallery in Rabat, and published in January 1966 in the Arabic daily al-‘Alam. In it, Chebaa argues for an authenticity of representation in modern Moroccan art. The poster by Mohammed Melehi that advertised the exhibition, in MoMA’s collection, signals this group of artists’ contemporary practice, grounded in vernacular forms and international graphic arts and design modes.

On the Concept of Painting and the Plastic Language (1966)

Mohammed Chebaa

The exhibition is a fitting occasion to take a look at the situation of our plastic arts in recent years.

We cannot deny that we are subject to the various problems that this situation poses, despite the impossibility of doing justice to them, with all their ramifications and complications, in a single essay or presentation. I believe that this plight comes from the fact that all of these problems have been fully raised, and now various opinions regarding them contend with one another.

Before we examine these problems, we need to take a small step back to see how the phenomenon of painting emerged in our country and what ultimately has become of it—virtually the only manifestation of the plastic arts movement that we have—and to examine the social and political influences it was subject to.

Our preliminary investigation foregrounds paintings by the oldest of the painters among us, who are now well-known figures: the likes of [Mohammed] Ben Ali Rbati of Tangier, around 1920, for example. Rbati’s paintings are not entirely primitive; rather they are symbolic figurative paintings. I believe that they are an extension of the paintings that typically accompany illuminated manuscripts—an art form still practiced by a small number of Moroccan artists, the most famous of whom is al-Qadiri of Fez—for they are closer to Persian painting than to European painting, not least because Persian artists have employed similar methods for ornamental painting on architecture as well as furniture, such as tables and chairs.

To this extent, this phenomenon remains purely Moroccan, although we notice that the abundance of painting production by these older artists often was due to the support of certain foreigners who discovered them and then exploited their production for various reasons, the most common being the quest for the exotic and the primitive. Rbati, for example, was a cook in one of the large English families living in Tangier at the time. And after this phase, which is still characterized by a Moroccan authenticity, came another phase that included many foreign patrons, most of who were expatriates in Morocco during the Protectorate and after it, whose inclinations and intentions varied.

We will only be concerning ourselves with two examples here. One of them is from the north, and the other is from the south. In the north, the Spanish painter [Mariano] Bertuchi was commissioned by the Spanish Protectorate to preside over the fine arts, and the most important of his initiatives was the founding of a school of fine arts, which, in Tétouan, is there to this day, and a school of Islamic arts. The school of fine arts played an important role in preparing Moroccan painters and sculptors to pursue studies abroad, in particular in Spain, just as the school of Islamic arts took part in revitalizing the national arts of the north: wood, metal, and plaster engraving; pottery; and mosaics. In the school of fine arts, Moroccan pupils became familiar with painting according to an academic concept of representation.

I believe the most important example in the south was undertaken in Marrakesh by the French painter [Jacques] Majorelle, who had both direct and indirect influence on the emergence of painting there. I once heard that the first female painter in Morocco was a woman who worked with Majorelle and who he guided toward painting.

In addition to these two examples, which are positive to a certain extent, there were also deleterious elements among the foreign painters, some of who exerted a negative influence on the emergence of our painting, for in their painting, they were only interested in views of daily life. This lent their work, and that of those Moroccan painters who were influenced by them, a touristic and documentary quality.

It is for this reason that those paintings are not in any way characterized by a Moroccan authenticity; rather, they are nothing more than distortions of what Moroccan painting might be, in addition to being inferior examples of what might be characterized as European art. And if we recall that European painting was, in that particular phase, in the process of distancing itself greatly from purely representational classical painting, we further realize that those foreign painters did not present us with good examples of what authentic Moroccan painting might be. After this, there came a phase that is much nearer to us, in which the phenomena of primitive painting and the naïf painter arose. The strongest examples are works by Mohamed Ben Allal and Moulay Ahmed Drissi, both of whom are from Marrakesh. It is common knowledge that the backers of these two artists were foreign patrons, led by a few foreign painters. I believe that this foreign support—first by the French Protectorate’s fine arts administration prior to independence, and by the French cultural mission after independence—was a way of highlighting an artistic phenomenon based (given our backward characteristics) upon exoticism, and not by any means upon support of popular art, as some people might believe.

Immediately after this, certain young painters emerged who demonstrated a particular openness to modern art, and especially to abstraction. They were sponsored by those same circles, and were sent to Paris to benefit from its school. All those painters did in fact return to Morocco, and most of them were greatly influenced by the city of Paris, and they are the ones who now represent the abstractionist trend in general, and Art Informel in particular, with [Jilali] Gharbaoui being their most prominent figure.

As a result, most of those painters also fail to demonstrate a trace of Moroccan authenticity, still less any African authenticity. The patrons and supporters I mentioned sense this, and so they seek a new outlet. When they opt to abandon these artists by renouncing their most prominent representative, Gharbaoui, then they soon find him wandering the streets without food or shelter, with illness gnawing away at his body! And in their search they find “new talents,” but this time we see those talents returning to the ranks of the primitives. For the best those foreign supporters can find among the artists who come after Ben Allal—who has become too old for them—is [Ahmed] Ouardighi. And so they bring Ouardighi out into the open, and set up exhibitions for him at home and abroad, and create a market that no Moroccan painter has ever even dreamed of (some of his paintings have sold for record sums).

Although this presentation was brief due to space constraints, we can see that our manifestation of painting is closely linked to our associations with foreigners, and consequently to our lived historical and political circumstances during the Protectorate, and during the independence after it. Indeed, some of the aforementioned foreign circles imposed their patrimony on the artistic and cultural renaissance. Painting’s turn away from African and Arab traditions goes back, firstly, to the guidance of those circles, and secondly to a lack of awareness on the part of our painters with our cultural and intellectual identity, in light of the weakness of their own education—most of our painters are illiterate.

The disadvantages of that artistic orientation do not stop here, however. Their repercussions also include the fact that some of our intellectuals now associate representational painting with Moroccan reality, unaware of the fact that the essence of our art was not and will never be representational, for there is nothing representational in either our Islamic art or our Berber art. Rather, it is abstraction and symbol—the abstraction of nature in geometric painting, engraving, mosaic ornament, and Berber carpets. It is impossible for us to be authentic in our work by orienting ourselves toward representation in painting, so how would such an orientation be appropriate for us at a time when research in the plastic arts in the West is turning toward the symbolic and abstract, after abandoning their classical traditions; attempting to draw benefit in that new research from our [collective] mentalities so as to reach a rejuvenation, a symbolism and art that is in keeping with what might be a foundation for art of the future?! This leads to a certain confusion between the understanding of plastic arts and that of literary language, and consequently to a lack of understanding of the true function of painting: they demand from the painting that it tell stories, that it depict events for them, as if it were a report or a narrative record. And they also demand that the painting perform the same task that the newspaper—or writing in general—performs, or that photography performs, and here there is a serious confusion between the characteristics of languages and their identity. For if I demanded of a painting that it merely record an event for me, then it would be more appropriate for me to read an article in the newspaper, which might very well be a clearer and more faithful rendering of that event!

The language of the plastic arts is not subject to the requirements of verbal or literary language, for these are two separate entities, each with its own rules and characteristics, and neither of them needs the other in order to accomplish its task fully, although both of them do have certain points in common with other languages—mathematics, music, theater, etc.—in embodying the human intellect and its civilization.

The treatment of this topic leads us to discuss an important problem: that of commitment in art. There are many conflicting opinions concerning this principle, but those who have hitherto posed this problem have, in my opinion, made the same mistake that we mentioned earlier: for in their understanding, commitment comprises “representational” painting, and the personification of the feelings and problems that the people are subject to in their bitter struggles. They also believe—and rightly so, this time—that painting must express the people and be understood by the people.

From this erroneous perspective, it appears as if the woman who weaves carpets in the remotest tribe of the Atlas Mountains does not understand the carpets she has woven, the designs of which she herself has created. A few conclusions can be drawn from this:

“Representational realism is not at the core of our artistic mentality. Rather, it was imposed by a different, European mentality—a reactionary one—which is alien to us.

Primitive art is not the only fitting direction our plastic art movement can take.

True commitment does not necessarily mean returning to regressive artistic models that are alien to us.”

So what is the solution, then?

Just as I do not claim here to comprehensively treat all the elements that were at the origin of our current situation in the plastic arts, neither do I claim to be able to put forward solutions to the problems that this situation poses. All I can do is suggest elements of solutions, which I hope we can discuss.

My presentation should not lead anyone to think that I am defending what is called abstraction simply for abstraction’s sake. Instead, I want to have been of benefit to the reader by demonstrating that the problem is not that of “abstraction vs. realism?” Rather, it is the following: research within the plastic arts befitting our rich traditions, our mentality, and our true perspective on the future.

And I believe that the best research within our plastic arts will be none other than investigation that takes the facts that we mentioned earlier into account. In my opinion, we must stop equating representation and figuration in painting with realism, since our artistic heritage—that of geometric ornament—is more realist and expressive of our historical mentality than any image that depicts a scene from everyday life!

I believe that this is the path of our true commitment.

Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu Zeid.

Belkahia, Chebaa, Melehi at the Mohammed V Theatre in Rabat, January 9–February 17, 1966.

Eds.: This is a reference to the mental illness and hospitalization of Jilali Gharbaoui, who had earlier gained fame in Paris as an Informel painter.

The Crystalist Manifesto

By Hassan Abdallah, Hashim Ibrahim, Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq, Muhammad Hamid Shaddad, Naiyla Al Tayib | 1976

Introduction

Man himself is the endeavor and the subject of a crystal that extends endlessly within. This happens simultaneously in isolation from and in connection to other things. We believe that the contradictions inherent in the claim that the universe is finite are no less than the contradictions inherent in the claim that the universe is infinite.

In the face of this crisis, the Crystalist idea emerges: the universe is at once finite and infinite; things have dual natures. When we say dual, we do not mean contradictory, for we go further and say that truth itself has a dual nature. When we refer to the duality of truth, we do not mean its multiplicity. This is not an issue that can be contained within a simple quantity; but perhaps it can be contained within a teleological quantity, namely, pleasure.

Theorization

Truth is relative, and absolute nature is dependent on man as a limited proposition. The struggle between man and nature always tries to find forms and claims for the opposite, that is, the absolute man, face-to-face with the limited forms and institutions in nature, which are themselves man-made. If the dialectic in classical modern thought is expressed with the phrases there are no isolated phenomena and man’s knowledge of matter lies in his knowledge of the forms of that matter’s movement, then we, in accordance with the idea of the crystal, may venture that the dialectic is a substitute for nature itself.

The basic premise for Crystalist thought, or modern liberalism, is to reject the essential quality of things, for it is now clear that any essence is nothing but a semblance for another essence. In the past, it was said that the atom was the irreducible essence, but then a whole world was discovered within it—nuclei, electrons, protons. This applies to subatomic particles, sub-subatomic particles, and to the limitless forms of existence of the entire cosmos. Man’s struggle with nature is but a transition from semblance to essence, which is in turn a semblance for another essence, and so the undoing of contradictions continues endlessly. This is what we mean when we speak of the transition from the opaque to the transparent, i.e., the removal of layers of concealment. The discovery of atoms does not negate the surface existence of things. Hence the naming of our school Crystalism, which implies the existence of both the semblance, or form, of the crystal and the dimensions and spectrums perceived within it. In the past, the transition from semblance to essence, and then to semblance, and so on, was regarded as idealistic thought, the standing objection being: Is there no difference between semblance and essence? And does that not also entail a beginning and an end? To that we say: The difference is primarily one of research methodology, and that the differentiation between semblance and essence is also subject to the same infinite sequence: semblance, essence, semblance, essence. . . .

But in order not to drag others into precarious territory, we opt for simplification and describe the process as follows: the transition is from relative semblance to relative essence, which creates another relative semblance that contains a new essence, and so the undoing of contradictions continues. Furthermore, the idea itself, as well as objections to it, are ultimately nothing but a potential embodiment of the crystal in its infinite spectra and its semblances, themselves also subject to endlessness. It is self-evident that a book lying before its owner is nothing but a semblance of a deeper essence, but we would here add that the same book is an essence for the semblance that surrounds it. That is to say, the crystal not only moves forward but also extends backward. To be more precise, it moves in all directions, or in all of space; or, if you will, the Crystalist school is nothing other than a negation of the objectification of objects.

The Unit of Measurement

The possibilities that nature lays before our eyes are not the ultimate possibilities. When an electron is two thousand times smaller than a proton, and one gram measures six hundred million trillion protons, it is understandable that a human being today—with disparate senses and a simple, empirical mind—would feel extremely alienated when attempting to grasp such massive numbers. We believe that the crisis lies originally in the old unit of measurement, for philosophy and the empirical sciences make man the unit of measurement, which leads to a dead end. The solution to this contradiction is to resurrect the essence, not the semblance, as the unit of measurement. Man’s essence is pleasure, and that should be the sole unit of measurement everywhere, including in the sciences, philosophy, and art—there is no other criterion. Pleasure in fact represents a full circle, in the sense that it is both a means and an end. Our goal is to seek out the teleological quantity.

The Chaos of Quantity

The dramatic struggle between materialism and idealism has resulted in familiar theories regarding the reality of things. Since antiquity, idealist thinking has claimed that the difference in things lies in expansions and contractions in quantity, and that, per Pythagoras and Democritus, numerical proportions are the basis of differences between things. Materialism, on the other hand, declared differences between things to be qualitative and occurring as a result of quantitative accumulation. From the crystal’s perspective, we believe that neither of these approaches sufficiently grasps the reality of things, for both deal with quantity and accumulation as fixed realities rather than a reality full of myriad contradictions. Quantity itself is simultaneously rational and irrational. Taking, for example, the number one as a unit of quantity, we find that it is made up of an accumulation of three thirds. But if, for the sake of precision, we divide it decimally by three, we unexpectedly find the result to be cyclic fractions that extend into infinity, which means that the accumulation in the number one is irrational, for it is both finite and infinite. Furthermore, when one is divided by an even number—for example, two—we find that the result is infinitely divisible by two.

We are confronted with the truth of the statement It is irrational for the finite to contain the infinite. We conclude that the number 1 is an irregular accumulation that, despite its finiteness, contains infiniteness. But we are still faced with the quantitative unit of “one.” In response to this quantum chaos, Crystalist thought emerges and proposes the teleological quantity, which is pleasure, and which also has a dual nature, being simultaneously a means and an end.

The Unit of Time

From the perspective of the crystal, we assert that things produce their own time, that there is more than one time depending on the diversity and difference of nature’s possibilities, and that what we live in is not that mythical collective time supposedly agreed upon by all people and shared by all things. Understanding the interconnectedness of multiple times is not particularly difficult, but it does require a high level of Crystalism. Man’s current alienation does not lie in the discrepancy of public times produced separately by separate things, but rather in the discrepancy of personal times, considering that each person is a construct of multiple and diverse things. The time unit of the individual is a matter of utmost importance.

Knowledge

Neoclassicism asserts that knowledge moves from the specific to the general, then back to the specific. We believe that generalization is a domain of repression. What really happens is that the specific and the free are pulled into the general domain and then returned in chains. We aim to liberate things from the repression of knowledge itself. To say that we seek knowledge that liberates things from knowledge itself does not make us self-contradictory; it makes us Crystalists. If knowledge was once based on the paradigm that a thing cannot be known in isolation from other things or from itself, then what we are currently proposing, in accordance with Crystalism, is that a thing cannot be known in isolation from infinity, or, in other words, that a thing can only be known in isolation from finiteness. We attach great importance to the claim that nothing is something, and that the dissolution of objective boundaries is itself a new objective boundary.

The Unit of Space

Matter exists in space. Things can exist above or below, to the North or the South, to the East or the West, etc. In other words, space is direction. But a thing is itself a space in the sense of an area, and area is determined by specificity, meaning that it would be difficult to claim that space is area, since area is extracted from the absence of area. We therefore say that when direction is specified it should be called an area, or, in other words, when it is perceived it should be called an area. Hence, North or East are also spaces in the sense of areas, except that they extend infinitely and are relative; indeed, infinite extension is possible from any relative point. Quantity is corrupt! We do not mean to claim that space does not exist in reality, but rather that it is an intellectual methodology. Based on the idea that space is direction, it is possible to say that the thing itself exists everywhere and, to complicate matters further, that the thing exists here and there in the same direction. In the face of this chaos of space, we propose teleological space, which is pleasure.

Language

Language, in its current state, being extremely close to objects, demonstrates its own corruption. The only way out of this is to dissolve language and turn it into a transparent crystal that moves in all directions: between the name, the subject, the thought, and their components; between the word and its components; and between the letter and its components. We expect this to happen in such a way that the fundamental opposition in language becomes an opposition between the crystal of meaning and the crystal of vocalization, which is a first and necessary step. We should mention here that the science of semiotics, [Claude] Shannon’s information theory, the methods for measuring quantitative possibilities of all information contained in a vocalization, the methods of measuring the information contained within one letter of the alphabet, and all associated mathematical laws—are nothing but dry academic methodologies as far as the problem of language is concerned. They are all based on the corrupt notion of quantity, and so do not rise to the level of the crisis.

Community

There are three types of repression suffered by the human form. Seen from a modern perspective, the first type is the repression that started with the separation of organic and inorganic matter, leading to the creation of man. The second type is the emergence of the objective mind, which is the mind of man’s entry into community. We also concede that at first, man collided with reality and outwitted it by creating certain institutions to fight it. It was inevitable, then, to form a community, and accordingly, man gave up a portion of his freedom in order to achieve harmony between his individual interests and the community’s interests. At the time, this price he paid was almost a freedom in itself. Ever since entering into community, man has been confronted with certain historical epochs characterized by different production relationships that were adopted by the intellectual institutions of each epoch, all confirming that instrument of repression. But the truth we are now facing is that the repression that occurred with the emergence of the objective mind continued to be inherited from one generation to the next. The idea of behavioral inheritance has much to support it, despite its being intentionally neglected for a long time. The obvious battle was between the schools of [Jean-Baptiste] Lamarck and [Charles] Darwin on the one hand, and those of [Hugo] de Vries and [August] Weismann—with their germ-cell research and evening primrose discoveries—on the other. In recent times, McDonough¹ came up with the decisive response to the question of behavioral inheritance. In all cases, we currently adhere to the idea that the function creates the organ and not the other way around. The third type of repression is the ongoing repression that is linked to the individual from birth to the present moment. As mentioned earlier, repression at first was both a necessity and a form of freedom, but through the acquisition of characteristics and its normalization, things become one’s nature, so that repression is no longer a price that man paid that ends with the end of its causes, but has become a human characteristic. Furthermore, man now finds pleasure in repression itself, having replaced sensual pleasure with nonphysical pleasure. There would be nothing wrong with that had the insufficiency of abstract pleasure not been scientifically proven. This has led to the creation of a new man for this age, the indifferent man, the refusing man, the man who does not experience pleasure. Modern literature, from Albert Camus’s “stranger” and Colin Wilson’s “outsider” to Tayeb Salih’s character Mustafa Sa‘eed, speaks of the indifferent man, the man who does not experience pleasure. We believe that anyone who reads such literature and appreciates it also carries a similar current within him. The risk is magnified by the fact that the undoing of that repression and the liberation of man, and thus all forms of his creative activities and energies—arts and literature—would be achieved by negating the objective mind.

Transparency

Crystalism seeks transparency, and so does Sufism, but the difference between the two can be summarized as follows: while Sufism (a mode of behavior) calls for dissolving into the self by negating personal volition, we believe that negating personal volition itself requires volition, or, in other words, that negating volition is itself a volitional act. When continued infinitely—volition, negation, volition, negation, and so on—an extending, infinite crystal is created, which again means the endlessly extending presence of semblances and essence.

But similarities do exist: the idea of the crystal is mentioned, both explicitly and implicitly, in a number of religions, for example Manichaeism, Orphism, Christianity, and Islam.

Beauty

In response to the question of what beauty is, we say that the crystal represents utmost beauty, and that the most prominent quality of the crystal is its liberality, in the sense of its being liberated. Furthermore, we maintain that a thing becomes beautiful when it has acquired a certain measure of dissolving objective limitations.

Plastic Art

Line: The basic value of the line lies in its direction. As mentioned earlier, matter exists in a direction, which is space, and matter is itself space in the sense of area. But in the final analysis, a line is a dynamic spatial dimension that contains temporal differences and transforms into them. The most exciting things about the line are its tangible bias toward the concept of space as direction rather than as area, and its containment of simple and dynamic temporal differences.

Color: Color is a composite. Taking for instance the color red, we find it to be unlimited both positively and negatively. This has prompted academics to break it down into principal bundles—scarlet, vermilion, crimson, and rose—in a desperate attempt to contain its limitlessness. To make things easier, we call for a change in the names of colors, so that instead of red we would say redness. Furthermore, there are numerous principal factors that negate the limitedness of color, such as:

1. The inclination of unlimited color toward other colors, [as] blue exists in reddish or greenish tones, in utterly limitless variations.
2. The amount of light falling on a color and reflecting off it.
3. The proportion of whiteness or blackness in a color.
4. The eye’s capacity to see, taking into consideration: a) the eye’s physiological makeup; b) the eye’s training in seeing and perception.
5. Spatial distance, which is also limited. Color is completely different, depending on whether it is one centimeter away or ten thousand meters away. This can be clearly discerned in natural landscapes, where the color red is the first to fade, turning gradually to brown until it disappears.
6. Also, the psychological state of the viewer, which can simultaneously be both certain and doubtful.
7. The possibilities of the nature of color presented before us at any given moment are not final, for the colors of nature are limitless.
8. Colors exist in nature in the form of surface. It follows that no surface in nature is without a specific color. Areas themselves appear geometrically or organically. Once again, geometric forms are limitless, as are organic forms.
9. Another relative factor for the surface of a color, if its form is defined, is its size. Blue, for instance, can exist in an area as wide as the sea, or it can cover just one millimeter. Again, there are no limits to how big or small an area can be. This leads us to unequivocally assert that colors exist in nature in limitless forms and possibilities: each color has limitless tonalities, the number of colors in nature is limitless, and the relationships among colors are limitless.

It can be said that simply being aware of a thing causes it to lose its essential characteristic, provided it had one to begin with. In this regard, Mao Zedong says that to know the taste of an apple you must taste it, meaning that you must change its taste in order to know it. Saying that green cannot be known in isolation from other colors would be an incomplete claim. The truth is that green can be known in isolation from finiteness.

Form: Objects acquire plastic value from their external movement: the value of a triangle lies in its triangularity. The academic perspective then studies the affiliations or relationships of a triangle with regard to other related forms, i.e., its external movement within the set of external movements of forms that it influences, or by which it is influenced. Aspects of similarity, balance, sequence, rhythm, and the rejection of disharmonies are studied. We assert that the triangle itself is of unlimited triangularity, assuming the validity of its reality as a triangle. The possibilities of its relationships with other forms are also unlimited. But let us forget all this and return to the academic perspective, where forms have always been divided into geometric and organic. Then, as knowledge progressed, academics had to budge a little, for it was proven that organic forms are only the product of geometric accumulations. As for geometric forms, those were eventually relegated to the museum of history with a massive sign that read “Euclid.” The old dreams have all collapsed—that two parallel lines never meet, that a straight line is the shortest route between two points, and the most impregnable stronghold of all, that light moves in a straight line. The old academics clung to these for a while, believing that an equivalent of the straight line existed in nature. But modern physics showed no mercy for any of these beliefs, and now the straight line no longer has any existence whatsoever. The differentiation between geometric and organic forms was a result of a quantitative understanding of things, but in reality everything is simultaneously geometric and organic.

An Appeal

We call on all plastic artists to use the color blue, for it has great potential in showing internal dimensions and depths—in other words, it has the ability to create a Crystalist vision. It is currently the clearest embodiment of Crystalism within the color spectrum. We must stress that the human ability to see internal dimensions in the color blue is not merely the result of a conditional reflex specific to the blueness of the sea and the sky.

Drama

The idea of the three dimensions of theater is irrational, for each theatrical performance is as multiple as the people who watch it. Someone sitting in the first row sees movements, expressions, and emotions, and hears vocal tones that are all completely different from what someone sitting at the very back of the theater, or to the right or left of the stage, sees and hears. So with the arrival of each new audience member, who would naturally occupy a different seat from all the others, a play remains open to further plurality and division. This plurality goes on infinitely, which is valuable in and of itself. But academics, with their habit of twisting the truth, deal with each play from a singular view, and it is on this basis that they issue their judgments, criticisms, and interpretations. Last year, when we covered the front of the theater with a transparent crystal, we were referencing this affliction. In the near future, in an attempt to ease critics’ consciences and give ourselves some rest, we will be interrupting the performance for short intervals in which we will ask audience members to change seats so that they can enjoy a greater variety of plays and have a more pleasant experience. This should result in less criticism. The idea of acting, or characterization, is itself an irrational idea: for two hours an actor can wreak havoc in the world through his assumed character, before hurrying off the stage for a previously arranged appointment, a cinema date for instance. This irrationality is not something that we discovered; the very history of theater is built on it. The struggle between theater giants like [Bertolt] Brecht and [Konstantin] Stanislavsky reflect it, and a dialogue with them is quite possible. Let us start with Stanislavsky’s question, “How can affective memory be turned into deliberate action?” And can this be achieved in isolation from the thesis of transparency? Is there not a need—even a minor one—for a theater of telepathy, history, clairvoyance, psychiatry, or automatism?

Concerning the appeal to morphology (the science of form) to provide a futuristic solution to the problem of drama, we say that human morphology is a set of developmental cycles and multiple adaptations to ensure survival. We still maintain that it is the function that creates the organ and not the other way around. Furthermore, present morphology reflects that struggle that relates to the different capacities of an earlier age. Now that man has entered the technological age, present morphology has become almost a burden on him.

Poets

Transparency is a genuine current in poetry. What artist and poet William Blake said about man’s four-dimensional vision—the ability to see an entire world in a grain of sand—represents a cornerstone of Crystalist thought. Sufi poetry is also full of references to the reality of the crystal. Indeed, it takes the crystal to its furthest and most impenetrable extremes. This can be seen in the following translation of a poem by Asif Jatt Halabi:

The colors went to the sun I need neither colors Nor the absence of colors The suns died, devoid of space I need neither light Nor darkness

Children

The interest and intense joy that young children exhibit toward the crystal in its simple forms—like a soap bubble or a kaleidoscope, which consists of a lens and broken bits of glass—add to the crystal’s authenticity. Children’s interest in the crystal is a deeply complex matter, for children are the most complex of riddles.

Conclusion

We conclude by repeating that the crystal is nothing but the denial of the objectification of objects. It is infinite transparency. We painted the crystal, we thought about the crystal, and so the Crystalist vision came to be.

—“Bayān al-Madrasa al-Krīstāliyya,” al-Ayyām, January 21, 1976; repr. in Ṣalāḥ Ḥasan ʿAbd Allāh, Musāhamāt fī al-Adab al-Tashkīlī, 1974–86, 2nd ed. (Khartoum: Madarek, 2010), 311–22. Translated from Arabic by Nariman Youssef.

The post Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents appeared first on post.

In this video, Boris Groys speaks on the biopolitics of technological immortality and resurrection; Arseny Zhilyaev considers the aesthetic ideals of Russian Cosmism including “life building” in collaboration with God; Hito Steyerl talks about continued quests for the elixir of immortality, euthanasia, and genocide; and Anton Vidokle presents a recent short film called The Communist Revolution Was Caused by the Sun. Ksenia Nouril moderates a concluding panel discussion among the participants.

The post post Presents: Russian Cosmism appeared first on post.

Fire and the Cinema

Like many film histories, India’s silent cinema inevitably intersects with stories of fire. When silent-cinema pioneer Dhundiraj Govind Phalke remade his debut film Raja Harishchandra (King Harishchandra, 1913), four years later, in 1917, it is widely assumed to have been because a fire had destroyed the original. 

A century later, in 2013, when Phalke’s film was officially declared the moment when the “Indian” cinema was born, it would become a touchy question whether the crown jewel of the National Film Archive of India’s (NFAI) collection was indeed the 1913 original—or, in fact, a remake by its author and thus a copy or a kind of fake, albeit by its original maker. Missing in that controversy was, however, a second development: a more recent fire, on January 8, 2002, which may have destroyed around 1,700 nitrate prints, including the original print of whichever Raja Harishchandra was held in the NFAI. 

Much of the popular news coverage of the 2002 fire claims that “all” of India’s silent cinema had been destroyed. This wasn’t, of course, untrue, and yet to most Indian film historians, it appeared to be a curious claim. We have grown up with the firm belief that almost nothing beyond the much-vaunted Phalke had survived of Indian silent cinema, and so there could not have been much to lose. The NFAI itself covertly furthered this belief, belittling the damage and claiming that everything had been transferred to acetate, that nothing of value had been lost. This was surely a dubious claim, and not just for the obvious reason that a copy can never compensate for the loss of an original. Long before the 2002 fire, Phalke’s films had been duplicated by the NFAI with the sound gate closed, which meant that around 20 percent of the left side of the screen was lost in the transfer. This problem was never solved and the 2002 fire now meant that it never would be. Further, in 1965, Satish Bahadur, venerable professor of film appreciation at the Film and Television Institute of India, had cannibalized all of Phalke’s short films into a single compilation, which he titled D. G. Phalke: The First Indian Filmmaker, using English and French intertitles, apparently for International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) conference he attended. None of the fragments Bahadur used, including clips such as How Films Are Made (1917), which shows Phalke editing, shooting, and instructing his actors, today exist other than in his compilation. 

How Films Are Made/How They Live On

Phalke knew that he was making history with his first film, as he showed on February 13, 1928, when he uttered the famous words, “Yes, I began the Indian film industry in India in the year 1912” in response to a comment from the colonial government–appointed Indian Cinematograph Committee, “I suppose you began the film industry in this country.” 

As we link the more overt process of “making history” with the silent cinema’s more covert, crustacean-like resilience— in refusing to die, in crawling out of disaster both natural and man-made—it is tempting to include another fire in the saga: the famous fire of the sage Vishwamitra, in Raja Harishchandra, which is almost a premonition of how Phalke’s cinema would survive in the decades to come. When the king, out on a hunt in all his regal glory, clashes with the spiritual universe of the sage Vishwamitra, who has trapped the “three powers” in a fire, it is hard not to see the “powers” of the cinema itself as trapped in the fire. Premonitions, or fantasy flash-forwards were, one adds in parenthesis, well-known to Phalke (see the famous scene of the evil Kamsa in his Shri Krishna Janma, 1918).

When, as historians, we try to reconnect the Indian cinema’s own history with the larger history of the twentieth century, which it necessarily captures, we inevitably face the difficulty of having to square cultural survivals on film with the quixotic saga of the actual survival of film. When in 1994 the 14th Giornate del Cinema Muto (aka Pordenone Silent Film Festival) showcased India, many historians were surprised to see what the NFAI had come up with. At least twenty-five silent films apparently existed, either fully or in fragments. Only eight of these were Phalke’s. They were a mere drop in an ocean (India made upwards of 1,300 silent films between 1913 and 1931) but they were surely something! But what did these bits and pieces add up to in the end? 

It is in light of the sordid saga of the thrice-destroyed that we turn yet again, in the early twenty-first century, to the ravaged films. We do so now with some additional resources—and also the knowledge that these films are now in the public domain. They are available for research, using new digital platforms—such as the independent, noncommecial site Indiancine.ma—that provide for detailed viewing and annotation possibilities. With this we ask, certainly not for the first time, where we stand with regard to Indian silent–cinematic history. 

Baburao Painter’s Own Survival

Resources like these allow us to address the several “non-Phalke” silents that have come into public view with, and shortly after, the 14th Giornate—especially and above all the two films of Baburao Painter (1890–1954) that were reconstructed by the FTII’s former cinematography professor K. P. R. Nair. Painter began his career a few years after Phalke, and so might not have been able to make the claim of having “started” anything. But as one of the leading painters of stage backdrops in western India, and later producer and director at the Maharashtra Film Company, he was almost certainly the bigger name of the two—and would have been a much more substantial presence but for the historical accident that none of his films had apparently survived. 

Until now. Until, that is, the NFAI assembled in-house, under the supervision of the great K.P.R. Nair, Painter’s 1927 film Muraliwala. How Nair did it is, in and of itself, quite a story: it appears to have been with the lowest tech imaginable, literally a physical cleaning and frame-by-frame duplication—importantly, with the sound gate open, so that we have the complete frame—even as the original print fragmented in Nair’s hands, already lost, long before the 2002 fire.

In one way, Muraliwala is, of course, straightforwardly mythological, and indeed the resemblance to Phalke (the Kaliya sequence being almost a direct nod to Phalke’s Kaliya Mardan made nearly a decade earlier though not nearly as spectacular as its predecessor) permits Painter to be easily absorbed into the nationalist stream. But let’s pause for a moment. Painter has a social context that is certainly not Phalke’s: he is not Brahmin but comes instead from the low-caste carpenter community; he is, in the end a “technician.” Phalke had neither students nor disciples. Painter had both. His own work straddled technological skill and an aspiration toward artistic authorship, the mold for almost everything produced by what would later become one of India’s best-known film studios, the venerable Prabhat Film Company. 

Painter’s leading student, future director and actor V. Shantaram, who made his debut in Muraliwala, would later embody his teacher’s legacy, in all its contradictions in terms of caste and otherwise, in a way that I lack space here to explore. Suffice it to say that the tension between fantasy (which, here, means special effects, dissolves, and trick scenes, which in turn bring in a lower-class artisanal skill and, of course, thrills for a “cheaper” class of audience) and realism (the gesture toward thematic interpretation, the literary legacy, and eventually nationalist purpose) would only grow as Maharashtra Company shaded into Prabhat. 

Might we now read, as we read Painter’s curious rebirth in digital platforms a century later, some of this self-doubt, this doubt as it stands between the mesmerizing pyrotechnics of the little Krishna and the more adult responsibilities of conjugal relations—the tension between fantasy and realism—in Shantaram’s extraordinary performance as Raman in Muraliwala? What does a man do, we may ask within the full-blown subjective realism that such a performance permits, when his wife is so obsessed with a child? What does it mean when the child tells her that she must learn to look at him with the eye of wisdom?

Let us analyze the sequence. The children have just completed yet another of their endless pranks. A cut. Raman and Radha are together, sharing for the first time genuine conjugal happiness. But then the demon resurfaces; as the nightmare continues, Raman dissolves yet again into the child Krishna. The problem has not been solved. What happens thereafter we don’t know (though we can surely guess), for after some fairly intimate exchanges with the child, Radha falls into a dead faint. Raman reappears, and he and Krishna have a confrontation. Krishna waves an accusing finger at Raman before stalking off. Raman, now helplessly standing before the unconscious Radha, keeps fantasizing that Krishna is standing there, when suddenly there is a flash of lightning and thunder; Raman is blinded and falls down, as Krishna is seen descending down what seems to be a gigantic crevice. 

Krishna is now in the throes of his epic and terminal battle with the snake-demon, from which he emerges vanquished—also having, presumably killed the demon, surely the very demon plaguing Radha’s life?

However we understand this extraordinary staging of the ethical dilemmas that precede the epic battle, it is surely unprecedented in Indian cinema. In fact, I know of little that has followed Muraliwala that so remarkably explores the ethics of the love story between Radha and Krishna. Certainly there is very much more than an incipient realism at work here: there is, precisely, the aspiration of a cinematic form to work out of its formal location—fantasy—and to arrive at a properly realist text. Is there (and I leave the question open in this brief blog-note) any possible historical connection we may now make in terms of how this film came to be, and then came to be before us, with the dilemmas of modernity that ravaged its protagonists at the time it had been conceived and made? Whatever the answer, the question at least directs us toward the sorts of dilemmas that await India’s silent-film historians once we have gotten our heads around all those fires, the lightning, and the thunder. 

For a complete list of Indian silent films on Indiancine.ma, go here.

The post The Film Fragment: Survivals in Indian Silent Film appeared first on post.