Art
in Lebanon – the Last Thirty Years by artist Joseph Mattar, copyright
2008 LebanonArt.com (Published in Byblos Art N'2, 2009)
To make a review
of contemporary art takes no little time, for it is a complicated
task involving not only art proper but also culture in general and
all sorts of creative activities. Contemporary art, as its name
indicates, follows on to that of the recent past and is a fore-runner
of that of the near future.
We are surrounded
by the achievements of creators, and that is what constitutes our
civilization. We all know that in face of the world become there
is already the world becoming, one where the laws of our existence
also apply.
Contemporary
reality animates the forces of our imagination, stimulates our faculties
and manifests itself in works of every kind, with as support here
a white sheet of paper, there a panel of wood, elsewhere some canvas,
stone, a wooden block, various materials or even sound, taking on
various forms as monuments or as words.
Is it possible
to find a certain unity of soul in so many diverse ways of expression,
in painting, architecture, theater, music, sculpture, dance or choreography,
offered to our consideration in museums, art galleries, studios,
scenery, cornices, the internet and so on?
The creative
powers of each one of us expressed in these ways become accessible
to others, to the common awareness, to the life of our times.
What is more,
in every epoch we live against a background of social structures,
traditions, usages, customs and habits which evolve, disappear and
give place to other expression under the pressure of new creative
geniuses.
I am a citizen
of this world, the old, the contemporary and the future; I come
from the land which was the cradle of the Alphabet, and am a son
of the light of the East and of its mythology, and also son of the
nuclear era and of the conquest of space, of the year 2008, breathing
the air of my time.
I remember well
my long and frequent forays in the space of the Grand Palais, the
salons, the galleries, the museums of Paris, and in Beirut before
our own modest high spots; all the schools were to be found, from
the figurative to the cubist, abstract, tachist and unreal. The
artistic movement in painting is the same, our newspapers and magazines
in English or in French, our joyful festivals at Baalbek, Byblos
and Beiteddine. They offer us images, scenes, books and critical
analysis of a kind similar to the best products of Paris, London
or New York. Our planet has become this small village of neighboring
tribes where exchanges take place at the rhythm of our time in every
domain.
Only the names
change: instead of contemplating a Rouault or a Braque in Paris,
here we admire an Onsi or a Gebran or some other artist in Beirut.
Instead of listening over there to Valéry, here one listens
to Saïd Akl, Charles Corm and the like. Art has conquered all
the frontiers of countries and races and even of souls, with communication
become so general.
The Louvre with
its treasures will soon be opening its doors in the Emirates and
after one thousand years the Sorbonne, created as long ago as the
tenth century, will be setting up its faculties in the deserts of
the Gulf in order to spread the magic of our Alpha Beta and other
letters fallen from the sky on the Phoenician coast at Byblos, leading
to the existence of books and all the mechanism of “relations”,
since Europe, the princess Europa, one of our own, was taken away
by Zeus from Tyre and conquered the continent to which she gave
her name, making way for the era of Pericles and for the Greek miracle,
for the medieval icons and the quattrocento, and the spread of a
unique learning throughout the whole world.
The contemporary
“self” is ever the promoter of the future. The Parthenon is as contemporary
as the offices of the Defense Ministry. To perceive means to see
in another way at the same time. The development of thought from
Plato to the computer, chips and artificial thought has taken 2,500
years, and all that was yesterday. In every age, Man has gone through
his evolution and has explored the treasures hidden in Nature as
in his own soul, using techniques and supports, lines, colors, forms
designs, volumes, gestures and sounds. Who would dare to say that
Cézanne was more contemporary than Dürer, Dali or Vermeer?
Each has a style according to his times and his individuality is
in harmony with his own soul and that of his time.
“How much longer
must we wait,” said Kandiresky in 1916, “before it is understood
that every new content demands a form created according to its likeness
and that a form without content is a sin against the Spirit?” By
good luck, I got hold of “Caractère de l’époque actuelle”,
a superb course given in Germany, but dated 1804-1805. So what is
now something of the present was even then contemporary.
At the present
time we are living through a great noise being made in the press
and the media, with the creation of hundreds of galleries retail
sites in the rich oil states and the great European houses opening
dozens of branches from Beirut to the Arabian Gulf.
Any work of
art is subjected to the economics of the market, and the press always
seeks to persuade us by adding zeros to the right of the price of
any article. The game is cleverly synchronized. At Dubai for example
lessons and courses are given free to initiate people into abstract
art, something dating from 1910, which is now so fashionable. There
are advisers who offer their services free of charge to explain
to you what figurative arts you should invest in and where and how.
The banks are ready to help on the financial side.
There is an
orchestration by the media, using every means in order to sell works
that are beautiful or not so beautiful, superb or mediocre, all
bringing works of art into the economy of the marketplace. We know
the important names of reference, but will keep them under our hat.
“How does the
artist manage to create” remains a purely secondary consideration
while a man has in himself the ability to represent, to think, to
dream, to feel and to individualize his sensations, his particularities,
his passions and his emotions.
Art evolves,
and so do the human being and the whole universe. The present-day
world is desperately seeking novelty in a race maintained by new
procedures and materials.
Renewal enriches
abundance of works. So-called schools erupt on the scene and reach
their climax, living only on what is present without any link to
the traditional, preferring experiment, research, change and, when
necessary, extravagance. Exhibition galleries, illustrated reviews,
TV clips, all make us see as art drawings, paintings, canvases,
surfaces and volumes with the most sophisticated forms. They may
even be the works of awkward imitators in search of notoriety, all
seizing as best they can on the advertising and presenting their
stuff as representative of modern art. Any surface, whether canvas
or wall, lends itself to the reproduction in image of some fantasy
or of a profound vision. The odd art critics know well how to dazzle
the reader or the visitor with a pretentious vocabulary which is
to be swallowed without a smile.
The real artist
will show himself master of the situation. The true creator or poet
will make of the masterpiece a living organism imbued with spirituality,
and even holiness in some cases, since a true work is the fruit
of thought, emotion and imagination in the conscious and in the
unconscious.
According to
Rudoph Steiner, “If {acting} alone, abstract thought gives surcharge
to the memory. Artistic contemplation forms it and the effort of
will consolidates it.” To press the point home, an illustration
comes to my mind. It is that art is a confrontation between light
and darkness, the conscious and the unconscious, the divine and
the human, where individualism, the self, the ego, shows itself.
Good wine is a bunch of grapes which ripened during the whole summer
season, having absorbed with light and warmth, then put away in
the cool darkness of the cellars in order to age, to enrich itself
and to become nectar of the Gods. All that is clearly seen even
if not always clearly expressed. And so I come to the concrete situation
presented in the domain of pictorial art in Lebanon over the last
thirty years.
A first generation
remained faithful to the fashionable figure painting, with portraits,
landscapes, Nature and scenes of social and religious life, pioneers
who opened the way, such as David Corm, Habib Srour, and Khalil
Salibi, well known for their work between 1860 and 1920.
A second generation
includes Youssef el Howayek, Gebran Khalil Gebran, Omar Onsi, Saliba
Douwaihy, Cor, Wehbeh, going from the beginning of the twentieth
century to 1960 or ’70.
A third generation
came in the nineteen-forties with Elie Kanaan, Jean Khalifeh, Ameen
Sfeir, Basha, Joseph Mattar, Basbous, Sharaf, Jordak, Shart, Awad,Najm,
Rayess, Zaven – in fact the number steadily increases.
Then a fourth
arose between 1960 and 1970. Here we have a very long list, with
Berberi, Doumit, Assadour, Sursock, Nakhleh, Ghali, Naomi, Hrair
and Harfoush, to mention only some.
The fifth and
sixth generations take us down to the present moment and here I
must stop. Many of these artists were my own pupils and I must point
out that there was never an actual rupture between one generation
and another, but rather a continuity with intimate connections.
At the demand
of the review Magazine Byblos, I am going to choose a score of artists
from over the last forty years in order to present their profile
in a short and rapid summary, drawing on the documentation in onefineart.com.
The second generation,
mentioned above, continued to assert itself through its fidelity
to figurative art, but took on with talent the new forms such as
fauvism, cubism, cubism, expressionism, and so on. Some threw themselves
into abstract, tachism, unreal, so as to be “in”, and there were
critics ready to impress the public with the imagined talent.
I stop here
just to give a one-page outline of our universities, academies and
faculties, to be numbered by hundreds, scattered throughout Lebanon,
as well as of the galleries and studios active in different parts.
I do not forget to mention a large number of Lebanese artists living
in Europe, America and round the world.
The score of
artists chosen without discrimination or prejudice have been picked
out of the last few years’ issues of the Cultural Agenda and out
of onefineart.com, artists who are active, working, showing. When
I say “picked out” I mean chosen, ones who make me feel some conviction.
The present range is widely varied. Decorators who have ventured
into the plastic arts are many.
Very capable
architects have thrown themselves into the figurative arts with
professional flare, ones such as Abdallah Dadour, Bonfils and Jean
(John) Lahoud, together with poets following the example of Joseph
Abou Daher. Of the many intellectuals who have made the change,
some have become colorists and others creators of forms or graphists,
existentialists and the like. Follow the fashion? Why not? One has
to. And “...if,” according to Beuys, “every human is an artist and
can become more and more so, the question of the adequation of the
art to the spirit, that means to say its adequation to reality,
should be the object of greater attention and increased consciousness,
both on the part of the artist and of the public.”
There are among
us some excellent critics. We know how much in France Diderot in
the eighteenth century and Baudelaire in the nineteenth were able
to make the public understand and enjoy the masterpieces of their
time and sometimes to reveal the artistic geniuses unnoticed by
their contemporaries. Even the genius Picasso, with his brilliant
follies (see the magazine of Paris Match of 22nd September, 2008)
was to be recognized and praised for his great qualities of impish
metteur-en-scène.
Truth or deception?
Rather should we continue to form our aesthetic judgment and let
the sun rise shining in the heaven of these new worlds and in hearts
bathed in love.
(Translator’s
note: “sh” gives the correct pronunciation in English spelling,
but the following names are normally written with “ch” in their
more widely used French forms. “Amine” has been given in its English
form “Ameen”.
Ashkar,
Ivette
For her, painting
is life, the air she breathes. Sincere and sensitive with great
freedom of expression, in her abstract world she speaks of drama
mixed with joy, a fairylike play of ever new virtuosities.
Berberi,
Antoine
An intellectual
and dynamic artist, also technician deeply versed in his craft,
he lets iron in his hands become movement and poetry. Bronze is
transformed into busts and monuments pulsating with life. Berberi
is a creative artist and patriotic historian, with national and
human motifs.
Bezdikian,
Assadour
As an artist
who is intellectual and creative, tormented, existentialist and
mythic, he expresses in his compositions the relationships of man
with time, the past, future and day-to-day. His own urban landscape
with its variants is the symbol of a civilization which time has
dislocated and ravaged.
Shamoun,
Shawki
He makes a geometric
reconstruction of facts and of things, in a way not without realism,
proceeding by elimination, keeping the sites of a lively communication,
emotive, pure, rhyming with the splashes of color representing gleaming
individuals.
Codsi,
Flavia
She is a painter
with an ethereal and clear transparency, of great sensitivity, easy
to understand. From trompe l’œil to hyper-realism, she composes
in her work a poem expressing day-to-day reality and conveys there
her own sensations. She masters chiaroscuro with its breath-taking
contrasts.
Doumit,
Naïm
Here we have
a calm, thoughtful and silent sculptor, able to simplify and to
take the modulations of his works to the point of paroxysm. He carves
both wood and stone, breathing into them life, and modeling clay
so seizing the soul and the spirit of things.
El
Basha, Ameen
This painter
received a solid formation in the academies of Lebanon and Paris,
and is a fine colorist, doing work both transparent and rich. She
is a creator who knows how to put her own imprint and character
into existence. Born into a family of artists and musicians, she
has kept harmony in her life. Her palette is also a keyboard, full
of virtuosity and poetry.
Faloughi,
Joseph
A silent and
discreet artist, in his research he exploits complementary tints
in juxtaposition; tones and subtle shades create an atmosphere that
expresses emotions and states of the soul which invite contemplation.
He observes Nature, but simplifies its reality and expresses his
own personal interior vision.
Haddad,
Victor
Here we have
an artist who is master and modulator of line. In his numberless
arabesques there arise his figurative forms in a continuity, play
of movement and linear spirals which tell us about Lebanon, about
its mythology, its gods, its lights and its people. With Haddad
reality shines out and so enchants us.
Hrair,
Diabékisian
Hrair has a
way of his own for portraying people, horses and houses. He shows
care in the forms and in the repetition of the decorative elements,
with a use of gold that reminds one of icons. His technique is related
to his own self. His expression and his vocabulary are rich indeed
and his colors gleam like so many suns.
Although as
an artist he is simple and delicate, he is also a master decided,
firm and energetic when he so desires.
Jouni,
Hassan
Jouni is a figurative
painter with solid constructions. He distributes his material with
a great deal of taste and care over detail. He likes to take as
his subjects scenes and groups, in coffee shops and such typically
Lebanese traditional settings. The space he creates is enchanting
even when extended into efforts across abstract planes. Jouni is
a true artist and a poet.
Kalfayan,
André
Although self-taught,
Kalfayan has been able by his efforts to attain a personal style
and technique to express the world around him at Byblos that fascinates
him. His attention is caught by any doorstep, passage, opening,
door or window, which immediately becomes his one subject multiplied
to infinity, the daily life of this world, where his heritage is
always present and is picturesque in all its nearby forms.
Kanaan,
Elie
The works of
this painter and colorist offer a play of colors which fascinate
and delight us. Through a rich and structured tachism, we discover
the soul of Elie Kanaan. Artist born, he devotes himself to his
task without discussion and takes expression to the point of emotion.
Kawak,
Marie-Claude
Interior architect,
she has delved into painting. With spaces and perspectives ornamented
with a subtle geometry and with oriental arabesques, she transforms
the desired structures into elements of dreams, of dialogue and
of exchange.
Lahoud,
Jean (John)
Trained as an
architect, he switched over to the plastic arts, beginning with
water-colors and creating a personal universe of geometric and metallic
constructions. His space is raised into volumes which travel in
a three-dimensional cosmos.
Madi,
Hussein
Draughtsman,
painter, sculptor, engraver, graphic artist, illustrator, caricaturist
and craftsman in the fields of ceramics and mosaic, he has a diversity
of talent that explains his rigorous work, his balanced and unified
composition, and his continuity fed by an orientalism of a world
of fantasy.
Joseph
Mattar
An astounding
alliance engages himself with his very Creator. The divine and the
human, heaven and earth, come together in his works and in a poetry
warm and appeasing. What is created becomes creation and celebrates
the play of the sacred that he carries within himself. His work
aspires to be a poem of love and a prayer; his paintings are luminous
and in them he expresses his soul. He loves to express himself in
scenes of Nature that abound in beauty. ( – Jean Delalande)
Nahlé,
Wajih
Nahlé
transmits his message through a calligraphy which is special to
him, “arabesque” letters which turn to groups and forms bringing
his simple space into harmony with both form and content.
Rawas
Mohamad
Painter and
technician, and going from Pop Art to dadaïsm and surrealism,
from graphics to collage, and, sure of himself, he has mastered
a solid technique. Aesthetic, he has a world view constructed into
a creative and homogeneous process.
Saïkali,
Nadia
She has a call
which silences all around her and gives rise in the regions of her
worlds to flashes, outbursts, high-tension sparks and tension, for
her world is action, movement and an ever-renewed birth.
Selwan,
Ibrahim
For Selwan painting
is more than expression but rather a religious vocation. His theatrical
stage of rotating movement in perfect balance makes a world entirely
his own with its dimensions and ranges where his soul is reflected
as in a mirror.
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