Huguette Caland By Helen Khal – The Woman Artist in Lebanon
"Art is
not a part of my life; it is my whole life. I've never analyzed
my creative intention. I know only that I want to determine a point
of emotion in the painting or drawing, and that I am absorbed by
an exploration of the sensual possibilities of the human body. My
body feels these possibilities more in painting than in drawing,
perhaps because the material itself is so much more sensual; two
felt and painted forms touching evoke the touching of human bodies.”
Although she
always knew that one day she would become an artist, Hugette Caland
did not begin until she was 33 years old. As she says, "There
were too many other events in my life, too many other commitments
to finish with before I could turn to art. I had to go through being
a daughter, a woman, a wife, a mother; I had to taste and digest
all that living before I could begin with the artist in me… And
I don't like doing things in half measure."
A first thing
first is axiomatic to the character of Huguette. Decisions are made,
each in its proper time, and always with total dedication. Of strong
and willful personality, with a spirit of calculated risk which
is the mark of a born gambler, she rarely acts purely on impulse.
Each move is carefully considered and the stakes decided upon; then
will, perseverance, and patience become the substance of her method.
She began decisions
at an early age, and it didn't make any difference that she was
the daughter of Lebanon's president, Bechara El Khoury; it simply
made things more difficult, more challenging (and Hugette loves
challenge). While her father strived for the independence of his
country, she was concentrating on achieving her own independence.
Her life was filled with many incidents and experiences uncommon
in the lives of most children. Constantly faced with pressures to
conform to the dictates of her status and role, she resisted; many
stories are related of her youthful escapades, of a conduct unbecoming
the daughter of a president.
Few young girls,
for instance, fall in love at the age of 12 to the serious point
of choosing a husband. Huguette did - - with 17-year-old Paul Caland
who, to make matters worse, came from a family that was actively
engaged in political battle with her father. "From the moment
I saw him, I decided he was the man I would marry," recalls
Huguette. "He didn't know it, my parents didn't know it, but
I had made up my mind. It wasn't easy, and it took eight years of
effort on my part. George Naccache, Paul's uncle, owned the leading
opposition newspaper, and was regularly lashing out at my father's
regime. It was a Montague-Capulet affair… and I had my Romeo to
convince besides, because at first he didn't pay much attention
to this 12-year-old Juliet! There were secret meetings (and plots
to evade the security guards assigned to me); there were constant
battles at home, tears and angry words; but I stubbornly persisted,
my parents finally capitulated, and when I was 20 Paul and I were
married."
Behind such
qualities of reasoned planning and determination, however, lies
another stratum in the temperament of Huguette Caland. There is
another side, which lends reverberant counterpoint to her life and
provides the tension and energy, the storehouse of fantasy and imagery,
out of which her art is born. When Huguette speaks about her chilhood,
she reveals early manifestations of unbridled imagination and curiosity,
of impulsive emotions often shot with intangible currents of uncertainty
and fear. She remembers the child's world of demons and angels she
found in the changing night shadows on her bedroom walls, frighteningly
alive and real. She remembers the night when illusion and reality
became one, when French soldiers in search of her father suddenly
burst into the room and with bayonets slashed through the mosquito
netting above her head. She remembers also at times experiencing
levitation and insists that she was able at will to elevate her
body.
About body,
Huguette speaks with complete candor: "You know, as a young
girl, I weighed 112 kilograms. I was grotesquely huge… and that
was another kind of battle I had to contend with. Why did I persist
in stealing sweets when I was supposed to be dieting; why did I
let myself grow so fat that it became finally not only aesthetically
unacceptable but also physically painful? I don't know… To hurt
myself? To hurt my parents? To defy the world and insist that it
accept me as I was, all 112 kilos of me? I accumulated and kept
that weight, it seems, with the same determination and thoroughness
with which I decided to and managed to marry the man I wanted."
A simple psychological
label for this abuse of the body would be "frustrated desire".
And to a certain extent, despite surface indications to the contrary,
this may be true - -because when finally Huguette began to paint,
she also at the same time began to pay attention to the state of
her body, and proceeded with methodical determination to lose 30
kilos in one year.
There exists,
however, another kind of concern with the human body which is neither
frustration nor a matter of kilos, but rather one of admitted and
avid curiosity in its sensual and erotic possibilities. In her work
today, Huguette makes an inquiry into this realm, exploring all
the qualities of line, texture, angle and juncture of limb, torso,
and appendage with the absorbed and innocent eye of a child examining
a new toy. Although the erotica is often explicit, the eye is first
provoked by a highly inventive handling of compositional space,
and follows with aesthetic appreciation Huguette's seductive, abstract
play line, color, and form. It is only upon closer, more literal
observation that one arrives at the erotic content - - but not before
being wooed by the tender humor and wit of a surreal imagination
that insists on the pleasures of sensual discovery and denies any
taboo.
Huguette began
to paint, finally and precisely, in January, 1964, immediately after
her father's death. He had been ill for three years, and through
those years she had remained at his bedside, the devoted daughter.
Now that obligation of filial love was ended, and less than a week
later she announced her decision. Her husband, long ago recognizing
the unusual qualities of the woman he had married, brought her the
paints, brushes, canvas, and later built her a studio. She had never
been the conventional wife and mother and she never would be, he
knew. He also knew that this decision would become a permanent and
total commitment, that it would take priority above all else in
Huguette's life, and that it would be left to him to guide their
three young children into adulthood. He eased her path then, and
still does.
Steel Blue, 1973, oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm.
Sculptural modeling
develops the volume in this painting and gives the shapes the burnished
quality
of metal. They press heavily against each other, and are relieved
only by the
two horizontal white areas. The diagonal white, however, instead
of easing the
tension, increases the sense of pressure and anxiety expressed.
The forms are
large and heavy, but their edges are treated with sensitive sensuality.
She began, completely
alone and without guidance, yet in those first months produced works
of startling accomplishment, both in size and quality of expression
- - one of her first canvasses was a large, red abstract two and
a half meters long. Aware, however, that she needed some formal
training, she enrolled a year later in art classes at AUB. There,
for four years she moved through the entire gamut of plastic expression,
from drawing to painting, from figurative to abstract, absorbing
all techniques, all materials, with remarkable appetite and energy.
In 1970, after
her first exhibition in Lebanon, she left both country and family
to live and work in Paris. When questioned about this move, Huguette
says: "I felt too confined in Lebanon. Maybe it was the fact
that the public viewed me still as a president's daughter and not
as an artist… maybe it was the ambiguity of my role at home - -
being a wife and a mother, and still not actually being one… or
maybe I wanted that larger challenge of the world, and not just
Lebanon. I suppose it's a combination of all."
Each summer,
however, she returns. Physically separated from her husband and
children and following no conventional patterns of “We are a family
of individuals,” Huguette says. “Each must be permitted to chase
after his own star, and to each, no matter what that star and to
what corner of the world it may lead, the rest of us give all support.”
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