|  Wajih
Nahlé
To
know about the CV of the artist, click here
The Movement and Color by André
Parinaud
Président de l'académie Nationale des Arts de
la Rue.
Président du grand prix de l'affiche française.
Président du Salon de l'affiche et des arts de la rue. Paris.
In our time,
where the civilizations are face to face, not only to challenge,
but also to get to know each other and, if possible, to marry. The
work of Wajih Nahle is a bridge between the Moslem world and the
occident. It is not certain that the three giants who lead the world,
strapped in their materialistic ambitions dyed with artificial sauce
of false philosophies adapted to the imperialisms, determine the
meaning of history. As if the cataclysm is not at the end of their
rivalries, it is unnecessary that the planet, one day tries to live.
And then the Spirit and its styles will take the upper side. Greece
defeated, imposed on Rome more than a victory could have done. I
think that getting prepared today are the true formulas of tomorrows'
quality of life; that the little Europe, clumsy and divided against
herself, but attempting to make its unity, and that the Arab world,
which petrol had placed since half a century in the center of happenings
(who could appear, the one and the other for the "greats"
as land of stake) are preparing in reality a shining revenge in
forging the arms of the soul. I think that their artists, their
thinkers, their scientists, those who are not contaminated by shortsighted
politics and commerces, are actually elaborating the line of strength
of the future. Their works are the crucibles new and true values.
It is on this level that the gesture of Wajih Nahle is situated.
He belongs to this marvelous little country, the Lebanon, balcony
of the Orient on the Mediterranean Europe, Gordion knot of the values
of the past and the present, magician's pot where the forces of
most illustrious races of the planet pulsate. He is linked organically
to this earth of all contrasts and dreams. His other native virtue
is that he breathes God with the natural of the desert hermits.
His paintings' gesture could be mystical but justly, the presence
of the occident, its culture, its intelligence, its plastic provocation
give to his word a universal range.
Arab, Moselm, most certainly, but with all the rational acuteness
of the Occidental are the evidence is in his writing. His purpose
could have considered of putting on page the name of Allah, of saying
with talent the graphical beauty of sign of the Arab calligraphy.
He would have become the image maker of a people and one of the
first painters’s of his country, a marvelous enlightener of God's
alphabet, taking like the plastic following of the Great Priests.
His historical dimension is having understood that his true inspiration
was at the level of his time as much as of his country.
Wajih Nahle
refused the easiness which would have consisted to exploit the harmonious
values of the letter, and which would have ended by the flourish,
it means to the exaltation of person, of the individualism, and
he prefers to choose the efficacy, which is the communication, the
truth sensible to all. It is essential that each of Nahle's paintings,
not only expresses the perfect harmony, the flasing gesture, the
identity of its author, but also wants to say something. He paints
names, shouts, wishes: his painting is prayer, faith, will. He wants
himself depth and form. He is the making and the speaking; each
of his works is a scenery of God. So, he is the most figural of
the abstracts and the most abstract of the figurative.
I believe that the occidental painting is at a turning which will
achieve the crisis, begun with Du champ. In a three quarter of a
century, the artists had broken the old pictures and the sclerotic
structures of the spirit, which were paralyzing the intelligence
and the sensibility. The old shaky heritage is liquidated. The essence
of things still exists and is looking for a new cover. The great
abstract adventure, in putting into evidence the quality and independence
of forms and colors, had revealed the language of the new values.
The konetic, the hop and pop established little by little the code
of the relation between the visual and the concept. A new reality
appeared. One could even say that everything concurs to prepare
new forms of expression: the technique of the message transmission,
for example, by the publicity; the suggestion of cinema pictures;
the vision evolution at the planetary scale through television,
another organical conception of the perception of felt speed, at
the car level; another sensation of space registered with the aviation.
Man changes skin and a big mutation is at the door of history.
Wajin Nahle is one of those by which the meant could become meaning
and model. As the generosity of his gesture is not less big than
that of an occidental artist, and the command which he accepts in
choosing the word that he is going to paint does not diminish the
plastically range of his creation. It is a supplementary challenge
he imposes.
Each of his paintings has the full meaning of the word, and his
message in becoming fully plastically, takes a spiritual aureole
which is the true measure of the art of painting.
If the modern occident finds one day his classicism, it will not
be but by the popular adhesion, by the establishment of a real communication,
by the apparition of an evidence. Nahle shows the road.
By him, the
Arab scripture becomes transcendence. His painting makes explode
the word in order to give to it its magnetism and let it rediscover
its fascination. He wants himself as painter of the great adventures
of the modern art permitted to him to find its solution. One can
see how he composed his palette, established his papers, and enlarged
his gesture, with the contact of the great works of the modern world.
Today, rediscovering the strength of the great arabesque which inspired
the masters of the Moslem art, he reaches us with the force of the
instinct and the quality of two cultures, assimilated perfectly.
Even when one ignores the signification of the words Nahle paints,
one feels the affirmation because his faith is true and his art
is imprint with a strong poetry. I could say that Nahle is one of
the pioneers of this school of message which may become the great
élan of the classicism to be born.
He half-opened the doors of the human truth of today's painting.
The collective world, which is slowly attempting to define its future
rules demands an art where it could recognize it self in. The time
of the furious individualism has used up his magic. The little games
of society and the trickeries of the self have lost all charm. An
immense hunger will develop: The appetite of a planetary race looking
for the pictures of its strength and it is the message one must
communicate.
A Plethora
of Signs by Adonis, a poet
Once you look
at Wajih Nahle's paintings, you feel as if he uses the body of words
to take you to the beginnings. Then, he tears this body apart and
leaves its parts scattered and goes on to mix them together, make
them contrast against each other or keeps them together, hence the
lines are skillfully dispersed.
When the words turn into lines, they enter the place and space to
turn into lively movement that bends, wavers, takes sharp edges,
gets intermingled, interacts, goes in parallel directions, turn,
groups and smoothly flows to offer implications that are loaded
with signs.
Indeed, it is neither the line nor the figure that have an implication
of their own, but they conceal a meaning or show an extent or extend
the road to the unknown.
A line is a symbol of another writing to the world. It is another
shape that can have an endless shape. In this context, the abstract
and the tangible are entwined. The imagination and concrete material
can get together.
The real world gives an indication of this embrace. A living person
can be a sign in itself. Everything in this space that we sometimes
call inside and sometime outside is nothing more than a sign. There
is no tangible nature and the mind is not active. Only the memory
and imagination are present and alive. They are always in a state
of constant vigilance.
When we view and read the paintings of Wajih Nahle, it seems as
if other senses are born to enable us to integrate with the world
around us and to turn our life into a plethora of lines and signs.
A Dictionary
with a New Alphabet by Henry Zughaib, a Poet
He seems as
if he paints with light. His brush seems in his fingers like a lighthouse
that carries colors in a magic of creation. His rich imagination
has a broad horizon that is conveyed to the white canvas that can
hardly cope with the space. It breaks the finite horizon into a
light that has an unlimited extend and is not besieged by any frame.
Where does his painting start and where does it end?
This is his artistic alphabet that no one as yet has decoded its
secrets. It is quite likely that anyone can try to look at the mystery
that remains and cannot be decoded expect by him.
From the day of relinquishing the impressionism (Which in spite
of its difficulty has been skillfully handled by his brush that
is capable of dealing with the most difficult expression) to embrace
the alphabetic artistic style, the letters have ceased to be a set
of flat drawings but very deep lines going to the roots to be able
to grow into words. It is a medium of expression. The letters dance
to the tunes of the spirit to produce colors of joy and delight.
A painting is no longer made of static letters but has become a
bride made up of lively and dynamic letters that exhausted the frame
but the painting remains lively without feeling tried.
From the artistic alphabet to the dervishes, there are sighs of
beauty moving on the white canvass to turn the canvass into a song
made of a melody of color through which run the lines that remain
bright, because the color is faster than a line and a line is faster
than a letter. Here the letter is no longer part of a word but has
become, at times, the whole word.
It penetrates
the inner self more and more to inspire more beauty and to produce
shapes that are not heartless geometrical designs or decorative
plans. They are shapes that transcend the geometrical measurements
to other kinds of measurement creating ideas and inspiring impressions.
In brief, they are all combined to make a painting into an endless
festival of geometrical designs.
He even goes further to paint with light.
It is him who paints with light. For him, a brush is not capable
of expression and the colors are no able to scream. The white canvass
cannot offer him the extent of expression. It is not unusual that
he has broken every familiar rule and decided to boldly paint with
light.
His medium is light that cannot be touched. His method is light
that cannot be put together. It is light that comes from everywhere
and goes everywhere.
How can he limit the light? How can he touch the rays and break
them to yield under the force of his brush cleverly producing the
tempo of his melodious art?
That is his genius. That is his unique skill. That is his great
secret, painting with light.
Who can dare to make light the material for his brush? It is he
who could dare.
It is not unusual that he could provide our artistic life with a
colors full melody of beauty. A melody signed by notes of transparent
flirtation, translucent inspiration and sensitive talent that is
felt in every painting that is the pride of Lebanon in the world's
art galleries. In brief, his works are more than the product of
a brush, colors and white canvass. They are the paintings of light,
an expression of the unity of light in a new artistic alphabet.
It is an alphabet pioneered by Wajih Nahle.
►► Some
of the other artist's artwork
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