The Art of Jo Koury, his Technique, and his Subjects

A slow and deep reading of Jo’s paintings, the articles, and the criticisms that were written about him allow me to sum up his style.

The color is the key to his art and the mean to expressing his obsessions and his thoughts. There are in the majority of his paintings no definite shapes. We can, however, clearly see the sky, water, nature, and people. Nature reveals itself sculpted with serpentine or flat brushstrokes. Man is a ghost, a brushstroke, or a white or barely colored stroke. In the painting “Secret Societies” and in “People of the Sky” for example, we barely distinguish people or what may seem to be people. They are dreamy paintings that pass on images from the beyond world, which begs for spirituality. They remind me, due to the similarities in the painted individuals, of symbolist Arnold Böcklin’s “The Isle of the Dead” (1827-1901). This painting and Jo’s two paintings depict the same peace, reverence, and probably the fear of the same destiny.

We find in Jo’s painting that human beings, men or women, are always hiding behind a color curtain that might be veils, which separate them from their own painful reality. They might also be masks, behind which people hide to enjoy a much bigger freedom away from the inquiring eyes of others, who do not know them just like in “Night Rose” and “Hidden Faces”.

The artist is trying to express his huge human issues through colorful strokes, which have a definite dimension on the canvas. “Woman” is a painting on which a panicking woman or a female spirit looking into the unknown amidst fiery, passionate, and sometimes cold colors is depicted.

Jo told me that painting was a pleasure to him not a profession. He dives into an ocean of colors, in order to get away from the painful reality. He depicts reality in a way that relieves him and brings him both happiness and joy. By merging these two techniques, he would be able to pass on his message in a frame that he loves: colors. Everyone knows how much colors lift the spirit of men and carry them into another dimension. However, are colors or coloring an art in every sense of the word?

To what extent can we define a concept and found a theory on it? Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) sums up painting to a certain number of colored surfaces skillfully harmonized on a canvas. I believe that art is a domain, which is open to all possibilities, and that the artistic process, as soon as finished, takes its place in history. By doing so, it frees itself from the artist and becomes the property of men and history. We, therefore, need to be open in the way we look at art. The ancient classical art regressed starting at the dawn of the twentieth century under the brushstrokes of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, impressionists, Picasso, Kandinsky, Malevich, and others. Art was freed from the supervision of the Classicism and enjoyed its freedom! Color became for some artists the symbol of freedom against painting which got the smallest share. Gauguin’s and Van Gogh’s vision changed as to the “established norms”. They were among the founders of modern art. Other artists would come later, after a hundred years or less, to change our vision toward modern art, and they would be the avant-gardes of that century’s modernism.

Jo’s paintings in the nineties are characterized by two types of brushstrokes: the first is large, and the second is spiraled and sculpted in its meanders on the canvas. In both cases, however, the brushstrokes are extremely tense. Although brushstrokes have a defined rhythm on the canvases, they explode in all directions in some, creating the impression of a shock, as if they had lost their marbles! He once told me that he sometimes entered an unknown adventure with his painting. He ignored what it might be about, and where it might lead him. This is what his passion is all about. He could start a painting with a particular idea based on an event or a feeling. Then, he would let his hand wander to some other place, which will eventually lead him back to his primary idea. The result however might not necessary be just like he imagined it. Is it therefore an absurd painting? Is it purely recreational? The answer remains in his passion for colors and in his love for journeys with his painting’s colors. Colors take him away, to magical far away places rich in colors, mysteries and questions.

Jo Koury’s paintings are an open book to the issues of life, obsession, love, death, men, misery, pleasure, happiness, and pain. One answer could not satisfy a soul longing for many more. In fact, is there in life a one and only truth? From the surface, the work of Koury is the expression of a personal dramatic obsession of a man incapable, till now, of clarifying or answering the vital questioning that goes through the mind of all men.

This hesitation and this anxiety did not urge him to exile to nature, like Romantics, escaping people and societies. In fact, Jo’s work is constantly in touch with others and their earthly problems and sufferance. He, however, exiled to his workshop, which represents nature to him. This is where he blends colors creating nature, which colors are his own. He lives in it and in his paintings that often suffer and groan under his brushstrokes.

As to his technique and colors, we mentioned before that his strokes were spiraled in some paintings, whereas in others there were large and vigorous. The spiraled brushstroke is characterized by a technique, which makes the color of the surround area light but illuminated, and its center profound and dark. How odd is this technique! It seems as if he was sculpting stalactites and stalagmites in Jeita’s grotto. These continuous sets of strokes glued to each other, and endlessly repeating themselves, make the viewer feel as if he/she is inside of this grotto, in some other one, or at the bottom of the ocean, where corals and algae side by side undulate to the rhythm of deep water currents. The viewer is therefore mesmerized by either this aquatic dance or the magic of earthly grottos. The work of Jo during this period is discreet, enigmatic, and magical. It expresses a colorful melancholia, and abstractly searches for answers. The answers of these endless vague questions become alive under his odd brushstrokes, his sometimes groaning and screaming and some other times dead cold contrasting colors. His colors take the shape of his questions and answers. During this period of his work, he is the painter of color psalms.

Jo produces colors in his almost laboratory workshop. He produces red, mauve or blue rocks, yellow falls, or even a river springing out of a volcano!

We must no longer view a painting or any other work of art based on our cultural background, which we came to built during our years in college or during our academic research. The twenty first century liberated art. It was snatched from a world of ideologies and strict artistic canons, and released into a personal free world. Art often became untamable and free of rules that some continued to consider as sacred and fundamental for art works.

Viewing art, in my opinion, is no longer measured on an academic scale; although the latter is a necessary starting point. In order to master the dimensions of creation, the artist must be able to captivate the viewer by his/her works of art while all along moving and marking him/her for ever.

Not all works of art are stagnant water. They are works that verge on creative madness. They are free of all constraint, in order to profoundly express a certain mood or state of mind.

Abstract Expressionism

I did my research on modern artistic movements, but I was unable to categorize Jo Koury in any of them. I could not define him as a Fauvist, etc... However, I was able to categorize a big part of his art as Abstract Expressionism, known as the School of New York. The process that Jo uses to produce his painting agrees with the main principles of this school. I should mention here that this movement was founded in New York at the beginning of the year 1945.

One and only principle is the foundation of this movement. The accent is put on the importance of creation during the coloring act. To define and foresee the result or the significance of a work of art before starting to paint or to color is rejected. The idea from which it springs is nothing but the excuse to initiate its execution, which in itself is only a mean to know where this idea would lead. The artist should free him/herself from accepted ideas, which will define a “good” work of art. He/she should work in harmony with his/her feelings and instincts. His/her work should reflect his/her personality in the present tense.

The Method of Commenting on a Painting

I tried in few lines to explain the concept of few paintings. I left many with no comment, allowing the reader, through the work title, to infer the message passed on by the painter through colors and components. I often briefly commented the components and the way they appeared on the painting, so that readers are allowed to approach it more closely.

I talked about what these canvases inspired me, what I inferred from their studies after coming closer with Jo at his work and in his workshop, and following the many conversations we had about his works during that period of time.