
Entrance to the "Présences arabes" exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Paris. (Credit: Nicolas Borel)
The Musée d’Art Moderne is hosting the exhibition “Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonization, Paris 1908-1988” until Aug. 25. In its press release, it included art historian and contributor to the exhibition catalog Silvia Naef’s, question: “How can modern Arab art be made?”
This question is uncomfortable because it suggests that Arab and modern art are hard to reconcile. Worse still, it indicates that modernity is reserved for Western art, leaving our region’s art stuck in an overused Orientalism.
Etel Adnan's "Arab Apocalypse," a one-meter-long accordion-shaped book produced in 1980. (Credit: Nicolas Borel)
Art in struggle
But you only have to look at “Présences arabes” to realize how relevant this question is. Through 200 works, most of which had never been shown in France, the exhibition maps the relationship between Arab artists and Paris during the 20th century.
As an underlying theme, the exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne highlights a profound paradox: Paris served as a place of emancipation for these artists while also being the epicenter of the colonial empire that dominated them.
This paradox is palpable from the first stage of the exhibition’s chronological tour.
It began in 1908, when the École des Beaux-Arts set up a branch in Cairo and, more importantly, the year artist and poet Gebran Khalil Gebran moved to Paris.
This section, which focused on the Nahda, specifically the Arab cultural renaissance in response to Western influence, illustrated the ambiguous relationship between artists from the region.
Lebanese artist Philippe Mourani, Egyptian painter Mahmoud Said and Iraqi artist Jawad Saleem arrived in Paris to train at French art schools, even though they challenged the rampant colonialism there.
Torn between a desire for emancipation and rejecting colonialism, these artists presented Arab Orientalist art in a completely new form at the 1931 colonial exhibition.
This break with Arab Orientalism became increasingly visible as the exhibition progressed, particularly in the section that looks back at Arab independence, including Lebanon’s in 1943, followed by that of the North African countries, which signaled the globalization of modern Arab art.
Naef described this development: “A real aesthetic project was put in place during the 20th century, one that broke away from academic art, echoed the Western avant-gardes and was conceived within the framework of a specific national identity, without reverting to an Islamic art form.”
Two paintings by Lebanese artist Huguette Caland exhibited at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. (Credit: Nicolas Borel)
Lebanese presence
This new movement was coupled with real struggles, notably affirmed at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture de Paris in 1967. It was an anti-imperialist struggle, primarily for the Palestinian cause, which was gaining momentum.
In the chapter devoted to this theme, we rediscover Etel Adnan’s “Arab Apocalypse,” created in 1980.
In the book, shaped like a meter-long accordion, the Lebanese artist and poet unfurled her volcano of colors, representing the voices of long-oppressed peoples rising, along with their long-excluded art.
At a time when Lebanon seems once again assigned to obscurantism, this darkness that has almost become a staple in the country’s history, “Présences arabes” promises to reveal the extent to which Lebanese artists, most of whom are women, have contributed to lifting the art of our region out of its colonial grip.
These include Huguette Caland’s “Espaces blancs,” two 2m x 2m oil paintings created in 1984, where the Lebanese artist unfurled fluid forms that make one wonder whether they are faces or landscapes, and Saloua Rawda Choucair’s paintings, which are a reminder of how much the Lebanese artist and sculptor was a pioneer of abstract art in the region.
The pieces include Bibi Zogbé’s still lifes, shaken by the stroke of her brush, agitated by her desire to break away from the traditionalism that Lebanese and regional painting has refused to confine itself to.
These women and all 130 artists exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne are reminders that Western museum institutions unjustly rendered their art invisible.
Yet this art has influenced modernity as much, if not more, than Western art.
*Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonization, Paris 1908-1988.” Until August 25, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 16th arrondissement.
*“Présences arabes - Art moderne et décolonisation, Paris 1908-1988” runs until Aug. 25 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, 16th arrondissement.
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour, translated by Sahar Ghoussoub and edited by Yara Malka.