Jessica Lack. Why Are We 'Artists'? 100 World Art Manifestos. Part Three

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History of Art Literature Anthologies
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Jessica Lack
Why Are We 'Artists'? 100 World Art Manifestos
London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2017, 502 pages

Review by Francesco Mazzaferro. Part Three

Fig. 3) The anthology Modern art in the Arab World. Primary Documents, published by the MoMA in New York by Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout

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This last part of my review is dedicated to the contemporary Arab art manifestos, which, in all sincerity, are the ones that amazed me the most. The truth is that the events of recent years (think of the ISIS destroying Palmira in Iraq, the Talibans demolishing with dynamite the rupestrian statues of Buddhas in Afghanistan, the terrorists killing visitors of the Bardo Museum in Tunis, and more generally the failures of the so-called Arab Spring in many states of the Middle East) have unfortunately consolidated the image of the Arab world (ideally here enlarged to the Persian one, although I am well aware of the differences between the two areas) as captured by an illiberal conception of religion, thereby opposed to beauty, and eventually incapable of expressing contemporary art. Actually, I had already seen at the Center Pompidou in Paris the exhibition "Art et liberté. Tearing, war and surrealism in Egypt (1938-1948)" [147], dedicated to the Art et Liberté group. The reading of the anthology of Jessica Lack, however, opened my eyes on a reality that I did not know. I read with emotion, for example, the manifestos of the Iraqi artists of the fifties and seventies, or of the Iranian artists in the months that immediately preceded the Khomeinist revolution of 1978-1979. The manifestos of the Arab and Iranian world included in the anthology can and should be read according to two perspectives: on the one hand they document the vivid hopes, but also the bitter disappointments that the young artists in those countries have nourished and suffered respectively; on the other they testify that art may be born everywhere and that there are no cultures that are historically adverse to it. After all, the recent news of the opening of a Louvre office in Abu Dhabi confirms this diagnosis. The theme of contemporary Arabic artistic literature is, moreover, object of increasing interest. The MoMA in New York has just announced the forthcoming publication of an anthology on the subject, edited by Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers and Nada Shabout.

In theory, I could have expanded the analysis to the art manifestos of the Islamic world (including those from Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sub-Saharan Africa and even Malcolm X's followers in the United States), but I felt more useful to limit myself to a geographical area (Middle East, Northern Africa and Iran) which, in itself, is already very wide and diversified. Therefore, I decided not to carry out, in this last part of my post, the analysis with the filter of a religious question. Moreover, most of the Egyptian surrealists of the last century were Christian Copts, while almost all the artists signing the other Arab manifestos included in the anthology were secular pan-arabist Marxists and certainly would not have considered themselves interpreters of a religious art, even if they were often broadly influenced by Sufism; the last group included in the anthology - that of the collective of anonymous filmmakers 'Abounaddara' - documented the violation of civil rights in Syria and on purpose did not make any difference between the factions of the civil war. Only the Sudanese manifesto of the "School of One" can be interpreted as religious Islamic art, but also included a claim to freedom in art. In short, it is religious extremists who want us to believe that societies in the Arab world are one-dimensional, and we should not fall into the trap.

Let us consider the twelve Arab-Iranian manifestos presented in "Why are we 'artists'?", treating them according to the chronological order in which they appear.

1. Georges Henein, Manifesto, 1945
2. Shakir Hassan al-Said, Manifesto of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, 1951
3. The Fighting Cock Art Group, The Nightingale’s Butcher Manifesto, 1951
4. The Aouchem Group, The Aouchem Manifesto, 1967
5. The Casablanca School, Manifesto, 1969
6. The New Vision Group, Towards a New Vision, 1969
7. Shakir Hassan al-Said, One Dimension, 1973
8. The Azad Group, Manifesto, 1976
9. The Crystalist Group, The Crystalist Manifesto, 1978
10. Habib Tengour, Maghrebian Surrealism, 1981
11. The School of the One, Founding Manifesto, 1986
12. Abounaddara, What is to be done?, 2011

Georges Henein, Manifesto, 1945 [148] 

Georges Henein (1914-1973) was an Egyptian intellectual, a (French-speaking) revolutionary poet and a surrealist painter who had a complex relationship with his motherland. He is probably best known for his manifesto "Long live degenerate art" with which, in December 1938, he launched the movement "Art and freedom" (the group whose Parisian exhibition I have just mentioned above). After life experiences conducted in Rome and Paris, Georges gathered a group of 28 living artists in Cairo in the years before the Second World War, all members of the Fourth Trotskyist International [149]. The group threw itself against the Egyptian academic art, but also against Nazism in Germany and the most recent episodes of aesthetic intolerance of fascism in Italy (an important fact, considering that Henein’s mother was Italian). The group "Art and freedom" boycotted, among other things, the reading of the texts of Filippo Marinetti in Cairo (March 1938), denouncing his fascist ideology, and finally supported the war efforts of Egypt against the Axis during the second world war (part of the Egyptian cultural elite instead hoped Rommel's victory in El Alamein in the name of Arab nationalism).

However, Jessica Lack did not take the 1938 manifesto into consideration, preferring instead to publish his 1945 manifesto, which created the "Surrealist Group" in Cairo and brought together a smaller number of artists: Ikbal El Alailly (the future wife of Georges), Hassan el Telmisany, Adel Amiu, Kamel Zehery, Fouad Kamel, and Ramses Younane. In it, Henein and the other signatories strongly criticized the Fourth International, denouncing not only the horrors of Stalinism (a point on which the Trozkists could not but agree), but of Marxism itself. Henein's fight against totalitarian ideologies further continued with other dissatisfying texts, not cited by Jessica Lack in the anthology, such as The Part of Sand (1947), in which he transformed the famous Marxian motto "Workers of the world, unite!" into "Female Workers of the world, be beautiful!". Eventually, his dislike of the Arab socialist nationalism of Nasser forced him into forced exile in Paris in 1962. Recently rediscovered also in Egypt, the surrealism of the fifties is however today (wrongly) considered in the country in substantial continuity with the art of the Nasserian era and that of the last decades.

  

“At the very time when events are sanctioning the partition of the globe into two unyielding fronts – the Egyptian surrealists wondered after the end of the world war – what should our position be towards Marxist doctrine, which one of these two antagonistic blocks would aim to put into practice?” [150]  The Marxists, the intellectuals of Cairo wrote, have shown that they use an opportunistic technique: libertarians as long as they are in opposition, they always change their tone as soon as they are in power, revealing themselves capable of exercising “blatant terror” [151]. In theory, Marxists would like to create a society that leaves ample room for critical thinking: “Sad to say, the real facts are far from confirming such claims; indeed, they are nowhere near. Let it suffice to mention that, one century after coming into being, Marxism is the sole economic doctrine which immediately considers blasphemous any critical views or any attempt to criticize it, despite the major upheavals that have affected the face and structure of the modern world, whose interpreter Marxism would be” [152].

The petitioners hastened to clarify that their criticism was not meant to be counter-revolutionary, but intended to criticize the fossilisation of Marxist thought, which, in their opinion, made that thinking insufficient to understand “the crises of Western Civilization as a whole” [153], revealing the same weakness as the thought of Nietzsche and Spengler [154]. Between 1920 and 1940, Marxism had in fact increasingly moved away “from the original socialist ideal of the material and spiritual liberation of mankind” [155]. “Faced with such an aberrant state of affairs where, every day, we are mired more and more in the ways of lies and ‘tactics,’ and faced with such a huge detour from initial principles that we end up back at their beginning source and intention, we proclaim that we consider the individual as the only thing of worth, yet today, seemingly, it is under relentless fire from all side. We declare that the individual is in possession of largely unexplored inner faculties, the most important of which is imagination armed with the most marvelous powers, an untapped force of vigor and spirit. The individual against State-Tyranny. Imagination against the routine of dialectical materialism. Freedom against terror in all its forms” [156]. From Cairo the manifesto was sent to Paris, where André Breton rejected it.

Shakir Hassan al-Said, Manifesto of the Baghdad Modern Art Group, 1951 [157]

With the artist and writer Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925-2004) we are now moving to Iraq. Together with the painter and sculptor Jewad Selim (1919-1961), Al Said created the Modern Art Group of Baghdad in 1951. Their intention – as Jessica Lack explained - was to pursue a national style of art “that incorporated concepts from Western modern art and traditional Arab cultural and intellectual influences” [158]. Among the innovations of the group, I would like to mention, for example, the attempt by Al Said to combine the painting of Paul Klee (who had written to have discovered colour when he went to Tunisia in 1914, and therefore in the Arab world) with the Sufist school. The author of the anthology pointed out that the group acquired an important role after the 1958 coup, which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy and transformed Iraq into a republic inspired by the nationalist Baath ideology (later on, in 1968, the Baath Party established in fact a totalitarian state). “After the July Revolution in 1958 … the Bagdad Modern Art Group became representative of a desire within Iraqi society to formulate a Pan-Arab identity based on the combination of the country’s traditional heritage and modern progressive ideals. Yet the moment was short-lived: as infighting between tribal factions split the new republic, Selim was denounced as ‘an enemy of the people’ and died prematurely in 1961, while al-Saidi suffered a near collapse of his mental health caused by the continuing turbulence of the political situation” [159]. We will find Shakir Hassan al-Said later on, as the author of a second manifesto in the seventies, once the health problems will have been solved.

Al Said read his text on the occasion of the First Exhibition of Modern Art, held in Bagdad in 1951, and where Impressionist, Expressionist, Surrealist, Cubist and Abstract artists were exposed. The manifesto began with an observation on the differences between public opinions: “At a time when western civilization is expressing itself in the realm of art, an expression that marks the present age with a yearning to achieve freedom through modern trends, our audience remain oblivious to the importance of the art of painting as an indicator of the extent of the country’s wakefulness and its tackling of the problem of genuine freedom” [160]. To fill this gap, the manifesto proposed to follow the same path as Picasso, who first sought dialogue with the primitive Catalans, then with the art of black Africa and, finally, with the post-impressionist movements. Along this methodological path, Al Said pursued a dialogue with the Islamic art of the Abbasid era.

“We thus announce today the beginning of a new school of painting, which derives its sources from the civilization of the contemporary age, with all the styles and schools of plastic art that have emerged from it, and from the unique character of Eastern civilization. In this way, we will honour the stronghold of the Iraqi art of painting that collapsed after the school of Yahya al-Wasiti, the Mesopotamian School of the thirteenth century AD. And, in this way we will reconnect the continuity that has been broken since the fall of Baghdad at the hands of the Mongols. The rebirth of art in our countries depends on the efforts we make, and we call upon our painter brothers to undertake this task for the sake of our civilization and for the sake of universal civilization, which is developed by the cooperation of different peoples” [161].

The Fighting Cock Art Group, The Nightingale’s Butcher Manifesto, 1951 [162]

Just back from his studies in Paris with André Lhote (1885-1962), Jalil Ziapour (1920-1999) created the Ḵorus jangi (fighting cock) Group in 1950. The fight to which he referred to was, obviously, that of the modern Iranian artist who had to challenge contemporaneously forms of aesthetic traditionalism of an academic-naturalist type (of which the painter Kamal-al-Molk (1852-1940) was the most exponent), dogmatic positions such as those related to the Iranian Communist Party, which limited art to an illustration of a political program, as well as the many different eclectic influences of contemporary European and American art. The very clear positions taken by the group provoked, after the publication of just five issues of the magazine of the same name in 1950, the negative reaction of the Iranian authorities, who accused the members of communist subversion. The experience resumed, however, in 1951 – after the change of government – with even more radical tones: culturally, the art of the group was in fact an expression of the Mossadeq government era (1951-1953). The newly-elected Iranian prime minister tried an innovative phase of democratic government, characterized by independence from the United States and Britain (Mossadeq was removed via a coup d'état organized by the foreign powers, after having nationalized the assets of the American and British oil companies in Iran). With the establishment of Shah Reza Pahlevi (1941-1979), the group dissolved, but the artists continued to be active, aligning themselves with the style of contemporary Western art, and finally retiring or going into exile after the Khomeinist revolution in 1979.

In his paintings Ziapour, while adopting painting techniques sometimes vaguely inspired by geometric representations of a cubist type, did not abandon figurative representation and always referred to themes of Iranian popular life. His pictorial language was therefore completely coherent with his interest as an intellectual, with numerous publications in the field of anthropology, linguistics and the study of traditional customs.

The group, in addition to Ziapour, was made up of the painters Hossein Kazemi (1924-1996), Bahman Mohasses (1931-2010), Sorab Sepehri (1928-1980), the poet and artist Hooshang Irani (1925-1973), the musician and poet Gholamhossein Gharib (1923-2004) and the dramatist and critic Hassan Shirvani. The members endeavored the difficult task to identify the contents of a surrealism which would be purely Iranian (Ziapour dedicated an article to this project already in the first issue of the magazine). The term Ḵorus jangi was inspired by a poem by Gholamhossein Gharib and the logo of the magazine (with the logo of the fighting cock appearing in each issue on the cover) was designed by Ziapour himself; the symbolism of the roaster was adopted because already present in Islamic calligraphy (think of the works of Mishkin Qalam in the nineteenth century), but also in contemporary art (see the rooster of Picasso in 1938) [163].

The manifesto "The butcher of the nightingale" (whose text can also be found on the internet [164]) was signed by Irani, Gharib and Shirvani and inspired by a radicalization of Ziapour's ideas, a few days after the nationalization of the foreign oil industry was announced, and therefore in a phase of great national enthusiasm. Jessica Lack explained that “the term ‘nightingale’ in the manifesto’s title has a double meaning in Farsi. It can refer both to a popular pattern of flowers and birds in traditional Persian decorative art and to a boy’s genitals. The ‘nightingale’s butcher’ therefore is an allusion to castration” [165], as a form of violent rejection of all previous art. Ayda Foroutan, in a recent essay on the subject, reached different conclusions: “The nightingale stands for the romantic tradition of Persian classical poetry, the symbol of the tragically love-stricken “lover who lives only to adore the rose.” The nightingale is therefore an iconic symbol of something sublime from the past, yet which has become banal in the present” [166].

Here is the text of the manifesto, based on thirteen very clear statements.

The Nightingal’s Butcher Manifesto:
1. The art of Fighting Cock is the art of those still alive. This cry will silence all voices mourning at the tomb of the art of the past.
2. In the name of a new era in art, we wage our merciless attack on all art traditions and regulations of the past.
3. New artists are children of their time and the right to live is exclusive to the avant-gardes.
4. The first step in any new development result in breaking old idols.
5. We condemn to annihilation all the admirers of the past with all its artistic manifestations such as theatre, painting, the novel, music, and sculpture, and break the ancient idols and their scavenger followers.
6. The new art considers sincerity to the inner self a gateway to artistic creation. It embodies all life forces and is inseparable from them.
7. New art walks on the graves of idols and of their sinister imitators, toward the annihilation of the chains of tradition and establishment of freedom of emotional expression.
8. New art cancels all conventions of the past and announces newness as the home for beauties.
9. Art’s existence is in motion and progress. Only those artists are alive whose thought is based on new knowledge.
10. New art is in contrast with all the claims of the proponents of art for society’s sake, art for art’s sake, art for whatever’s sake.
11. In order for new art to progress, all old art associations should be destroyed.
12. All creators of artworks! Be aware that the artists of the Fighting Cock group shall fight most strenuously with the distributions of old and vulgar artworks.
13. Down with imbecils.
FIGHTING COCK ART GROUP.
Gharib, Shirvani e Irani [167]

The Aouchem Group, The Aouchem Manifesto, 1967 [168]

A group of Algerian artists, led by painters Denis Martinez (1941-) and Choukri Mesli (1931 -) founded in 1962 the Algerian group Aouchem (in Arabic, it means 'tattoo'), five years after the end of the very long war of liberation from France. It goes without saying that they tried to get rid of the pictorial aesthetics of the French avant-garde (that is, of the former occupants), orienting instead towards an iconography inspired by ancient local traditions, even going back to prehistoric art. Jessica Lack wrote: “Using typical materials of Berber art – such as feathers, copper and sand – the Aouchem artists created paintings that embraced ancient Berber traditions and sought to establish a connection with the prehistoric artists who had created the rock art of the central Saharian Desert” [169].

The short manifesto, although written in French, was the expression of a project of cultural independence from Paris. “Aouchem was born – the text begins – thousands of years ago on the walls of a cave in the Tassili Mountains. Its existence continues into our own time, sometimes in secret, sometimes in the open, according to the fluctuations of history. It defended us and survived in many forms despite the many conquests that have taken place since the Roman period. (…) It is this authentic tradition that Aouchem 1967 insists on rediscovering, not only in the forms of art works but also in the intensity of colour” [170]. The link with the past also means to acquire distance from “a certain gratuitous and even sometimes pointless freedom of contemporary Western abstraction” [171]. It is really paradoxical that, while the Group tried to elaborate an intimately ‘national’ aesthetics, in 1967 the art of the group (as the author of the anthology explains) was substantially rejected by the Algerian society because it was considered too abstract and that in 1993 the two painters had to move to voluntary exile in France, in order to escape the wave of murder attacks against Algerian intellectuals during the ten-year civil war.

The Casablanca School, Manifesto, 1969 [172]

The same desire to gain complete independence in aesthetic terms animated the Casablanca School Manifesto published in 1969 by six painters: Mohamed Ataallah (1939-2014), Farid Belkahia (1934-2014), Mohamed Chebaa (1935-2014), Mustapha Hafid (1942, -), Mohamed Hamidi (1941, -) and Mohamed Melehi (1936, -). The leader was Farid Belkahia (1934-2014), who - after a five-year stay in Paris - returned home at the beginning of the sixties with the purpose to implement in art the Panarabist project and since 1962 aimed at formulating a new style, which Jessica Lack described in these terms: “They incorporated (…) bold colours and Arabic and Berber calligraphy, and experimented with traditional natural materials like henna and leather” [173]. If the painters will change their style in the following decades, they will never abandon the use of traditional pigments and materials.

Morocco was finally free from direct French control. And yet, even in the process of decolonization, the Casablanca School questioned itself on how to guarantee the full emancipation of young artists from foreign influence, in a situation where there was no public exhibition space (exhibitions were often held outdoors) and public funds to support art were indeed insufficient. The 1969 manifesto was published in the Franco-Moroccan magazine (Lamalif) to support the initiative of the Minister of Culture who, for the first time, sought to bring contemporary artists together in an association for the promotion of Moroccan art. “For a lack of galleries and exhibition halls, artists were forced in the buildings of foreign cultural missions, where the paternalistic approach to art that had defined the protectorate era was only reinforced. Worse still, in order to reach their audience at home as well as abroad, artists often had to accept the patronage of cultural missions” [174].

The entire educational system (from primary education to that imparted in the only school of fine arts in the country, in the city of Tétouan) was completely inadequate: primary school programs made of art a mere recreational activity, and did not educate anyway to appreciate either the art or the cultural tradition of the country, while the school of Tétouan was still dominated by programs and orientations of the era of the protectorate. “Since the protectorate, the establishments we call ‘museums’ have been turned into storage depots. No attempts have been made to grant them their true function: to inform and educate. We feel that museums should be places where vibrant programmes allow for a better diffusion of the arts. The popular arts are currently depreciated, misunderstood, known only superficially and often confused with poor quality handicrafts. Museums could play a part in raising the profile of popular art, and the presence of artists would facilitate this” [175].

The New Vision Group, Towards a New Vision, 1969 [176]

With the New Vision Group, we are moving to Iraq, in a new and different historical phase compared to the previous one of the Manifesto of the Modern Art Group in Baghdad of the early fifties. As from 1969, the Baath party - after a period of turbulence - took control of power and created ambitious cultural structures to promote and support the aesthetic principles of pan-Arabism, encouraging the birth of groups of artists. Jessica Lack wrote: “One of the most influential artist association was the New Vision Group (Al-Ru’yaa al-Jadidah), founded in 1969 by the artist Dia al-Azzawi (1939-), who co-wrote the manifesto with Rafa al-Nasiri (1940-2013), Muhammad Mahr al-Din (1938,-), Ismail Fattah (1934-2004), Hashem Samarji (1937) and Saleh al-Jumaie (1939)” [177]. Their manifesto - which seems to me the most significant and intellectually deepest in the list of Arab-Persian ones proposed in "Why are we 'artists'?" - went far beyond the support for the patriotic ideas of the regime (despite some tirade scattered over the pages of the text). Well aware of the bloodshed that had ravaged the country in recent years, members of the group in fact claimed a mystical vision centered on Sufism and were careful not to fully subscribe to the political actions of the party.

“There is an internal unity to the world – this is how the manifesto opens up – that places the human within a non-visible position towards it. There is no doubt that contemporary consciousness is nothing other than a process of discovering the essential identity of the human on the one hand, and of civilization on the other” [178]. Along this path of research, a real exploration to which every man of conscience is called, we must deviate from the idea that there is “any ultimate purpose for existence” [179], and understand that even the objects are “in continuing evolution and constant change” [180], so much so that the artist cannot present the world as something “stagnant and incapable of change” [181].

For primitives, practicing art was a matter of magic; for the ancient Greeks it was a consequence of the study of beauty and for the men of the Middle Ages a theme of faith. For the contemporaries it is instead a practice characterized by a continuous contact with the world. “Art is practice of taking a position towards the world, a continual practice of transgressing and discovering human interiority from within change. (…) The artist is a fighter who refuses to put his weapon down as he speaks in the name of the world, and in the name of the human. He lives in a state of constant sacrifice towards his world, expressing a burning desire to denounce the masks of falsity, and so he always owns what he wishes to say. The unity of artistic production throughout history places the artist at the centre of the world and at the focal point of the revolution. Change and transgression are two faces of a conscious challenge to all the regressive social and intellectual values that surround his world” [182]. The artist's spirituality, his ability to self-annihilate and to sacrifice himself in the moment in which he tries to restructure the world in a new artistic vision, and finally his determination to free himself from the pressure of material and social relationships make art the only one instrument of true change in history. The artist's task “is to bring a lasting end to previous forms of thought (…) so he may grow anew” [183].

It is art that provides the justification for the existence of man in nature, giving him the ability to create stories and always invent new ones. “For when he brings, on a one-dimensional surface, his own unique world into existence, the artist is presenting to the world a truth which, at first, appears not to exist. Through his creative capabilities, he gives that truth a presence in the world of light so that it may help us uncover some of the hidden aspects of our lived experience – those that cannot otherwise be revealed in mental perceptions” [184]. The work of art is not (and should not be) simply an object, a material good, but “a manifestation of the emergence of the artist’s world into public existence” [185].

“The artist lives the unity of all periods of history, even while he lives in his time, and as a part of his own society. As much as he feels that he must change the past through contemporary vision, he also feels that the past orientates the present, that between the past and the present there is unity and coexistence” [186]. That of the artist is a renewal of his personal self that goes through an eternal return to his cultural identity. Individual and culture meet: “art is not a means of seclusion in individual existence or immersion in one’s private world” [187]. The collective task of the artist is to pursue a goal of renewing his own civilization, recognizing the past greatness of the civilizations of the Arab world, but overcoming them in a dialectical way: “Let us remember our art in the lands of Mesopotamia, Syria and the Nile, and let us reject the world of rigidity and imitation. Let us construct a permanent and honest relationship with our generation. We must tear apart heritage so that we recreate it. We must challenge it in order to surpass it. We must recognize it, within the confines of its museum existence, and recognize the aggressiveness and fierceness of the encounter. Let us unite in our souls a desire to surpass” [188]. 

The manifesto shows us that New Vision was a group deeply convinced of the need for the artists to be free to express a modern painting that would assign a new identity to the Iraqi community: “Modern art – as we read in the final part – is the language of contemporary society. The artist is the human being in this society who is capable of transgressing the boundaries of the contemporary self, to adhere to a purity that is free of all the prejudice of modern civilization, in an effort to affirm the innovative existence of this national community through art. Those who reject this language are the living dead.  Freedom of expression is the freedom of the revolutionary against everything that turns thinking into a muddy quagmire. It is freedom of vision, of rebellion against all of society’s false constructions. Art is every novel innovation. It is incompatible with stagnation; is continuos creation. As such it is not merely a mirror of the artist’s lived reality, but also the spirit of the future” [189].

The exercise of freedom may always expose artists to the risk of repression by illiberal political regimes. The Baath party accentuated the pressures on New Vision, to the point that in 1972 the group broke up and in 1976 Dia al-Azzawi fled into exile in London, where he is still living. Many of the other artists, one after the other, moved abroad in the following decades (especially in the rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf), also to escape the numerous wars (the one against Iran between 1980 and 1988, the two Gulf wars in 1990 and 2003, the civil war from 2014 to today, which also saw the establishment of the Islamic state on part of the territory). In short, a real Iraqi pictorial diaspora has helped establishing in the last years the birth of new art centers (Dubai, Qatar). That diaspora is well known today, even outside the Arab world; for instance, Dia al-Azzawi is an internationally renowned artist. It is singular how the members of the New Vision were already well aware of this condition as early as 1969: “Our existence is always under threat” [190].

Shakir Hassan al-Said, One dimension, 1973 [191]

We have already met the painter and writer Shakir Hassan al-Said (1925-2004) as the author of the Manifesto of the Modern Art Group in Baghdad in 1951. We are finding him now, twenty years later i.e. in 1973, as the author of the manifesto One dimension, inspired by a combination of the philosophy of German thinker Martin Heiddegger (1889-1976), Sufism and the tradition of Arabic calligraphy. Jessica Lack wrote: “The new group’s ideology was complex. Essentially it rejected conventional three- and two-dimensional art in favour of an illusionary ‘one’ – or inner – dimension, similar to the concept of existential temporality promoted by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. In practice this ‘One Dimension’ was difficult to manifest artistically, as drawing or painting on a surface is two-dimensional; instead, al-Said’s paintings did not convey conventional forms or shapes, but the trace of something, like a crack in a wall. At the same time, inspired both by Heidegger ontology and by the mystical form of Islam known as Sufism, al-Said began to employ the Arabic language, in its written form, in his work as the means to reveal the hidden essence of being” [192].  

“From the philosophical perspective – we read in the manifesto – we can consider the thinking of the enthusiast for adopting the letter in art as transcendent thinking. (…) He attempts to branch off into the experiment of comparison between two worlds: the linguistic one (the world of the letter) and the representational one (the world of two dimensions). So, from this perspective, One Dimension is a human/non-human vision because it goes beyond its own world towards its universal horizon” [193].

“In this sense, the theory of One Dimension presumes that the true meaning of the universe is realized by reverting from form to its linear eternity, and from size to its morphological eternity. It is a practice of transcendence (and by implication absence) through the relationship entered into between the self and the external world, in such a way that this relationship does not become a restriction within which subjective human existence is confined, but rather a developed relationship in which the self senses its own being within the universal presence” [194].  We are certainly in front of a philosopher painter, who was very familiar with the hermeneutics of his time. From it he drew the idea of a “Contemplative vision” [195] of the world; furthermore, he proclaimed the superiority of such vision over the “Surrealist vision” [196] (we have already seen how surrealism permeated contemporary art in the Arab world). If the surrealist way of seeing is in fact still limited to physical and emotional reality (the awe for the things that are seen), the contemplative one is considered superior, because it recognizes that the former “is not enough to express the truth of existence in space-time” [197].

“As for the technical aspect, One Dimension is concerned with transforming linguistic symbols into a representational dimension” [198]. In ancient times, artists expressed reality through allegorical models; then in the modern era the principle of the imitation of nature was affirmed; it was now time to use conciliation techniques between the world of letters and the world of images. “Hence, in the technique, the letter also plays the role of a witness from the world of language when it is present at the heart of the pictorial surface” [199]. “When a painting is charged with the letter in this way, the expression in it almost represents what a seismograph communicates through its signs” [200]. 

The Azad Group, Manifesto, 1976 [201]

During the last years of government of the Shah of Persia, a group of established artists - known as the Azad Group (the free group) - met in Teheran under the auspices of Morteza Momayez (1935-2005), an artist known today not only as a painter, but also as a designer and graphic designer. The group, which had a strong pro-Western orientation, was active until the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, and therefore for only three or four years only. It must be said, however, that both Morteza Momayez as well as the other members of the group – i.e. Massoud Arabshahi (1935-), Abdorreza Daryabeygi (1924-), Hossein Kazemi (1924-1996), Sirak Melkonian (1931-), Gholam Hossein Nami ( 1936 -), Faramarz Pilaram (1937-82) and Parviz Tanavoli (1937-) - were further active in Iran in the following years. This points to the fact that spaces of freedom may have continued to exist, at least in some historical phases, even under the Islamic revolution. Anyway, as Jessica Lack explained, when the Azad Group established himself in the mid-seventies, the group had to defend itself against the accusation of having an orientation that was too far from the Iranian culture.

“They accuse us of the following: (i) The works of the artists of Azad Group are an imitation of current art movements in the US and Europe; (ii) The artworks of Azad Group are irrelevant to our environment; (iii) Anyone can easily create similar artworks” [202]. The manifesto did not deny the inspirational role of Western art, but overturned the interpretation. The members recalled that the greatest Iranian painter between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (like that Kamal al Molk whom we already mentioned) was inspired by Chinese and European art, that the American contemporaries could not be understood without Dada art, that Picasso owed much to African art and that Modigliani and Matisse were influenced by Iranian miniatures.   

There is no universe free from the interaction of ideas. In fact, “being influenced is not a voluntary action that can be avoided. Those who are sensitive are influenced by their living environment, and the living environment in its turn is under the influence of communication and economic systems. Which of us has a non-environmental behavior and is therefore able to condemn influence?” [203]. The openness to the world was the very reason for the creation of Azad. “A need has brought together the members of Azad Group despite all the differences of their artistic methods. The environmental influence has created this need in us. The need for an intellectual play, for an investigation and for experiencing a route different from their main path, for opening a window into a different art, for smelling, tasting, digesting, and being born anew in the same main path. The need for self-destruction to test our criteria anew. The need for avoiding repetition. The need for simplicity and for approaching and approximating whatever is in our lives – things we do not see in our intellectual solitude and the value of which we ignore. The need for hailing other horizons” [204].

The Crystalist Group, The Crystalist Manifesto, 1978 [205]

Sudanese contemporary art owes a lot - Jessica Lack wrote - to the founder of the Khartoum school, Ibrahim El-Salahi (1930-), who turned the meeting of the Arab and African traditions into the mission of his life as an artist. “Caught between the heritage of the predominantly rural population and their own modernist aspirations, Sudanese artists embraced their paradoxical situation by pioneering a style of painting that incorporated Western abstraction, traditional African motifs and, like other pioneering artists in the Islamic world, Arabic calligraphy” [206].  In the mid-seventies El-Salahi occupied (albeit briefly, before falling into disgrace and ending up in prison in 1975-1976) the position of minister of culture and actively promoted a modern art tradition in the country.

It was in this tradition that the Crystalist Manifesto was launched, authored by the female painter Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (1939) along with some of her best students at the Khartoum School: Muhammad Hamid Shaddad, Naiyla Al Tayib, Hisham Abdallah and Hashim Ibrahim. It was a group deeply imbued with Western culture: Kamala Ishad completed her studies at the Royal College of Art in London and began in 1978 a decade-old pictorial series (Women in Crystal Cubes) strongly inspired by the painting of Francis Bacon. Shaddad (the most important of her followers) instead dressed like John Lennon, behaved eccentrically and, among other things, also promoted conceptual installations, such as the collective observation of the process of melting ice cubes.

In those years, Sudan pursued the objectives of socialist pan-Arabism, including the social promotion of the female community. Jessica Lack explained: Kamala “Ishaq’s paintings explored the role of women in Sudan, and focused on traditional ceremonies and rituals, such as the zar, in which women are possessed by spirits. The Crystalist Group coupled such themes with an interest in European mysticism – in particular William Blake – in order to promote a philosophy that was existential in nature. The cosmos, they believed, was like a crystal cube: translucent, interconnected and constantly changing according to the viewer’s perspective” [207].  It should be noted that while Jessica Lack's anthology dated the manifesto in 1978, a very recent essay published on the MoMA site in New York  [208] brought it forward to January 21st, 1976.

“The Crystalists testify – as the manifesto started – with their kind minds that the Cosmos is a project of a transparent crystal with no veils but an eternal depth. The truth is that the Crystalists’ perception of time and space differs from that of others. (…) We life a new life which necessitates a new language and a new poetry. A new life means that we have acquired new contents, which requires new forms and framing which are capable of expressing these modern contents. That is, we do not cling to the old forms because we do not like rhyming verses and old metric poetry” [209].

“The Crystalists testify that there is no empirical (practical/experimental) knowledge. Everything that has been said about empirical knowledge is a myth. The human mind has not evolved, and will not make any progress, because of experimentation or practice. The essence of Crystalist thought is that the ability to know is also knowledge. The ability to know is older than experimental knowledge. The truth is that the mind is more intelligent, more holistic and complete than experience/practice. (…) Yes, pleasure is intrinsic to knowledge. Our observations in life are but observations in pleasure. We should know that the dividing line between knowledge (science) and pleasure falls into absurd mirrors of water and light. The Cosmos is small and large, realized and non-realised, and what separates the two a dialectic of absurd mirrors composed of light and water. The world around us is calculated against a permanent one which is the light speed. Yet we focus our vision on the idea of the inverse of the light speed, so we can arrive at the edge and frontiers of the absurd mirrors” [210].

I would like to point out (a consideration not present in the Anthology) that the reference to the world of crystals, as a parallel artistic universe, pervaded the German aesthetics and artistic literature of the second part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century (in the German context, one spoke of Crystalline art), with important references in the writings of Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), Adolf von Hildebrand (1847-1921), Bruno Taut (1880-1938) and Paul Klee (1879-1940)  It is not to be excluded that the artists of the Khartoum school absorbed indirectly their tradition – which had spread beyond Germany – during their studies in London.

Habib Tengour, Maghrebian Surrealism, 1981 [211]

Habib Tengour (1947-) was a surrealist poet, literary critic and Algerian intellectual (who never produced any work of art). He authored among others a short poem entitled "Maghreb surrealism". His thesis was that surrealism in Algeria and in the other countries of North Africa did not originate in French culture, but in the culture of Sufism. The poem cited the painter Baya Mahieddine (1931-1998) as an example of an art that in France was erroneously interpreted by André Breton as part of the Francophone surrealist universe, but in reality had a clear basis in traditional Berber art. 

The School of the One, Founding Manifesto, 1986 [212]

With Ahmed Abdel Aal (1946, -) and the "School of the One" we are meeting another of the exponents of the School of Khartoum, albeit in a different historical phase from that of the aforementioned Crystallists. Jessica Lack explained: “Emerging at a time of increasing Islamic fundamentalism in Sudan, the School of the One sought to enrich the Khartoum School’s aesthetic with a new-found religious dimension, believing that a spiritual form of art could express profound universal truths” [213]. The manifesto of the School of the One was signed, as well as by Aal, also by Ibrahim Al-Awam, Muhammad Hussayn Al-Fakki, Ahmed Abdallah Utaibi, Ahmed Hamid Al-Arabi.

“The Sudanese visual artists, the undersigned of this manifesto – as the start of the manifesto read – are of the opinion that contemporary artistic creation has no value without a civilized foundation. That is why they are connecting to the Arabic Islamic heritage, the heritage of the last human civilisation founded on an universal divine revelation. They are drawing on their heritage, not as a depository of past achievements, but as a dynamic living entity similar to other living things on weaknesses and strength” [214]. It followed that artists do not want to imitate the creations of the past but “make an effort to grasp their significance, and to develop their potential for constant growth and evolution” [215]. Art is a "system of thought and a way of thinking, even though it is channeled and expressed through colour, stone or other raw materials” [216]. The signatories recognized the artistic inspiration as “a creative necessity, which makes the art work a reminder of the need for a constant, vigilant consciousness. This means the need for a wise and more practical consciousness, which shall free human beings from the confines of inattention to the wisdom of the beauty of existence. Our relationship to the nature with which we have been endowed is one of inspiration and intimacy, and not a relationship of emulation, conflict or distortion” [217].  

Alongside religious inspiration, the Manifesto of the One identified the local heritage (“that the Islamic civilization has never destroyed” [218]) as a source of fundamental inspiration. “The School of the One appreciates that ‘nation’ (homeland) is not a romantic expression, but an indisputable entity rooted in time and space. Its substance is the heritage of its people and their land, their present and future predicaments, their pain and triumph, and their aspiration to fulfil their ideal values within secure and happy lives” [219]. Part of the local tradition was the experience of the Khartoum School, which the signatories of the manifesto did not want to deny, but complete: “For over half a century, the contemporary Sudanese visual art movement has reflected the above assertions, albeit with differences in levels of clarity and depth of individual contributions. (…) The Sudanese artists, the undersigned of this manifesto, appreciate and take into consideration the contribution of the Khartoum School” [220].

The Manifesto ended however with a recognition of the universality of the human race and of the artist's need for freedom. “In the end, artists of the School of the One find comfort in their belief in the unity of human existence. It is this conviction which makes their distinct creativity a long-awaited contribution to human heritage, a contribution in harmony with the uninterrupted prophetic orientation of the Islamic civilization. The artist who believes in the unity of God (i.e. in monotheism) is a struggling cultural entity. Therefore members of the School of the One believe that freedom is the essence of religious and moral responsibility. Freedom is a basic demand of all artists, as it is a demand of all people. Freedom is a means of revival and nation-building. At the same time, it is the only means of victory in the struggle against weakness, dogmatism, fear and poverty” [221]. This text is today thirty years old: it reveals how there were then in Sudan artists oriented to an orthodox Islam, who hoped to find in the religious tradition a source of artistic freedom. Few perhaps, today, would still believe it is possible.

Abounaddara, What should be done?, 2011 [222]

Abounnadara means in Arabic "The man with the camera" and is the name of a group of anonymous video artists. The name of the collective refers to the title of the documentary film "Man with the camera" (Человек с кино-аппаратом) of the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954), filmed in 1929 as an experimental form of documentary. Abounnadara is regularly publishing on social networks, every day, videos shot during the Syrian civil war to show the reality to the world public opinion. Jessica Lack wrote: “Many of the films are poetic meditations on everyday life: a shopkeeper joking with his customers, or an underground school for beauticians. Others evoke the realities of civil war with horrific candour – child refugees talking about heads and hands being cut off – while never explicitly showing them” [223].

The manifesto recalled what had happened in 1860, during a previous civil war in Syria. The inhabitants of a city were besieged and in desperation: on that occasion, the citizens produced a mosaic displaying the united nation, bringing together the traditions of Byzantine and Arab art. The members of the collective felt therefore committed to producing images worthy of their people to reflect the common humanity of the Syrians, whether they would be sided on one or the other side.

NOTES

[147] See: https://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/resource/ce5nBKj/rBokbLM.

[148] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? 100 World Art Manifestos, London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2017, 501 pages. Quotation at pp.35-37.

[149] The text of the manifesto is available at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20120905230521/http://www.egyptiansurrealism.com/index.php?%2Fcontents%2Fmanifesto%2F. The signatories were: Ibrahim Wassily, Ahmed Fahmy, Edouard Pollack, Edouard Levy, Armand Antis, Albert Israel, Albert Koseiry, Telmessany, Alexandra Mitchkowivska, Emile Simon, Angelo Paulo, Angelo De Riz, Anwar Kamel, Annette Fadida, A. Paulitz, L. Galenti, Germain Israel, George Henein, Hassan Sobhi, A. Rafo, Zakaria Al Azouny, Samy Riad, Samy Hanouka, Escalette, Abd El Din, Mohamed Nour, Nadaf Selair, Hassia, Henry Domani.

[150] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 36.

[151] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 36.

[152] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 36.

[153] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 37.

[154] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 47.

[155] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 37.

[156] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 37.

[157] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp. 45-48.

[158] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 45.

[159] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp. 45-46.

[160] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 46.

[161] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp. 47-48.

[162] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p. 49-51.

[163] Foroutan, Ayda - Why the Fighting Cock? The Significance of the Imagery of the Khorus Jangi and its Manifesto “The Slaughterer of the Nightingale”, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2016. See:

  https://www.irannamag.com/en/article/%DA%86%D8%B1%D8%A7-%D8%AE%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B3-%D8%AC%D9%86%DA%AF%DB%8C%D8%9F/.

[164] See: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ARTM_a_00085.

[165] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.49.

[166] Foroutan, Ayda - Why the Fighting Cock? (quoted).

[167] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.50-51.

[168] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.110-112.

[169] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.110.

[170] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.111.

[171] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.111.

[172] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.121-125.

[173] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.121.

[174] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.122-123.

[175] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.124.

[176] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.143-149.

[177] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.143.

[178] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.144.

[179] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.144.

[180] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.144.

[181] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.144.

[182] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.144-145.

[183] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.145.

[184] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.146.

[185] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.146.

[186] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.146.

[187] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.147.

[188] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.147.

[189] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.148.

[190] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.147.

[191] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.183-187.

[192] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.183.

[193] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.184.

[194] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.184.

[195] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.184.

[196] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.185.

[197] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.185.

[198] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.186.

[199] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.186.

[200] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.187.

[201] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.286-288.

[202] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.287.

[203] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.288.

[204] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.288.

[205] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.324-326.

[206] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.324.

[207] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.324.

[208] Lenssen, Anneka - We Painted the Crystal, We Thought About the Crystal"—The Crystalist Manifesto (Khartoum, 1976) in Context, 4 aprile 2018 

http://post.at.moma.org/content_items/1104-we-painted-the-crystal-we-thought-about-the-crystal-the-crystalist-manifesto-khartoum-1976-in-context.

[209] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.325.

[210] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.325-326.

[211] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.338-339.

[212] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.398-402.

[213] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.398.

[214] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.399.

[215] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.399.

[216] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.401.

[217] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.400.

[218] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.401.

[219] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.401-402.

[220] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.399.

[221] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.402.

[222] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, pp.455-457.

[223] Lack, Jessica - Why Are We 'Artists'? (quoted) …, p.455.