Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Oct. - 3 Nov. 1999 Issue No. 453
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Helmi El-Touni: Message in a fish Profile by Amira Howeidy If he painted it, you'll know

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A lion is courage, a fish fertility, a bird shrewdness and a woman opulence and motherhood. Helmi El-Touni has made more use of the symbols of Egyptian folklore than any other contemporary artist. El-Touni has even added a few of his own symbols to the folkloric pantheon upon which his oil paintings have drawn for the past 13 years. He believes every serious artist must be obsessed by an idea that finally transforms itself into a specific visual language -- and he is living this belief to the full.

He is also the man who conceived and executed the cover and inside illustrations of thousands of books published in Egypt and the Arab world -- among others, the books my generation grew up reading. As a young girl, I was fascinated by the colourful illustrations in my books, and remember seeing El-Touni's name in the corner of the cover.

When we arrived, 30 minutes late for our appointment, he was utterly unprepared. He was sitting comfortably in his studio, wearing only pink boxer shorts. Two young people were sitting at a table, completely absorbed in the piles of paper and books surrounding them. As the large, beaming maid showed us in, we bumped into El-Touni, who apologised for "being late and not being dressed". We had just witnessed a typical scene in the painter's life. The shorts may change, but the other elements stay the same.

The rather small reception area has very little furniture. All the walls, however, are decorated with oil paintings by El-Touni -- just him, plus one small work by an unknown artist. The house is full of his paintings: piled on a sofa, stacked against a wall, or neatly arranged in the small studio.

El-Touni returned, dressed in a white crisp shirt and beige trousers. The shirt would not do. "Ah, because white will contrast with my complexion?", he asked rhetorically. "Will pink do?" He was gone before he could get an answer.

When he reappeared, duly clad in pink, another discussion with Randa, our photographer, ensued. Randa was happy with the daylight flooding the reception, but he wanted to go into the studio. He won.

He promptly moved a small stool near a large painting and we sat down, facing him. "If you take your pictures now, the painting will appear nicely in the background and the light from the window will look great," he informed us. El-Touni has worked on newspaper layout for the past 40 years, and he knows exactly what he's doing. This shrewd and witty painter with the intelligent eyes never lost track of the conversation, not for one second. Nor did he babble on. And he says only what he wants to.

He has attained a fame many of his contemporaries can only dream of, in a society that has more important things than art to think about. Chief art director of the prestigious cultural monthly Kutub: Wughat Nazar (Points of View) and one of the Arab world's most famous artists, El-Touni, 65, has been lucky, for a painter in this part of the world.

He is one of the many Arab artists and intellectuals who spent their youth believing in the Nasserist-socialist scheme, then, devastated by the 1967 defeat, awoke with a start to Sadat's Open Door policy, pro-American stance and 1979 peace deal with Israel. But this is the background, told and retold. For El-Touni, the story doesn't end in 1981 with the assassination of Sadat, whose last days witnessed nationwide arrests targeting Egypt's top intellectuals and politicians. That's only the beginning.

El-Touni was fired from Dar Al-Hilal during Sadat's time. Youssef El-Siba'i was then editor-in-chief. "I asked him, how can you fire me? I've been here longer than any of you," he recalls. "He just answered, 'you've been under the influence of the communists.' I said I wasn't a communist. He replied 'that's very true, but they've brainwashed you.' And that was it."

His relation with Dar Al-Hilal had begun when he was still a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, in the early '50s. Although he was from an Upper Egyptian family of "technocrats interested only in engineering," El-Touni had a passion for art and convinced his family to let him apply to the Faculty of Fine Arts. They made sure he studied interior design, "because it was close to engineering. They were afraid I'd become a bohemian painter," he laughs.

During his first year at university, however, his father died. And one day his mother gave him a fistful of pearl necklaces and asked him to sell them. His father's death had coincided with the Land Reclamation Law, which stripped his mother of her land. "I realised that we were poor and that my mother needed money so badly she was selling her jewellery. That same week I found a job." He worked as an illustrator for Al-Kawakib magazine, following a gruelling schedule of work and study. "This was my life for three or four years. But I was always first, and I graduated top of the class in 1958. I think I owe this to my father's death."

El-Touni moved to Dar Al-Hilal during his second year of university. Publishing magnates Mustafa and Ali Amin were about to launch a newspaper, and organised a competition in which young journalists could present trial issues. The prize was LE200. El-Touni's presentation impressed them, so much so that he won the LE200, but was also hired on the spot. He illustrated all Dar Al-Hilal's publications. The Amin brothers then were transferred to Akhbar Al-Youm, and Ahmed Bahaaeddin replaced them. "I learned a lot from all these amazing journalists," says El-Touni, who became Dar Al-Hilal's art director and photo editor under Bahaaeddin.

"During that era, the notion that an artist should be committed to social issues emerged. Many people believed that painting is a luxury because it meant ignoring major issues. Others said journalism can play a role in these issues, so I chose to do just that. For years, journalism, not painting, was my priority."

When El-Touni was fired because of his alleged communist orientation, "everyone turned on me," he says matter-of-factly. "We were all Nasserists. But I was and still am an Arab nationalist, a socialist Nasserist, a Muslim, a believer. I'm all of this. But I wasn't a communist. The [15 May] 'corrective revolution' was simply a battle."

In 1973, then, he went to Beirut, where Nasserist sentiments were fairly strong, and stayed there for 11 years. El-Touni doesn't dwell on the Lebanon years, although he lived the traumatic experience of the 1982 Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut; he also married there, and saw the birth of his daughter Lara (named after Julie Christie's Larisa in Dr Zhivago). He was received warmly: on his first day in Lebanon, he was asked to design a logo for the Arab Cultural Club, which organises the Annual Arab Book Fair. His design remains the fair's logo until today. In 1975, he held his first oil exhibition and, during the days of the Israeli siege, he completed a book of 100 illustrations entitled One Thousand and One Stories from Ancient Arabic Literature. His goal was "to challenge the Israelis with our heritage". Only when asked if he married in Lebanon does he say yes. And was he married before going to Lebanon? Another abrupt yes, accompanied by a terse addendum: "And I have two sons, Marwan and Hazem." Obviously, his marriages are not for public perusal, which is why I didn't ask him about his third.

El-Touni returned to Egypt in 1984, holding his first exhibition here in 1985. "I returned to Dar Al-Hilal, but as an advisor." The most important thing he does at the publishing house, he says, is to supervise the execution of the covers. He is also the art director of the prestigious Dar Al-Shurouq publishing house. An important aspect of El-Touni's experience is his unique ability to combine the talent and patience of a painter with the more pragmatic, go-go-go drive of journalism. Very few artists today can reconcile two different passions so successfully.

So why can you always tell El-Touni's paintings a mile off? Some argue that he simply repeats himself: same lines, same colours and shapes. Others, including him, have a different take on the matter. "My paintings, if I may say so, are like thyme. When you walk into a house where thyme grows, you smell it at once, and you're never mistaken."

El-Touni believes that every artist must play a role without making a political statement. "It is also important to find an identity." His was folklore, which "somehow encapsulates all the civilisations that came through Egypt." It horrifies him, however, that some view folklore as 'exotic'. "This is a catastrophe: it reflects complete ignorance and shallowness, but also disrespect for our heritage."

After his 1985 exhibition, El-Touni decided to pause for a while, to ask himself where he was going, and why. By 1986, he had rejected the "stupid Westernisation" that took Egypt by storm in the post-Open Door era. "When I came back from Beirut I was shocked: everyone was trying to be a khawaga, even in what they ate: hamburgers, donuts, processed cheese. We were taking the worst from the developed countries, even in art." Exhibitions he visited back then were, on the whole, "imitations of old-fashioned modern European art, which no one did anymore".

El-Touni, whose work is inspired by that of Egypt's tattoo artists, lists the features of folkloric art. "It is very linear. Its composition is symmetrical and the rhythm, as in music, is repeated. Folkloric art likes to repeat itself via its symbols and icons." He has adopted these symbols exactly as they were, without alterations. "I played with them for a while, trying to understand their shape and aestheticism. I was trying to know them, just as a man tries to understand a woman he just met: how she sits, how she talks... Then I drew them differently, with more freedom. Gradually their connotations changed, too. A fish, symbolising fertility, now stands for women. I also added my own symbols: a hoopoe, pyramids, windows, clouds..."

Here is a painting of a room. A ballerina stands before an open window. One catches glimpses of the sky, pyramids, a cloud and a plate of fruit on a table. El-Touni asks, as if to a classroom full of eager students: "Now, what is the relation between all these elements? I won't say. But there's a message, a very subtle one." Maybe too subtle. He agrees readily. "Yes, sometimes I deliberately do that. I prefer subtlety to political statements."

He takes issue with the accusation that he repeats himself. He spends half an hour displaying paintings from "different stages: what I'm showing you is my 'other' states. An artist is always worried that he isn't developing, or that he's changing so much he loses his aim. It's like taking the wrong road, then returning and proceeding down the original path." A painter who jumps "from one field to the other" simply has "no faith in what he's doing". El-Touni has been trying very hard to "be myself all the time, but my new self".

One "new self" was indeed in evidence at an exhibition he held last year. The collection consisted of portraits of Egyptian celebrities: King Farouk and Queen Farida, Umm Kulthoum and actress Raqia Ibrahim. Never a portraitist as such, El-Touni admits having felt rather uneasy, "but it was a challenge, and I did it." The exhibition was received with unbridled enthusiasm. Again, there was a message here. "I don't want people to see an exhibition of mine and cry, 'oh, a beautiful picture.' They must think. I was telling people, don't look back in anger, look back at the beautiful past that was so often condemned. It was much better than the present."

He also wonders if people find his portrayal of women -- a cipher for home in his world -- "banal". Women have been powerful protagonists of his art, from day one. In the past, though, they seemed larger: so traditionally plump and white. More recently, they have been slim as dancers. "I like them slim," he laughs, before slipping back into a serious explanation: the anatomy varies depending on the desired connotations. Rounded forms are "motherhood, strength, fertility and stability".

El-Touni refuses to talk more about the "women in his life", with the exception of a lengthy tale about his grandfather, who married several women. "The last one, I recall, was very fat and very white and when I visited as a little boy, I'd see her sitting in bed, covered with satin sheets and watching the street reflected in a mirror... Maybe she was in the back of my mind when I was painting, I'm not sure."

He is willing, however, to talk about his latest achievement, Kutub: Wughat Nazar, with a great deal of excitement. "I had stopped journalism until Wughat Nazar. [Eminent writer Mohammed Hassanein] Heikal was involved, so I grew nostalgic, especially because I was so unhappy with the press in Egypt." The press, he says, has been "infected with several viruses, including the Gulf variant, in which glossy coloured paper and abuse of modern printing methods are the norm." Wughat Nazar is selling like hot cakes and has already acquired a reputation for excellence. He is proud of the fact that "it proved Egypt is capable of producing very fine material, and challenged the belief that only the Lebanese can produce 'respectable' literature."

Wughat Nazar was a challenge, though. "We wanted something good but modest, something that respects the reader's intelligence. I didn't want glossy covers, too many pictures or anything lavish and overdone." The result is elegant and simple, a comfortable layout design that has quickly become an archetype. "Many people are imitating us," says El-Touni, "but that only makes us happy because it means we've succeeded in setting a trend and contributing to a revival."

But he wants more, and his appetite is growing. "We want another 'newborn', and we're considering..." He pauses, then proceeds: "I want to make movies. The [Egyptian] cinema industry is in such a bad state I simply feel challenged." Then he pauses again. "Actually, I am very careful not to fall into the trap of the 'comprehensive artist' who writes, paints, directs, sings, dances, does it all. It gets you nowhere." He also rejects the notion of "international" fame, sought by many of his peers. "I refuse to hold exhibitions outside the borders of the Arab world. If we are capable of doing something worthwhile, then they'll come to us. Just look at Marquez." And when he smiles, you know he means it.

photo: Randa Shaath

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