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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 January 2000 Issue No. 465
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Black and white
Youssef Rakha
Black images on a white surface can be profound, if austere, experiences: fledgling states of consciousness that have barely come into being -- rough, lively and arrestingly dynamic. Nabil Tag's new exhibition, which opened yesterday at the Gezira Arts Centre in the presence of Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, juxtaposes light, hesitant lines with heavy black masses, drawing on the sheer black-and-white power of contrast. Through these means, Tag adds a mental and emotional dimension to his drawings that ultimately transcends the visual -- an evocative combination of the abstract and the concrete that points to far more than instantly meets the eye.
An old man in traditional headgear and galabeya, for example, exists solely by virtue of a simple cluster of lines, yet that cluster is so potent the old man's presence is inescapable. Leaning on some dubious surface with his head down, at first one can barely make him out, but on closer inspection he appears palpably concrete. Not only does his figure emerge, but also his predicament. Exhausted, aging, dispossessed, the man is strikingly alone, and it is his loneliness that makes the drawing so poignant, attaining a sensation at once conventional and decadent, though never straying too far from what is immediately at hand.
The numerous seated figures, though barely distinct, reflect Tag's social concerns; they invariably lead to human as well as technical speculation. This is a far cry from much contemporary Egyptian art and a stimulating instance of studied idiosyncrasy -- only a hair's breadth away from pretension.
Promoted as "improvisations and experiments", the drawings on show actually make up Tag's first individual exhibit in Egypt. Having spent his life illustrating magazines and newspapers, the veteran draughtsman has been too timid to show work he created for his own self-realisation, even though the "job" never prevented him from pursuing individual artistic objectives.
"Throughout his involvement in journalism and publishing," writes an anonymous 'old friend' in a preview note accompanying the invitation, "Nabil Tag never severed his links with free, non-occupational art work, whether in the old neighbourhoods of Cairo where his studio stands... in the Fayoum countryside where he has a much favoured country house or in his modern-style apartment in Heliopolis. Yet he has never before thought of showing such drawings in an individual exhibition to be held within his own country."
Born in an anonymous village near Mansoura in 1939, Tag studied art at Cairo University and subsequently spent a decade learning and teaching graphic arts in Switzerland. On his final return to Egypt late in 1977, he continued to concern himself with drawing, concentrating his efforts on that most primal and elusive of all art forms, and by the testimony of many art critics producing fewer and fewer, yet better and better works.
