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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Season to taste
By Nigel Ryan
Summer always descends with something of a whimper on Cairo's galleries intent, as always, to maintain that quaint little anachronism, the season. And while the season is not quite ended, we are being treated to a kind of dry run, a rehearsal of the virtual vacuum that always accompanies the most humid of the summer months. Not that it is without highlights -- Georges Bahgory's exhibition at Picasso is decidedly good-humoured, the paintings punctuated by the occasional homage, to Van Gogh -- rush seated chair and lots of yellow; to Rembrandt -- Bahgory in a smock, palette in hand, lots of browns, and Paul Klee -- though here the fragmentation of the pictorial plane appears more studied, an exemplar of the method used in several of the intervening, more declamatory, "serious" paintings. And there is, too, a gloriously slippery Umm Kalthoum, with trademark chiffon handkerchief and features that slide in and out of focus yet which remain, effortlessly, always the same. The show is without edge, which is not to say without seriousness. The gallery space is itself far from attractive -- it is more shop than gallery, and in a shopping centre to boot -- yet this does not act against the paintings. Bahgory takes it all in his stride, and one leaves the place happier, which if it is not the ultimate criterion for judging art is certainly a valid one.
Dust laden, desultory, Cairo Atelier is one of the city's more depressing venues. It is sad that this should be so, because the Atelier, potentially, plays an important role, offering opportunities to artists who are on neither the public nor private circuits. Yet the few successful shows held at this venue increasingly look like accidents. The gallery has a reputation, but it needs to do more than it is to justify that reputation and ensure its continuing.
What it is doing at the moment is filling the first ground floor gallery with the kind of brassily shiny tiles that you find elsewhere only in elevators in buildings that were last renovated in the early seventies. In their art manifestation they carry pseudo-Pharaonic scenes. In the small gallery on the ground floor, a space that is dedicated to the work of unknown artists, is a peculiar offering called Carnival, featuring framed pottery face and lace ruff concoctions, objects that more usually line the shelves of gift shops, and appear perennially popular with a certain kind of early adolescent. Supplementing these are a range of miniatures. Never has a signature been more obtrusive than in these pieces which provide a perfect lesson in how not to sign your works. Upstairs, all is rather more portentous, greeny, goldy yellow, heads with hair sprouting like so much tagliatelle only to collapse into a sodden mess of semi-calligraphy. Names are unimportant -- the only lesson to be drawn from these showings is that the Atelier is in desperate need of getting its act together. It treads, as a collective enterprise, a difficult path. Yet some kind of quality control obviously needs to be exercised if the institution is to retain credibility as a serious venue for the showing of art, though the mechanism for the exercise of such control is very far from obvious.
Souad Mardam Bey;
George Bahgory's Homage to Rembrandt
Souad Mardam Bey is showcased at the Mashrabia, an awkward mishmash of signs, symbols and techniques. Some of these paintings, particularly the variations on still-lifes, display the kind of self-conscious classicising that marked the least endearing work of the European avant garde in retreat during that notoriously self-destructive period, the late 1920s and 30s. We are, though, eight decades on, which might have afforded time for lessons to be learned. The small scale, collaged pieces, are better, but once again there is simply too much deja vu. Souad Mardam Bey is Lebanese, and there is a decidedly Mediterranean feel to many of these works despite a predominantly brown palette. The replication of forms and motifs that hark -- consciously or unconsciously -- back to a period that at first sight appears less complex lends a touching nostalgia to many of these pieces, though this is not quite enough to satisfy.
The Townhouse has devoted its first floor exhibition spaces to recent works by Scott Bailey. Small, square, identically sized and sometimes hung in groups of two, it is an exhibition that offers a little more the longer you linger, but not too much. Loitering, one can formulate various rules of thumb: the more impastoed the surface, the more agitated the treatment, the less satisfying. Or alternatively the smoother, more neutral the surface, then the easier to transform the painting into a meditative, contemplative vehicle. Forget figuration -- barbed wire is all too ubiquitous, too hackneyed a symbol in such a context, and concentrate instead on the pieces that appear to contain residual elements of landscape. An explosion of dirt against an acid yellow background is just plain dull, while an unruffled green surface of complex colour variations becomes some moods perfectly. It is pieces such as this that stand a second glance, and then a third -- controlled, contrived, imaginary details of imaginary landscapes impressively modulated. Tiny pieces in big rooms, Bailey manages -- perhaps accidentally -- to play an overwhelming vacuity off against significant, though abstracted, details, a difficult balancing act but one that is occasionally pulled off in this show.
The next batch of exhibitions is likely to be the last before the onset of the summer lull and the appearance of those dilatory group shows -- at least in the private galleries -- that appear to stay forever and often comprise little more than a selection of unsold works from the gallery's earlier programme of one man shows. So time is running out if you want a last minute visual fix: one can only hope that the next batch of openings are slightly more inspiring than the current shows, with, of course, a few honourable exceptions.
