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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498
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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 Letters Words and pictures
By Nigel Ryan
An exhibition of hitherto unexhibited sketches by Tahiya Halim opens this week, timed to coincide with the 81st birthday of an artist who first came to the public's attention almost half a century ago and whose work, in the intervening years, has come to comprise one of the most coherent statements to have been produced by an Egyptian artist over the past half century.
Perhaps the most talented student of Hamed Abdallah -- and, incidentally, his first wife -- Halim's vibrant colourism ensured that she emerged early from the shadow of her teacher, and to general acclaim. And though, even in her earliest works, Halim was willing to take on big historical themes -- Cairo on Fire, or Demonstration, is a typically idiosyncratic take on the events of 1951 -- it is the ahistorical, timeless manner in which she approaches her subject that distinguishes her work. The titling of paintings, as an attempt at contextualisation, acts more or less effectively to mislead the viewer, stressing what is least substantial in her oeuvre. It is the wood, rather than the trees, that are Halim's stock in trade, though the very specificity of the subject, as suggested by the titles of individual paintings, obscures this fact. She deals less in the individual predicament than in the more general condition of which that predicament is but one manifestation, and if this sounds a little over-blown, then over-blown it must sound for that is the nature of the beast.
Several years ago, while visiting the artist, she explained a painting to me in terms of a symbolism that had perhaps been intended at the time, but which could equally have accrued around the image in later years. It dated from 1960 or 1961 when Halim, along with several other artists, was the recipient of a government grant intended to finance travels in Nubia in order to record impressions of a landscape and way of life that would soon be submerged in the rising waters of Lake Nasser. This, she told me, pointing to the figure of a man standing on the prow of a golden barge, is President Nasser, and he is bringing prosperity to the people of Nubia.
Such iconographic unravelling was unnecessary not because the symbolism was obvious -- far from it -- but because it was entirely incidental to the impact of the painting in question. It diluted a powerfully resonant archetype in favour of a simplistic, propagandistic reading. Which is not to question Tahiya Halim's sincerity, of which I harbour not an atom of a doubt. What was interesting, though, was the manner in which she appeared to be unaware that her entire approach to her painting, the manner in which she had chosen to depict such a scene, effectively subverted such a simplistic, and eventually inconsequential, reading.
Artists -- a wild generalisation, this, but one more than supported in my experience -- tend to be weakest when talking or writing about the significance of their work, or its import. Think only of the American abstract expressionist Barnet Newman who insisted endlessly that the zips in his colour fields were gaps intended to allow the viewer a glimpse into infinity and you will understand what I mean. The fissures that stretch vertically across Newman's canvases may serve any number of formal functions, they may even indicate points of compositional stress, could, at a push, indicate those places where the artist himself began to experience doubts during the construction of the canvas. But even given the metaphysical loading of gesture without which so much abstract expressionist painting is no more than splatter splatter drip drip, the last thing Newman's gaps allow is a glimpse into infinity.
Unfortunately, for at least a century, the impetus has been towards ever greater wordiness on the part of artists, a direction that now requires any self-respecting post-modern practitioner to provide a statement of intent to accompany each and every new manifestation of his or her work. That such artists' statements have an unfortunate tendency to slip effortlessly into babble -- in all fairness one should not expect someone who has chosen the image as a medium of expression to be a dab hand with words -- seldom serves to temper the desire to tell anyone who will listen the reasons why, and how, and where, they do the things that they do.
Maybe the blame for these heaps of words should be laid at the feet of Vasari, that Renaissance confabulator par excellence, whose Lives of the Artists began the long transformation of artist from craftsman to hero. This transformation gained even greater urgency with the advent of Romantic alienation, that consolidation of individual genius, and the upward spiralling of the prices commanded by the unique products of the by-now sanctified ubermensch. And along with such expense comes authority, an authority that squats as heavily on the words as it does on the life and the works, provided, of course, they can be certified.
The twist in the tail of the long journey from artisan guild member to rampant individualist is that a great deal of current production might just as well be described, and then posted on some vaguely relevant website, which would save everyone the trouble of having to trundle off to the gallery, or site, to see the installation in situ. For that little journey has come to seem infinitely wearying: if the idea, after all, is the thing, if it is the concept and not the execution in which all interest lies, then what is the point of seeing that concept realised, especially when such a concretisation, more often than not, acts only to underline the banality of the idea?
Yet that journey is likely to be more than worthwhile in the case of Tahiya Halim, an artist whose work is about far, far more than recording how President Nasser brought bread to the people of Nubia.
