Al-Ahram Weekly | Profile | Fresh from the shell

The year was 1974, and I was chairman of the State Information Service. I took pride in being unlike most top officials, in that my office was always open to callers. Anyone could just walk in without a previous appointment.

The young/old man marched up to my desk, opened his file and spread his works out before me. The colours dazzled my eyes.

A WORLD THAT'S NEW: Ali Dessouqi's bright and deceptively simple pantheon is peopled by the denizens of the poorer quarters : Ramadan Lantern

"My name is Ali Dessouqi," he said, extending a hand still smeared with traces of paint. We shook hands, then he came around to where I was standing and started unfolding what looked to me like pieces of painted cloth. In fact, they were beautiful tableaux of scenes from Egyptian life. That was my introduction to both the art of the batik and the master of this art.

Ali Dessouqi was born in Al-Azhar. Growing up there was like living in an open museum of Islamic art. Like Naguib Mahfouz, he was brought up in the shadow of the walls of Al-Hussein, Khan Al-Khalili, Al-Ghuriya... His childhood was spent playing with the other children in the narrow alleyways, and waiting for Sandouq Al-Dunya, which would afford them glimpses of a marvellous, magical mystery world. The man bearing the large box would choose a site where the children were playing, set up the picture show, and invite the children to watch for the modest sum of half a piastre. Plunging his head under the black cloth, young Ali, too, would watch in fascination as the drawings of characters and incidents from well-known folk tales raced in front of his eyes.

Thus did he come to know Abu Zeid Al-Hilali, Antar and Abla. He watched winged horses, sword fights, camels and Arab heroes. Those images stayed with Ali, and later became the main inspiration for his paintings.

Our artist had very little formal education, but his love of art was such that he enrolled in what was known as the "free section" at the Faculty of Fine Arts. The department offered an education to people with a flair for art, without requiring any scholarly achievements or credentials. That was where Dessouqi supplemented his natural talent. Interestingly, his studies left no trace at all in his art.

Ali Dessouqi held his first one-man show in 1963. It was a collection of oil paintings, their themes derived from his childhood world of folk tales and winding lanes crowded with donkey-drawn carts, playing children, marriage processions, pilgrimage festivals and other manifestations of life in a popular quarter.

His interest in characteristic popular figures, portrayed within the family circle or at work, brought him recognition in the form of a grant from the Ministry of Culture. This grant enabled him to dedicate all his time to his art for three years. During this time, in 1964, he left Cairo for the first time, travelling to Luxor and Aswan. Thereafter, elements of Nubian culture began to surface in his works.

Painter, critic and student of folklore Saad El-Khadem once commented that Dessouqi's work captured a transitional phase, during which many features of his childhood surroundings began to disappear. His oil paintings, therefore, represented a sort of archive of the history of folklore. "In the course of his untiring search for solutions to pictorial problems," El-Khadem added, "the artist acquired a deep understanding of the basic aspects of local folklore... Both his oil paintings and batik combine the qualities of 'high art' with historical significance."

The result of the trip to Aswan was an exhibition held at the Atelier in 1965. During his journey, preparations had been underway for the inauguration of the High Dam; yet that important national event did not stir his feelings. He was more attracted to the beautiful landscape and the Nubian people. Nothing could distract him from his original figures. His Aswan paintings resembled his previous work, but in new attire. He also added to his repertoire of animals: in addition to the donkeys of which he was so fond, he began to paint goats.

The same exhibition also witnessed his move towards a brighter colour register, most notable in his use of violent red. Some batik works also appeared beside his oils. These innovations he attributes to "the sun of Aswan."

It was over a decade later, however, after a batik exhibition held in 1978 at the Goethe Institute, that Bikar wrote in Akhbar Al-Yom: "With this new medium, the artist who once whispered is shouting at the top of his voice. Glaring brown, warm red, glittering yellow, deathly black and white: these colours radiate and seem to glow, reflecting a summer warmth more Egyptian, more lively than the sleepy, misty atmosphere of his previous paintings."

Dessouqi's colour choices have evolved over the years, however, from a palette of greyish blues to orange, from white to red. This change, he maintains, was not intentional or planned. "During my white phase, for instance, I was busy preparing white plaster for a mural similar to those popular artists draw on the houses of returning pilgrims. I liked the colour and, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs purchased those paintings, I decided to produce more."

In addition to his skill with colour, Dessouqi possesses a rare gift, which critic Mahmoud Bakshish has described as "surprising kindness." In his imaginary world, equality prevails, embracing young and old, men, animals and birds, bestowing permanent peace upon all of them.

Dessouqi himself admits that he always concentrates on "the local element, but only as a concept. For example I see a donkey-drawn cart, the candy floss vendor, a group of children, or a horde of buffaloes. They are all there in my paintings -- but not as I see them. It is as if they have emerged from a more poetic, transparent world -- just like the world of the innocent, newborn chick."

In many ways, Dessouqi himself is still a child, and sees the world with simplicity and spontaneity. Maybe that is why his paintings show children skipping or playing hide and seek, but always discovering what is to them a new world.

He is living proof of Habib Gorgi's theory that inside every Egyptian are layers of past eras: the Pharaonic, the Coptic and the Islamic. In his words, "I made full use of our ancient art. You see the Coptic influence in the round eyes of my children, which resemble those of the Fayoum portraits. From Islam I draw the spiritual and ethical elements as well as architectural structure."

One of his most striking works shows three girls with features similar to those of the women portrayed in Pharaonic bas-reliefs; they are astride three donkeys, but could be sitting on thrones for their regal bearing. He also remembers being a regular visitor to the Museum of Modern Art, when it was housed in a beautiful Islamicate building on Qasr Al-Nil Street in the 1950s. "Can you imagine," he exclaims, tears starting to his eyes: "There is now a parking lot where it once stood!"

In 1973, Dessouqi's career witnessed a sea change. He began to study batik at the American University in Cairo. He soon discovered that the batik was a window onto new and unanticipated vistas. "It is like hard labour," he explains. "I look upon oil painting as the basis of my art, but batik is my craft."

At first, he was attracted to the technique; "then, with time, I tried to express my points of view." During his earliest attempts to master the craft, he simply transferred his oil paintings. Later, he selected special themes for his batik work, and incorporated a simple, yet very specific symbolic language: the fish is the symbol of goodness, the palm tree is life, the lion is power, the sword is heroism and the star is nature. All his symbols are associated with man and the universe. These works are a combination of legend and reality -- the latter represented by a backdrop of a house as a permanent feature of life.

"A house to me," says Dessouqi, "is a symbol of privacy, the privacy of its inhabitants. This is why my houses are always closed to the outside world. But though they are closed, we find their occupants outside in the light, playing or working, all associated with nature rather than with the house. And when I paint the interior of a house, I always leave the doors and windows open to reveal what is going outside."

As a mainstream representative of what one might call the National Wave -- the art of Mahmoud Mukhtar, Ragheb Ayyad, Mahmoud Said or Abdel-Wahab Mursi, all of whom attempted to redeem Egyptian folklore, making it more palatable to the advocates of modernity -- Dessouqi nonetheless stood out. While Mukhtar gave Egyptian peasants a Pharaonic sanctity, Dessouqi made national icons of poor neighbourhoods and emaciated children. What distinguishes him from the masters is his spontaneity. His alleyways were not the frustrated, violent spaces inhabited by El-Gazzar or Mursi. Poverty is there, of course, but so is peace. Women sit and chat while children play. The women's features are placid geometric shapes -- their faces are those of the sugar dolls bought for Mulid Al-Nabi.

It is this culture -- street culture at its best and most idealised -- that permeates his work. When his studio went up in flames, almost all his oil paintings were destroyed; one of those he managed to save was based on a song by Sayed Darwish, "This beautiful girl got up to knead the dough at dawn." Dessouqi gives these popular themes a personal twist, however.

It is perhaps his very specific take on the tropes of naive art that has made him such an able ambassador. His earliest visit to Europe, which came about as a result of his visit to my office, was as a member of a delegation going to Tubingen in West Germany for an "Arab Week." That same year, he had an exhibition in Paris. Then followed invitations to a number of European countries, and Ali Dessouqi became an international artist with works in a number of European museums.

Dessouqi is married. His wife is a lawyer, but passionately interested in art. "My wife has been my life companion since we married in 1970," he says. "Our home was my first studio and she helped me a great deal during my initial artistic phases. I think her love for me made her forgive the drops of wax my batik work left all over the carpet." He has two sons: Yehia and Omar. Yehia dabbles in batik, but insists that "it is just a hobby."

It is hard not to enjoy the delicate moods of Ali Dessouqi's very personal creations. He has never allowed himself to fall for the gimmicks that could have ensured easy success. Dessouqi proves that an artist can achieve far greater stature simply by remaining true to himself. His art is his life, true -- raised to artistic perfection, and phrased in a determinedly contemporary idiom.

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Al-Ahram Organisation

		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 30 Nov. - 6 Dec. 2000 Issue No.510

In the Coffee Shop	Boats on the Nile	Fuul Cart

Ali Dessouqi:

Fresh from the shell