Issue No. 597
Culture
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1 - 7 August 2002 Issue No. 597 Culture |
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On the revolutionary trail
Nigel Ryan heads down the garden path
If there is one painting that might have usefully appeared among the three hundred or so showing in the exhibition Revolution and Art (at the Palace of Arts in the Opera House Grounds) it is Abdel-Hadi El-Gazzar's Hunger, later renamed The Theatre of Life, reproduced above. Unfortunately it falls on the wrong side of the great divide: it predates the revolution by three years, having been first exhibited at the Contemporary Art Group's 1949 exhibition. Following that showing El-Gazzar was arrested, along with the exhibition organiser Hussein Youssef Amin, presumably on some portmanteau charge along the lines of bringing the nation into disrepute. Following the intervention of Mohamed Nagi and Mahmoud Said the charges were dropped.
"The young Egyptian Revolution has been, in some way, the result, the confirmation and the triumph of the social consciousness represented in the work, the message and the pressure coming through the expression of young Egyptian painters."
Aimé Azar's remark, which appeared in La peinture moderne en Egypte, Cairo, Editions Nouvelles, 1961, may overstate the case: it is not, however, hopelessly wide of the mark. Yet such is the magic of numbers, particularly round numbers signifying a golden jubilee, that the organisers of this show have been happy to ignore the emergence of several remarkable groupings of artists in the 1940s, the early work of the Contemporary Art Group among them. Perhaps they remain too challenging, too difficult to fix in the revolutionary history currently in vogue. Azar, writing nine years after the event, was a little more clear-sighted: it was still "the young Egyptian Revolution", had yet to be coopted to legitimise a future and could, therefore, acknowledge -- tacitly at least -- an artistic past. The strictures that accompany middle age are less accommodating.
It need not be so. Anniversaries provide the perfect excuse for a jamboree and the genesis of this particular show would normally have made an opportunity for the kind of half century retrospective that, given a more acute curatorial eye, might have offered new takes on recent Egyptian art history. Sadly, the opportunity is squandered in favour of the further reification of a not altogether convincing orthodoxy.
Rather than Hunger, then, the El-Gazzar that dominates this exhibition, placed slap bang at the entrance, and dominating the first gallery, is The Charter, painted in 1962 and entered in a state-sponsored competition, The Revolution: Ten Years After, that same year. It took first prize: unsurprisingly, it is the one Gazzar painting in which even the most vain of revolutionaries might glance and find a reflection sufficiently flattering, provided they do not look too carefully. It is, though, not quite so convenient an image as is generally presumed: the obsequies of the working classes, the fellah offering a flower and grain, the mechanic his tools, both on their knees before an hieratic representation of Egypt (her face is as green as El-Gazzar's earlier, and much celebrated, The Green Madman, her head adorned by bare twigs, devoid of leaves or fruit) are not overly reassuring. In other revolutions, other times, other places, workers had nothing to lose but their chains; here they have nothing to give but themselves, and remain prostrate before a charter. The background is as mythic as the figure that represents the nation, a piece of topographical imagining historically, rather than geographically, located. A battleship sails through the fantastic straits, on its prow the legend UAR. In the middle ground priest and sheikh engage in the by-now hackneyed embrace, and somewhere, top right, are intimations of a dam.
In 1963 Gazzar, along with several other artists, was invited by the Ministry of Culture to view the original model, the High Dam, a visit that resulted in another, similarly complex image, a disturbingly dehumanised image, a metal man, reduced to sheet metal construction and wires. The great triumph of the technocrat is the robot. And even that wears an amulet where the mask is punctured. It is hard to read the painting as a positive image of what many regard as one of the Revolution's greatest achievements. It is not surprising, then, that The High Dam is excluded from the show.
It would be perverse to spend so much time on what is not in an exhibition if it were not for the fact that Art and Revolution is only one of many histories that might have been presented and by detailing the more significant omissions one gets a clearer picture of what that history is about. So El-Gazzar's High Dam may not be there: all present and correct, however, are two small ceramic dishes, one green glazed, the other patterned.
There are more than 300 items on display, which makes of the exhibition a major undertaking. It occupies the whole of that tricksy space, The Palace of Arts, which becomes something of a labyrinth. From several points a gallery -- well, more a kind of glorified corridor -- is visible, but try as I might I could not access it so can make no claims to providing a comprehensive overview. But the ceramicists are in -- studio potters rather than the ones labouring in Fustat -- while the most celebrated images produced by arguably Egypt's greatest artist of the last century are out. So whose art, whose revolution is this?
That there should be problems, and controversy, over such an enterprise, is almost inevitable, and it would compound the inconsistencies to simply brush them under the carpet. But without an adequate curatorial eye group shows are always going to be troublesome, and the bigger the more bothersome.
While there is a lot to wade through at the Palace of Arts there are worthwhile moments, just don't expect to emerge enlightened about its purported subject. Revolutions, in any case, have never been particularly kind to art which, if it is worth the name is always going to be too malleable to be constrained within the chosen straight jacket no matter who does the selection, who chooses the slogans. Art doesn't quite do that sort of illustration. So instead of seeking coherence, head for the three paintings included by Tahia Halim. The third, and smallest, a single, emblematic figure elongated across a narrow, banner like plane, is simply beautiful, no more and no less. In many ways Halim is reminiscent of Gwen John: with every encounter her painting gets better, the control more apparent, the refinement more clearly intimated. It is a remarkable balancing act for an artist who was perfectly willing to incorporate the necessary symbols when required for she, unlike John, did not have the option of domestic retreat. And still Halim continues to emerge from the shadows cast by her noisier, more raucous contemporaries. Her composure, in the face of the demands made of any artist of her generation, is nothing short of miraculous: a gallery devoted to Halim, a second to Gazzar, would have made something of this show. As it is, just a few paintings constitute this gallery visit's pay-off.
The labelling is unforgivable in what promotes itself as a significant undertaking, but that is no more than par for the course. On the first floor of the gallery is a charming depiction of dervishes whirling: not in the least cloying, perfectly simple and refreshing in its understatement, though the name of the artist was impossible to make out. Indeed, amid so much that is self-seeking and declamatory, as well as toe-curlingly embarrassing, it is those works that constitute the quieter corners, that make their own space and in doing so detach themselves from this particular version of (post- ?)revolutionary fervour that save the whole enterprise, though this is not quite what the organisers intended.
An aside: a crucifixion by El-Seggini, bronze on wood, hangs in one corner. The Christ figure is muscular, heroic in the manner socialist realism intended its workers to be heroic. His arms are crossed -- making a nonsense of the nails -- the better to show off the biceps; the right leg, similarly raised. It is so ill-conceived as to capture the attention, it could not be more wrong, easier, or crass. The cross, as Abdel- Hadi El-Gazzar and Tahia Halim both knew, is no place to strike poses. Thankfully they, and one or two others in this show, have spurned mock heroics in favour of things more substantial, things demanding of thought.
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