Art appeal

Prominent artist Hamed Owias argues that art could defy violence and unfairness. Dina Ezzat hears him out

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Owias; his oil on canvas masterpieces "Cup of Tea" and "A Country Girl"

"When poverty goes beyond, or rather beneath, a certain level, it takes a serious toll on the aesthetic quality of our lives; beauty slowly begins to disappear -- it does not go away completely but it does dissipate -- and suddenly it is violence, unfairness and ugliness that we mostly see," says leading artist Hamed Owias.

Residing in his small but extremely artistic house in the middle-class neighbourhood of Moharram Bey in Alexandria, Owias has created a refuge behind an abundance of his paintings. Yet the collection he has in his house includes only a small part of the copious production of the 90-year-old artist.

The paintings that Owias keeps around him represent what he believes to be the most aesthetic of all values: rejection of violence and unfairness and gratification of beauty in its many forms, liberty included.

It is when violence and unfairness rule that Owias fears a great deal for society, simply because he knows what comes next. "A certain feeling of darkness and frustration," he elaborates. "When people cease to appreciate beauty they lose interest in life... They continue to survive, but it is a sad life."

Owias is particularly bothered by the increasing lack of aesthetic values in the life of Egyptians in a way that he finds to be almost unprecedented in his life's observations. "People used to enjoy the simple beauty of a painting without learning much about the history, genre or the techniques of art. [Almost] every middle class house, especially in Cairo and Alexandria, would have to have a painting among its decorative items... There was even a piano in some houses, even if only for decorative purposes, but it was still a sign of a certain attachment to art and to beauty... This is no more," Owias laments.

The man who has dedicated a lifetime to serving the cause of art and beauty is firmly convinced that creativity is still there. "Beauty is not gone. It is our gloomy mood that prevents us from seeing or communicating with it."

Why? Owias answered: "It is about the general atmosphere around us. Poverty, politics and fundamentalism of all sorts -- not just religious," he said.

Living through the wars that infest the Middle East and being subjected to the irritating developments of the Arab- Israeli struggle, even by simply watching TV every night, Owias believes that one might find it difficult to think about, let alone appreciate, beauty.

This said, Owias had always found it within his means to confront the injustice of politics through his own command of arts. In his living room he keeps a large painting from his 1970s period. It is a painting in which, Owias says, he predicted and cursed the US hegemony of the world and the disastrous consequences of this "greedy and mad monopoly of power on the world, and even on the values of liberty that the US has long stood for."

In the same room the artist keeps a painting that symbolises the refusal by Egyptians to succumb to their military defeat by Israel in 1967. Egyptians, as Owias painted out in the late 1960s, strove hard for victory. "The features of every man and every woman in this painting show the resolve to reject defeat," he says.

In other paintings that this prominent artist takes pride in he portrays his rejection of social injustice and the discrimination against the poor and against women. "When society defied the emancipation of women I painted women breaking free from archaic social rules," he recalls. In this way Owias finds that he has harnessed art to defy injustice. But then again, those were times when the plastic arts had a much wider audience than they do today.

The dwindling audience for plastic arts is not the only sign by which Owias measures the declining appreciation for beauty. There are other ways to detect the unfortunate aesthetic decline, he argues. The way people dress, walk and talk; the way the stores decorate their windows; and the time they dedicate to pursue creativity.

"Alexandria is a good example. Only a few decades ago it was a much more beautiful city that carried and reflected diverse influences of beauty -- even in the poorer neighbourhoods there was enough beauty to inspire the artist," he says.

"When I first arrived to Alexandria it was [around the mid-1940s] and at that time people tended always to find room for beauty. The poor and the rich had a way to pursue and demonstrate beauty," he recalls. This, he laments, is no longer the case.

The defeat of the 1967 and the subsequent waves of Islamic fundamentalism that resulted from the inundation of radical values upon society are held to blame by Owias for what started as a lack of aesthetic appreciation and evolved into unmistakable signs of violence and sheer injustice.

It is, however, he said "the unkind form of poverty" that people now have to put up with that has dealt the harshest blow to the appeal of beauty to most Egyptians. "The poor were always there, but their destitution was not as harsh; poverty was kind to the poor," he says. "This is obviously related to the increase of unemployment and overpopulation," he adds.

For Owias the victory of violence over beauty is not inevitable. Aesthetic appreciation could still be somehow promoted, he finds, despite the many challenges. "The state has a role, a crucial role to play there," he argues.

Owias wants the state to pay more attention to arts in general. State-run Radio, TV and newspapers need to find a better way to promote arts, all types of art, he says. "Aesthetic appreciation is basically an acquired taste, it is not a matter of pure taste," he says. "And if we get to watch beautiful things, at least on our TV screens, then we learn to appreciate beauty and reject violence, which is basically a crude form of ugliness." More attractive museums, less expensive art shows and a wider geographic access to art is what this world-acknowledged painter deems necessary for the interest of society.

"We should not give in to ugliness. We have no reason to and we have nothing to gain from succumbing to violence and injustice, even when we know they are hard to defeat."

Owias promptly adds that for beauty to reign there needs to be much more than a wide sense of aesthetics. "It is not just about that -- far from it. This is only one element," he says.

For this painter, it is the supremacy of justice and fairness that counts most of all. "In 1967 the defeat was an acute form of ugliness, and the sense of victory achieved in 1973 was indeed a form of beauty. Fairness is certainly crucial," he adds. For him art can defy but cannot ever be a substitute for unfairness: that is the ultimate root of violence.