tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19938931014859408592024-03-14T06:09:35.789-07:00Farhat Art Museum Collection مجموعة متحف فرحات Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger261125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-91628876604036901532016-01-24T10:55:00.000-08:002016-02-01T21:53:28.941-08:00Life's Longing for Itself: The Art of Adnan Yahya, An essay by Will Cloughley, MFA (Jan 2016)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">To view the paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and figurative ceramics of Adnan Yahya is to experience what the higher callings of fine art can offer to mankind: an unflinching look at some of the worst horrors and injustices of modern life on the one hand, and on the other a radical search through the mysteries of calligraphy and poetry for an expression of that higher intelligence and realm of spirit that might save us as a species.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adnan Yahya</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I believe that artworks are like religion," Yahya has said, "Paintings, sculpture, calligraphy, music—they are all important in the refinement of human ethics. This applies to the social, moral and political aspects of life."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Adnan Yahya was born in 1960 of Palestinian ancestry and joined his family's migration to Jordan, a country that has taken in refugees being forced out of Palestine, their homeland, by the creation of the state of Israel. "I lived the migration life," says Yahya, "that was great suffering." But in spite of the turmoil surrounding him, his life took hold in Amman. He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1979 and then from the Teacher's Institute in 1980. He has had a career as a teacher as well as a successful fine artist. He mastered the chiaroscuro technique—often called "Rembrandt lighting," after one of the old masters who perfected it—learned several styles of Arabic calligraphy, and also acquired skills in sculpting and painted ceramics in clay.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Qana Massacre</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 1982, his art was propelled in a definite direction by the profound distress he felt from the infamous massacre of some 2000 Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites in the refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. The massacre had been carried out by a gang of Young Men, so called, with the Phalange, a Christian Lebanese right wing party with a presumed motive for revenge and ordered by their allies, the Israelis, to clear the camps of the PLO. Under the protection of a multinational force, the PLO had already withdrawn from Lebanon before the massacre during a US-mediated cease fire. But Ariel Sharon insisted that “2000 terrorists” remained in refugee camps around Beirut. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) secured the perimeters around Sabra and Shatila, allowing no one to enter or leave, and shot illumination flares over the area while the gang went from house to house killing everybody.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirhfY6uvGhae2aj5jH65JAhyphenhyphenbGqVGv0wMwUWY_eotvObxmzz2VI0js5IK-eHLf9plRzp4MmbQhlps-x7LxBAY35qFei0VN9CK2nykTs9T0OE6_ZOeeOJ6CyULDI22JPOSuoZoWDi-X9BWH/s1600/Stephen+Hopkins+%25281934+-+%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirhfY6uvGhae2aj5jH65JAhyphenhyphenbGqVGv0wMwUWY_eotvObxmzz2VI0js5IK-eHLf9plRzp4MmbQhlps-x7LxBAY35qFei0VN9CK2nykTs9T0OE6_ZOeeOJ6CyULDI22JPOSuoZoWDi-X9BWH/s400/Stephen+Hopkins+%25281934+-+%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To attempt even the briefest summary of this massacre and some background as to why it happened is to enter an emotionally charged, seemingly infinite regression of cycles of retaliation and revenge. But the images depicting the stark realities of what happened speak directly in a way that belies any explanation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"This shocked me," says Yahya. "It affected me thus that I painted lots of works reflecting the suffering faces, arms and legs separated from slaughtered bodies. Many of the victims weren't connected to politics; they were just Palestinians."</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sabra & Shatila , Ink on paper </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sabra & Shatila, oil on canvas 160*150 cm</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Francisco Goya's Disasters of War images must have been on Yahya's mind after he was confronted by the photojournalist's images that appeared on television. Goya had been shocked by the atrocities committed by French forces during the Peninsular War (1808-1814) when Napoleon's troops occupied Spain. Following an uprising in Madrid, soldiers began marching groups of civilians to hills on the outskirts of the city and executing them with firing squads. Goya had felt morally bound to use his artistic talents to make a statement about these disturbing revelations about what humans are capable of doing to other human beings, even though these prints would not be published until 1863, thirty five years after his death.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOHYoQ83J_E8PHERsxYR-34jjFIvlIztFzBfp2x_Tb-hxpJHkF1_PDhqD646Wpc0lh536x_9Suc7Xyv2fwASiwUOPhYiltV_7iUs8xUtS8l2YV4P8iqrVjOi5hp3a-rMThjL-Drpbk40j/s1600/12539995_10153295284660887_1986119970_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPOHYoQ83J_E8PHERsxYR-34jjFIvlIztFzBfp2x_Tb-hxpJHkF1_PDhqD646Wpc0lh536x_9Suc7Xyv2fwASiwUOPhYiltV_7iUs8xUtS8l2YV4P8iqrVjOi5hp3a-rMThjL-Drpbk40j/s400/12539995_10153295284660887_1986119970_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large; text-align: left;">Goya's Disasters of War</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As Yahya began to explore new methods of producing images that would be capable of expressing his empathetic pain and outrage at what was happening, he developed his own twist on some familiar tropes from the Surrealist period: strange symbolic or grotesque specters appearing in bleak open landscapes.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9-5EjsuHqX3-8NSGnJER_AjlH5d8_OueTPVKO16LyNay7X3_MTqSv3O_y1YjMQcLpUvD8LLs_nQI4m4d2bnHRSgca-q6elB41kD5nbqiQdKJiucx-BCQP19hyphenhyphenkIbmj_BErGA-JcFHdv_0/s1600/%25D9%2588%25D9%2584%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF+%25D8%25AF%25D9%258A%25D8%25A8+%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B4%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF+%25D9%258A%25D9%2582%25D9%2581+%25D8%25A3%25D9%2585%25D8%25A7%25D9%2585+%25D8%25B3%25D9%258A%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25AA%25D9%2587+%25D9%2585%25D9%2586+%25D9%2586%25D9%2588%25D8%25B9+%25D9%2585%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B3%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF%25D8%25B3.+%25D8%25AC%25D9%2586%25D9%258A%25D9%2586%25D8%258C+1969.+%25D9%2585%25D9%2586+%25D8%25A3%25D9%2584%25D8%25A8%25D9%2588%25D9%2585+%25D8%25B9%25D8%25A7%25D8%25A6%25D9%2584%25D8%25A9+%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B4%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF.+%25C2%25A9+%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2585%25D8%25AA%25D8%25AD%25D9%2581+%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2581%25D9%2584%25D8%25B3%25D8%25B7%25D9%258A%25D9%2586%25D9%258A..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9-5EjsuHqX3-8NSGnJER_AjlH5d8_OueTPVKO16LyNay7X3_MTqSv3O_y1YjMQcLpUvD8LLs_nQI4m4d2bnHRSgca-q6elB41kD5nbqiQdKJiucx-BCQP19hyphenhyphenkIbmj_BErGA-JcFHdv_0/s400/%25D9%2588%25D9%2584%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF+%25D8%25AF%25D9%258A%25D8%25A8+%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B4%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF+%25D9%258A%25D9%2582%25D9%2581+%25D8%25A3%25D9%2585%25D8%25A7%25D9%2585+%25D8%25B3%25D9%258A%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25AA%25D9%2587+%25D9%2585%25D9%2586+%25D9%2586%25D9%2588%25D8%25B9+%25D9%2585%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B3%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF%25D8%25B3.+%25D8%25AC%25D9%2586%25D9%258A%25D9%2586%25D8%258C+1969.+%25D9%2585%25D9%2586+%25D8%25A3%25D9%2584%25D8%25A8%25D9%2588%25D9%2585+%25D8%25B9%25D8%25A7%25D8%25A6%25D9%2584%25D8%25A9+%25D8%25A7%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B4%25D9%258A%25D8%25AF.+%25C2%25A9+%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2585%25D8%25AA%25D8%25AD%25D9%2581+%25D8%25A7%25D9%2584%25D9%2581%25D9%2584%25D8%25B3%25D8%25B7%25D9%258A%25D9%2586%25D9%258A..jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Salvador Dali's ,Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, Premonition of Civil War</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Antic sensationalist though he was, Salvador Dali's life was touched by the insane wars of the mid Twentieth Century, and he invented an imagery that can be said to delve into the disturbed psyche of the time. Above left is the painting from 1936 that he titled, "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans—Premonition of Civil War." Dali and his wife Gala had fled to Paris in 1934 to escape the Spanish civil war. When he returned, his house in Port Lligat had been destroyed, and his close friend, the poet Garcia Lorca, had been executed. Above right is Dali's painting, “Visage of War,” executed in 1940 during WW II.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picasso's Guernica</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the lead up to WW II, the Spanish village of Guernica had been bombed by a legion of German planes on the orders of Franco. Three hours of bombing had left 1600 civilians dead. Picasso's painting, named in honor of this Basque town, is perhaps the most famous response from a modern fine artist to the horrors of modern warfare. A tapestry copy of Guernica hangs in the United Nations building in New York City, and many think it is quite significant that when Colin Powell was presenting the case for Bush's war in Iraq to the UN, this painting was draped from view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here, in an exquisitely rendered Yahya painting, a face thrusts up through the rubble in which it has been buried, and manages a scream in spite of the gag which runs across its mouth. The picture delivers its emotional punch at once, before the viewer begins to appreciate its painterly skills: the Rembrandt lighting, the blending of the rubble into the structure of the face, and the somber coloring that might suggest a horrifying vision glimpsed in a dust storm.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In this Yahya painting, executed in the same color palette, the rubble theme is again used to great effect: a body, barefoot, with the hand of another reaching through, both crushed beneath rubble fitted to the body shape and curiously displayed as if on a pedestal. The figure in this painting is bent over, crushed down, no scream coming through.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Naim Farhat has noted Yahya's ingenious and ironic use of another convention: that of the commemorative or memorial statue erected to glorify great conquerors or generals. In this painting, the general's body is rendered with a blue-black morbidity, a feminized male body with fleshy breasts and a paunch that suggests over indulgence, as does the cigarette in his mouth. The face is a scary, eyeless face, lacking in meaningful awareness or ability to perceive, and definitely lacking in compassion. The most colorful area in the painting is the mantle of medals and military decorations, sops to the bloated ego.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Images like this one of the general might remind one of the art of George Grosz, a leading Dada artist (1917-1922) who satirized Germany's corrupt capitalist society with a desire to "show the oppressed the true faces of their masters," and then fled Nazi Germany in 1933.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">End of the War 2006</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But other interesting questions come to my mind. Who is this figure? Has Yahya targeted a specific individual? Is he symbolic of the faceless force of the oppressor, the military tyrant who has many names? Or could he be seen as a symbol of our human ego, always inclined it seems to a certain narcissism? Looking at the images of the victims buried in rubble, it is easy to identify, but can we look at the general and say, I too am that? And how would Adnan Yahya answer these questions?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Those who have met Adnan Yahya say that he is a soft-spoken, gentle man, that he courteously allows others to speak before speaking himself, that he is a good husband and father, and his family obviously loves him. Two of his children, Hamza and Jaafar, are named after two Shiite historical religious figures. And two others, Naji (after a character artist, Naji Al-Ali) and Omar (after a Sunni historical character).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I have no division beliefs between Sunni and Shiites," says Adnan Yahya, believing that these sectarian divisions are encouraged and exploited by the West. "I love the human person regardless of gender, race, or religion...The most beautiful thing in life is a human being who thinks wisely. I like civil life with all its aspects. I admire the persons who dream of peace for mankind. At the same time, the worst is war. I deeply hate military presence and activity, regardless of its nationality. I love the bulldozer if it helps to build a house, but I detest the tank."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The side of Adnan Yahya's character that yearns for the wisdom that can bring peace is best expressed, I think, in his remarkable calligraphic paintings. He was challenged by a gallery owner Ella Arps in Amsterdam to do a calligraphic painting based on a poem, Your Children, by Khalil Gibran (1883-1931). The poem opens with the lines:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Your children are not your children.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">They come through you, but not from you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yahya was inspired to do ten paintings based on Gibran's poem and they were exhibited in Amsterdam in 2013-2014.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In many respects Khalil Gibran and Adnan Yahya are kindred spirits. Best known by his work, The Prophet, from 1923, Kibran was born into a Marionite Catholic family in Bsharri in Mt. Lebanon. His mysticism was born of a convergence of Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Judaism, the Bahai Faith, and even Theosophy. He was a voice of ecumenism:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You are my brother and I love you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I love you when you prostrate yourself in your Mosque,</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">and kneel in your church, and pray in your synagogue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">You and I are sons of one faith—the Spirit."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Gibran yearned in his writings, as I feel Yahya does in his calligraphic paintings, to speak from what we should all be able to feel as the universal ground of the spirit.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I am not a politician," protests Gibran, "nor do I wish to become one. Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yahya has also done calligraphic paintings based on poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al Qasim and Maell Bseiso. "I am fond of Arabic calligraphy since I was young," says Yahya. "I can write all types of Arabic fonts properly. By steady practice I was able to capture strength in painting them. My long experience allowed me to process design elements. In this way I developed this new style of artwork."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Further exhibits of his calligraphic paintings were hosted by the Foresight Gallery in Jordan on January 6, 2015.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yahya uses his Rembrandt lighting technique to great advantage in the calligraphic paintings, spotlighting a group of marks while the rest is allowed to fall into shadow. The writing appears to be applied with thick paint, a bas-relief effect, and made to pop out by adding a shadow side.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For those viewers who are tuned in to manifestations of expressionistic calligraphy, these paintings can develop an almost mystical power.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The sometimes tangled mass of biomorphic abstractions that are Yahya's calligraphy can tease the receptive viewer into a hallucination of creatures, animals, trees, human forms, ocean waves, flocks of birds, and other flights of imagination. They may appear to be the shapes of the sounds of a language that has not been learned into specific meanings or references, partaking of the potential for ambiguity that is always a part of the search for new meaning in the growth of language. Or they may be thought of as the tangled remembrance of a forgotten primal language.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The British science fiction writer J. G. Ballard imagined that "The babbling newborn were telling their mothers of that realm of wonder from which they had just been expelled." And the Freudian philosopher, Norman O. Brown, in his lyrical book, Love's Body, explains it this way: "Speech, as in symbolism, points beyond itself to the silence, to the word within the word, the language buried within the language...speaking in tongues; the primordial language, from before the Flood or the Tower of Babel...present in all our words, unspoken. To hear again the primordial language is to restore to words their full significance, the etymology, the subterranean original meaning."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Yahya's calligraphic painting can be experienced as a kind of graphic glossolalia, a written form of speaking in tongues. He seems transported in these works. And so we might say, as Gibran said of our children in his poem, that these paintings—and indeed all of Adnan Yahya's artwork—that they have come through him, but are not from him. They are an expression of Life's longing for itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Will Cloughley January 9, 2016</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-61691757223445585642015-12-18T06:45:00.001-08:002015-12-18T12:21:28.985-08:00Into the Heart of the Feminine Labyrinth: The Art of Nour Ballouk, Essay by Will Cloughley M.F.A. v1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Nour Ballouk is a young, emerging Lebanese artist who in 2014-2015 created a series of digital artworks titled ARAB SPRING DANCE. Printed on large sheets of translucent plexiglass that give them luminosity--and a suggestion perhaps of iconic stained glass windows--these works are all variations of a brilliant and provocative artistic juxtaposition: ghostly images of Orientalist dancers overlaying photos of the destruction that has been the result of the ongoing wars and occupations of Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nour Ballouk, Beirut April 2015 </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">From my first viewing of these images, I felt that Ballouk had succeeded in producing true symbols whose meaning cannot be exhaustively explained in words, not even by a statement from the artist herself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The “Arab Spring” is a journalistic label used to describe a remarkable series of populist uprisings against oppressive leaders and governments that, according to a Wikipedia time-line, exploded like a string of firecrackers, spreading from Tunisia in 2010 to Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Oman, Mauritania, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Djibouti, Morocco, Sudan, Palestine, Iraq, Bahrain, Libia, Kuwait, the Western Sahara, Iranian Khuzestan to the borders of Israel. But after the early euphoria of these people's rebellions, there has been a settling back into versions of business-as-usual and on-going conflicts. It is not my purpose here to offer a political analysis of why these events have taken place or the course they have taken. There are endless numbers of back-stories, spun opinions, and distortions to sift through. The oppressors in an Orwellian world wear many different masks and even layers of masks. But one thing is obvious: in these wars and occupations innocent people have been hurt and ancient structures that are memory holders for all of mankind are being destroyed.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Syrian Rhapsody, The Arab Spring series, 2014</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to Nour, the piece titled “Syrian Rhapsody” was the one that started the whole series off. Prancing on the balls of her feet, the veiled dancer arches skyward in front of a photo of the Khalid abin Walid Mosque's partially destroyed mausoleum in the AL-Khalididya. The artist has said of the Arab Spring Dance series:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“It is a way to honor these Arab cities charged with history, that are evidence of a great and ancient civilization now afflicted by destruction and death. Cities that carry in them deep sorrows as ancient as the old churches of Syria, the shrines in Iraq, and the temples of Luxor...”</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Torments, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In this poignant lament, and in the production of this series, Nour clings to the right of ecstasy rather than a crushing defeat and depression. In the summer of 2006, only recently graduated from the Lebanese University in Beirut with a B.A. in arts, she was one of several Lebanese artists whose art and studios were damaged or destroyed in an Israeli attack on several areas of Lebanon .</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ballouk's workshop, Lebanon_Nabatieh 2006 - AFP photo by Anwar Amro</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGsJatLNRXnvzdwwqfX8xHotlgj5Ya3T1JsCoBn3cherbl5TK3zSpL3ZQZ3rstTGRUZV6NdJg1_-QyFIGR-kgbhiR2FichlXRnRdolIOgvqPxHSPEInZyPU3r5JUkAUZXu15wiJsx6ArYH/s1600/Lebanon_+Nabatiye+15+ao%25C3%25BBt+2006+-+AFP-Photo+-+Anwar+Amro+str...jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGsJatLNRXnvzdwwqfX8xHotlgj5Ya3T1JsCoBn3cherbl5TK3zSpL3ZQZ3rstTGRUZV6NdJg1_-QyFIGR-kgbhiR2FichlXRnRdolIOgvqPxHSPEInZyPU3r5JUkAUZXu15wiJsx6ArYH/s400/Lebanon_+Nabatiye+15+ao%25C3%25BBt+2006+-+AFP-Photo+-+Anwar+Amro+str...jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ballouk's Home destroyed, Lebanon_Nabatieh 2006 - AFP photo by Anwar Amro</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But in September, the artists affected by the attack rallied together and under tents atop the rubble of bombed out buildings exhibited their war-damaged work. She said:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">“The Israeli destruction of my art caused a temporary setback, but it didn't break my spirit as a human being or as an artist. I will continue to create and paint.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Eight years later she came out with Arab Spring Dance.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_P-96IKUGJiExsiQ6XGW79rqe1I5EKdRwItPltyDl36bRxG3eruuvGWHBBAf4GTX7NakqqZq_3ye4aS8bXEsEZIX0VnfV1J9u1pqrTaZ592Tm0Itxn0DNbJEfBgVt2rT44xKujZOn8a20/s1600/35+50.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_P-96IKUGJiExsiQ6XGW79rqe1I5EKdRwItPltyDl36bRxG3eruuvGWHBBAf4GTX7NakqqZq_3ye4aS8bXEsEZIX0VnfV1J9u1pqrTaZ592Tm0Itxn0DNbJEfBgVt2rT44xKujZOn8a20/s400/35+50.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the Wire, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Some historians have suggested that the appropriation of the image of the dancing harem girl, the Orientalist dancer costumed in translucent fabric and draped with strings of pearls, was somehow part of the effort by the Western powers to dominate and colonize those lands and those peoples, something that was undoubtedly fated to happen when the industrialized infrastructures (and military forces) of the West came to be powered by oil.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzzWxIahMe089MIhyphenhyphenQ0cW4jGF_7pKHbfM-9tpNwIgmbUY2YN4pppgqzlWknWiZ2A7-8uyOATi_h9O5YjGMKh5DUo4Ed60oymNvMT3h2N_SvF41Amq7_CyLC4_fCpAnnMUE72uRst-70J4/s1600/group+dance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzzWxIahMe089MIhyphenhyphenQ0cW4jGF_7pKHbfM-9tpNwIgmbUY2YN4pppgqzlWknWiZ2A7-8uyOATi_h9O5YjGMKh5DUo4Ed60oymNvMT3h2N_SvF41Amq7_CyLC4_fCpAnnMUE72uRst-70J4/s400/group+dance.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rituals, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">According to Virginia Keft-Kennedy, the version of the Orientalist dancer known as the “belly dancer” was introduced to the West at the series of World Exhibitions in the late 1800s, and used for erotic titillation at the Fairs. In the late 19th and early 20th Century, Western women began to emulate, appropriate and transform the dances of the Middle East as these expressions became a part of feminist politics. And as I write this today from the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California I am witness to the enormous popularity of Belly Dance as a part of a New Age, neo-pagan feminist culture here. For better or worse, we are now all part of an electronically-connected, increasingly globalized culture in which cultural traditions, sacred teachings, art, and products are being exported, imported and mixed into new amalgams and hybrids. One reading of these juxtapositions in Arab Spring Dance is obviously that of a savage irony. Among the images of dancers used by Ballouk is that of Princess Banu, a contemporary Turkish belly dancer who had performed for heads of state like Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, both of whom were ousted during the Arab Spring uprisings.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Er2MKRnbB6B7FJHES4zZ_owpT8sTDHvSD3wuUrC_695x_2NHosC3zKyAA1RWMGK-JzREFftX4hbX6r5bA1Klc3XrphLcXVHyn-gSjIIqkZGeE0ymwq9BE_EDYkH9DbAIPjBmJRFpTebX/s1600/2surreal+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Er2MKRnbB6B7FJHES4zZ_owpT8sTDHvSD3wuUrC_695x_2NHosC3zKyAA1RWMGK-JzREFftX4hbX6r5bA1Klc3XrphLcXVHyn-gSjIIqkZGeE0ymwq9BE_EDYkH9DbAIPjBmJRFpTebX/s400/2surreal+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surreal, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfA31TguMizHP2xABltwdlU7R6ZsxVgz0bTUpiJ-0jaacDMs_aIeJR_J8W1X_d_eYalySYBH0Zk8AmPD99naXjI-uNx-BJS7MTaaWa36rHWgH011NyD-zXtHi8Xry_UTZCOaRvRxNHQK5i/s1600/3TV+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfA31TguMizHP2xABltwdlU7R6ZsxVgz0bTUpiJ-0jaacDMs_aIeJR_J8W1X_d_eYalySYBH0Zk8AmPD99naXjI-uNx-BJS7MTaaWa36rHWgH011NyD-zXtHi8Xry_UTZCOaRvRxNHQK5i/s400/3TV+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Scenery, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw69phG1ZWZn9EE779DQVRv5Mb4pD1FimPHAQzO7wDKs_kUTM0c0ENdi7GHT2msP89S5FXouRz-93pJe1UD7qQWjesmQoD8KU530Lj0tfGQjaT0ZBpDqLEVLSKY_qcKxBC8LTHBe4yHDw1/s1600/window+view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw69phG1ZWZn9EE779DQVRv5Mb4pD1FimPHAQzO7wDKs_kUTM0c0ENdi7GHT2msP89S5FXouRz-93pJe1UD7qQWjesmQoD8KU530Lj0tfGQjaT0ZBpDqLEVLSKY_qcKxBC8LTHBe4yHDw1/s400/window+view.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Window View, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But if I just consider the feeling I get from looking at the images in Arab Spring Dance, I find that I prefer to approach them from the perspective of Jungian psychology, which attempts to get at the elemental forces at work in the human psyche, what he called the archetypes of the collective unconscious. From this perspective, the Orientalist dancer is a specific cultural manifestation of the feminine principle which Jung called the anima. The complement to the anima is the male principle which he called the animus. Both these principles are at work in men and women. A man is influenced by an inner anima, and a woman by an inner animus. Keeping these forces in balance is a key part of any individual’s maturation into wholeness. We can also consider the need of a whole culture to keep these two forces in balance and properly assimilated into consciousness in a positive way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The dancing girl, the Belly Dancer is the youthful, erotic stage of the anima. It is a basic, life-affirming force that opens toward joy, exuberance, and falling in love. In the Tantric traditions of India, we see it expressed in the friezes that decorate certain temples where it is identified with an energy called kundalini that can travel up the spine animating the whole body—an energy very much related to the impulse to dance. The potential for ecstatic release is built into our biology and can manifest in the higher emotional and thinking centers, spiraling up through the chakras to the crown. The anima is the soul, an inner guide ultimately to transformation and the wisdom of maturity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Given this perspective from deep psychology, it is interesting to note that a number of the images of dancers used by Nour Ballouk are from a historic ballet adaptation of Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic poem, Scheherazade, composed in 1888 and premiered as a choreographed dance by the Ballets Russes in Paris on June 4, 1910. It is based on the tale of One Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as The Arabian Nights.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh02Iwz83Wx7UvtVHAZkboC9MpOp4XaTL7ap-oeujm1iyRIatdBLloVJ35UYWodJf6bbMvYdgVyhdNi3Fo6wPT7_-R4jnJfdxnKhmn2PR1zzQsKCzB6_9FJX3ggJKnrvP3gqJPmQ8i7q-Tg/s1600/750635db-2a6c-4e8b-88ef-e6035d9d00da.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh02Iwz83Wx7UvtVHAZkboC9MpOp4XaTL7ap-oeujm1iyRIatdBLloVJ35UYWodJf6bbMvYdgVyhdNi3Fo6wPT7_-R4jnJfdxnKhmn2PR1zzQsKCzB6_9FJX3ggJKnrvP3gqJPmQ8i7q-Tg/s400/750635db-2a6c-4e8b-88ef-e6035d9d00da.jpg" width="395" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grey Dance, The Arab Spring Dance, 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The story line is like an Oriental fairy tale or myth that lends itself so well to a Jungian interpretation that I want to summarize it. Shahryar, the Persian King, after discovering that his first wife was unfaithful to him, resolves to marry a new virgin each day and behead the previous day's wife so that she would have no chance to be unfaithful to him. He had killed 1000 such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizer's daughter. Besides being beautiful, she had read and absorbed the books, annals, and legends of preceding kings and antique races, memorized the works of poets and knew the arts and sciences as well as philosophy. She was a great story teller, and the King lay awake and listened with awe as she told her first story, but she left the story unfinished to carry over to the next night. At the end of 1001 nights, she ran out of stories, but by then the King had fallen in love with her and made her his Queen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Scheherazade in this tale is a fully developed anima figure with the power to effect a transformation in a king who is a monstrous animus figure. She becomes the very necessary guide to his inner world, leading to a change of heart. It is his, the King's destruction, that we see in the background photos to the dancers in Arab Spring Dance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In Nour Ballouk's early work in oil and acrylic, she demonstrated mastery of classical figure rendering and began to announce the themes that she would pursue in her maturing work: feminine power and sensitivity and a romantic sensibility that is drawn to ancient occult teachings and symbols.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I note in particular a painting titled LABYRINTH in which the ancient image of a labyrinth is superimposed over the image of a woman in profile in the position of her heart.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirF5zkLF5NLRRyS1jP2h8gjof2cTljdr7j70K-soVCdb_pHWL8HVCOfcLyCYiqp1Jh6CgkrkvS5eH02qJmxMvZ5KZS6T7GHsSt5BDrH8E2vBXD3U5vL4x28JNv9OqJRtJuxJ1dZqdsIGdY/s1600/1013597_625893414110127_597862855_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirF5zkLF5NLRRyS1jP2h8gjof2cTljdr7j70K-soVCdb_pHWL8HVCOfcLyCYiqp1Jh6CgkrkvS5eH02qJmxMvZ5KZS6T7GHsSt5BDrH8E2vBXD3U5vL4x28JNv9OqJRtJuxJ1dZqdsIGdY/s400/1013597_625893414110127_597862855_n.jpg" width="312" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Labyrinth, Oil on Canvas 2013</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">She looks toward the image of a rooster in the background, clearly a male or animus symbol. The labyrinth creates, orders and protects the center (here the heart of the feminine) by conditioning entry. Entry into the labyrinth is an initiation, a step on the path of knowledge. But before knowledge is revealed, the old preconceptions must be dissolved by re-entry into the preformal state of the womb. This is Jung's journey toward wholeness, from the little self, to the Self of the fully developed human. At the center of the spiral labyrinth, man meets, overcomes and assimilates the monster, the Minotaur of his own hidden nature. The center of the labyrinth is thus a symbol for the state of balance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I have said that a true symbol is so rich with meanings that it cannot be exhaustively rendered into words. Art is its own language, and we are lucky to have artists like Nour Ballouk to give us art symbols worth pondering and wondering about, symbols I believe with the healing power of the feminine.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Will Cloughley 12/10/2015</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ArtistNourBallouk/">https://www.facebook.com/ArtistNourBallouk/</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-89235684610843873492015-12-08T02:17:00.002-08:002015-12-08T02:17:10.847-08:00RED ROCK, BLACK SUN sculpture/artist’s book project by Will Cloughley, Farhat Art Museum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-15559204038072284902015-12-08T00:08:00.000-08:002015-12-08T00:08:35.701-08:00The Art of Will Cloughley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-51409859550215614942015-12-07T13:47:00.002-08:002015-12-07T13:47:55.814-08:00Locating Existence by Bassam Kyrillos, Farhat Art Museum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-86894164173360821532015-12-05T05:55:00.000-08:002015-12-05T10:28:20.873-08:00THE SPIRIT OF COLD MOUNTAIN IN THE LIFE AND ART OF DAVID TEACHOUT<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">What is the role of the artist in modern society? What is the real value to and function of a painting in modern culture? These are questions that the non-representational, abstract expressionist painter, David Teachout, born in 1933, has pondered throughout his life—most eloquently in a short autobiography he titled, UNCERTAINTY: The Solidarity of the Solitary Artist.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNJOPqlJuL421rjY6YALDo3z-6rq-qSoTVnkfUHgu0xEbI0UI1oii-zwfFirvk4Y2vYgDEsbjhVzcmKctYYbVuOPjxZIPeaBtYpCuklcfXBpVMoM5RotX2kKW5wBXocsrYvsB811VpVSbD/s1600/Scan+9+%25281%2529.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNJOPqlJuL421rjY6YALDo3z-6rq-qSoTVnkfUHgu0xEbI0UI1oii-zwfFirvk4Y2vYgDEsbjhVzcmKctYYbVuOPjxZIPeaBtYpCuklcfXBpVMoM5RotX2kKW5wBXocsrYvsB811VpVSbD/s400/Scan+9+%25281%2529.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Teachout (The Pilot)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Teachout, who inherited a handsome, athletic body from his super-athlete father, trained as a young man in his twenties to serve as a naval aviator in an all weather jet fighter squadron flying off an aircraft carrier in the Far East during the nightmare years of the Cold War. He flew single pilot jet fighters at sea. After serving his stint in the military, he rejected commercial flying as a career path, and began taking courses at North Carolina State University. Once he discovered painting in college, there was really no turning back from the deep calling he felt for it. But fame and gallery patronage take years plus a stomach for self promotion that has little to do with what painting is all about for people like David Teachout. Also he had a family to support and the study of architecture satisfied a certain penchant he had for precision and order, so he took a degree in landscape architecture. But over the years he found himself again and again turning away, ultimately, from potentially lucrative and secure mainstream careers as pilot, architect, and university art teacher to configure his humble living space(s) into painting studios for large canvasses where he could devote himself completely to an art that he regarded as a disciplined and contemplative practice.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titled Cold Mountain 10 , November 1974 Measures 66×84</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7-3X3iHi1oScZpBrKZCgEzlDVYG-kflHjqXyC2ElQnVF7c8qxyBKXTyU4nEBz04rc4FxqG9I9-48h0ovsDxPhiSrxzm6dRRVXtGaBhoOnD2fA3JAqXkAlc8l5_RmO6J38-UQ6yEjtsrK/s1600/Titled+Cold+Mountain+number+9+Copyright+October+1974+Measures+66%25C3%259784+inches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7-3X3iHi1oScZpBrKZCgEzlDVYG-kflHjqXyC2ElQnVF7c8qxyBKXTyU4nEBz04rc4FxqG9I9-48h0ovsDxPhiSrxzm6dRRVXtGaBhoOnD2fA3JAqXkAlc8l5_RmO6J38-UQ6yEjtsrK/s400/Titled+Cold+Mountain+number+9+Copyright+October+1974+Measures+66%25C3%259784+inches.jpg" width="358" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titled Cold Mountain number 9 Copyright October 1974 Measures 66×84 inches</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps nothing is more indicative of Teachout’s feeling toward his calling to his life as an artist than the naming of one of his most important series of paintings, the COLD MOUNTAIN SERIES, after Han-shan, a 9th Century, Chinese Tang Dynasty poet associated with the Taoist and Zen tradition of a mountain recluse who—legend has it—wrote his poetry on rocks:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Words from Cold Mountain</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">excerpts from the poetry of Han-shan</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">II</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Where’s the trail to Cold Mountain?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Cold Mountain? There’s no clear way.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Ice, in summer, is still frozen.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Bright sun shines through thick fog.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You won’t get there following me.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Your heart and mine are not the same.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">If your heart was like mine,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">You’d have made it, and be there!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">V</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">High, high, the summit peak,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Boundless the world to sight!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">No one knows I am here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">VIII</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I travelled to Cold Mountain:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Stayed here for thirty years.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Slow-burning, life dies like a flame</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Never resting, passes like a river.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Today I face my lone shadow</span><span style="font-size: large;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">XV</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I’m on the trail to Cold Mountain.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Cold Mountain trail never ends.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Who can leap the world’s net,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Sit here in the white clouds with me?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">XXVI</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Are you looking for a place to rest?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Cold Mountain’s good for many a day.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There’s an old man sitting by a tree,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Muttering about the things of Tao.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Ten years now, it’s been so long</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This one’s forgotten his way home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">XXVII</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Cold rock, no one takes this road.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The deeper you go, the finer it is.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">White clouds hang on high crags.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">On Green Peak a lone gibbon’s cry.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">What friends do I need?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I do what pleases me, and grow old.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Let face and body alter with the years,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I’ll hold to the bright path of mind.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Teachout says of Han-shan:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“His was a poetry of austerity and, in a way, a commentary on the confused and overburdened minds of the society from which he escaped. He is associated with Zen and Taoism, but it seems to me that he maintained an independence from all organized spiritual practices. I felt a kinship to his natural austerity in my own approach to painting.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Han-shan’s poetry captures not only the sympathetic feeling of the contemplative and solitary renunciate but also something of the aerie view that Teachout experienced as a pilot which he says had a strong influence on his painting. He writes in his autobiography:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> “Flying through vast clear space at supersonic speeds 40,000 feet above the earth effects one’s visual sense. Horizons and ordinary terrestrial visual clues vanish. One flies in a four dimensional world where one location is a good as another, where there are no boundaries, no frames to fly in and out of. Space is everywhere the same, an all-overness without focal points or contrast to delineate a figure/ground relationship. In space, all is space without distinctions. It is unified, undivided and luminous....Speed also affects perception. I flew low altitude, high speed missions as low as fifty feet above the ground. At first, objects on the ground appeared as a blur. Gradually, with practice, I was able to see those objects as if I was riding in a car at highway speed, even though I was flying at 600mph. Rather than speeding up, my mind slowed down, became quiet and settled, open: in a meditative state. It is the same or similar state that describes my painter’s mind.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“My canvases are wide enough and high enough, that when I approach to paint, the edges disappear into my peripheral vision, and the field, unencumbered with edges, is of primary importance. The borderless space of the aviator...”</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeMSbOstwmcelzIlOQHxTxmOrnHd4aQcBD70BYca5o1lg7WM56wkXLNC-ypjXI-fM86DiMWuDDd5xL2lkoSToGwGo9jKtR9wvb6WtRGGnR3PYFaQZeGrC60egXmQhZ3ffqAK0BzTRWdi8Q/s1600/geometric+...jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeMSbOstwmcelzIlOQHxTxmOrnHd4aQcBD70BYca5o1lg7WM56wkXLNC-ypjXI-fM86DiMWuDDd5xL2lkoSToGwGo9jKtR9wvb6WtRGGnR3PYFaQZeGrC60egXmQhZ3ffqAK0BzTRWdi8Q/s400/geometric+...jpg" width="305" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">These then are partial descriptions of Teachout’s trail to his own personal Cold Mountain, a trail that led to the color field paintings he refers to as the Aura, Parabolic, and Hyperbolic, painting. (The Hyperbolic painting—a mirage-like vertical cluster of monochromatic hues— was chosen to be part of the 1967 30th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC. And Aura VI, a predecessor to Hyperbolic and now in the Occidental College collection, was featured in the San Francisco Museum’s Annual Art Exhibition.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Another group of paintings to emerge from Teachout’s realization of the ganzfeld effect of high altitude supersonic flying are paintings that he calls The Falling Series or Poured Abstractions. The g-force twists and turns, those inertial determinations of space transmitted by the pilot’s control stick are in these paintings expressed by considered pours of selected color as the canvas is re-oriented in earth’s gravity field for each separate pour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2kYt1z2c6sM_9uplTce_Qab0XoIdwT1f-8wa_6sKwdDAq7uA_hNH_1Whyphenhyphenw6XR_a2jqvqq3j0qZUPCwnZCz0Uxb2U1mMqyPbUu5M1K0vXBO-HZhTEKAxCnRIzT9spro6Hlos5Vp6Ej86E/s1600/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25284%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC2kYt1z2c6sM_9uplTce_Qab0XoIdwT1f-8wa_6sKwdDAq7uA_hNH_1Whyphenhyphenw6XR_a2jqvqq3j0qZUPCwnZCz0Uxb2U1mMqyPbUu5M1K0vXBO-HZhTEKAxCnRIzT9spro6Hlos5Vp6Ej86E/s320/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25284%2529.jpg" width="257" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-Fou53woVm6IgY0kmifE-QUbDxxrUSDUjpRYjfXPcAgvM85wEDUYnxlJebHkcIsYmHYbC2M7fafwEknoCpUH1HYashJdwtAFyF6uOTyvVSrLTOWjhZ70xpElDDOOd4iPNosSwAnJ8inL/s1600/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd-Fou53woVm6IgY0kmifE-QUbDxxrUSDUjpRYjfXPcAgvM85wEDUYnxlJebHkcIsYmHYbC2M7fafwEknoCpUH1HYashJdwtAFyF6uOTyvVSrLTOWjhZ70xpElDDOOd4iPNosSwAnJ8inL/s320/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25285%2529.jpg" width="274" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj803ncqcDW2-OSwARzv7WjI7_yFohKakuMSab-ZA50aR9pipdLyHPFQkLajmClMyLa9_6j9wENp2ShaijM9VHZYS0_97q7RmnE83Dfjt7RDWm9f1Yk_88RNdqxfKKpFw1x1CrZ_qH2vl45/s1600/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj803ncqcDW2-OSwARzv7WjI7_yFohKakuMSab-ZA50aR9pipdLyHPFQkLajmClMyLa9_6j9wENp2ShaijM9VHZYS0_97q7RmnE83Dfjt7RDWm9f1Yk_88RNdqxfKKpFw1x1CrZ_qH2vl45/s320/Dripping+Abstraction+by+David+Teachout%252C+Acrylic+on+canvas++%25283%2529.jpg" width="263" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> And what is being poured is pure color, not color being used to represent something other than itself, but color as subject and object.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Teachout says of this process:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Colors would mix, either physically when wet, or visually with transparent overlays, as streams of paint flowed over one another. ...where the paint was poured and how much was poured mattered. Should I pour wet onto dry, onto damp, onto wet? There was a ...convergence of my attention to simultaneously blend a complex of ideas, materials and processes in one brief moment of pouring. Did I want the paint to transverse the full length of the canvas, or stop upon it. Gravity had replaced my paint brush as the method by which the paint would touch the canvas. With full attention, all parts that would form the painting, combined in the instant the paint was poured. Gravity pulled the liquid color down the canvas slope, and it was done. So began the ‘Falling’ series that preoccupied me for the next three years.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Further explorations of the pouring technique in the Cold Mountain series involved distorting the canvas into mounds and furrows which would affect the flow of color. Adopting a pouring technique, compared with his earliest gestural abstractions with a brush, of course, involved relinquishing a certain amount of control and introducing the element of chance. Teachout became fascinated with fashioning systems that would allow him to box-in the various parameters controlled by chance and “...getting out of the way as much as I could...” This involved, among other things, utilizing the Book of Random Numbers to determine the placement of rolls of cloth under the canvas as well as the position, direction of flow, and volume of paint.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Chance and randomness were also invoked in another series that Teachout called THE ORIENTAL CARD GAME. He describes his system as follows: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheE60rW-SNhiJpbzqqFIdYC2CEBoZlGKwCizCnWFxYj8hd8eohzhdBKDCfQ4MVXDIJk7tIYhoNlntfsEXPytXQLOFTBU2EhEfiU7o4Q8OUmPIUXvAVUDvX4lgr9oYfEeFAZsuHrD8nqLSB/s1600/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games.....jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheE60rW-SNhiJpbzqqFIdYC2CEBoZlGKwCizCnWFxYj8hd8eohzhdBKDCfQ4MVXDIJk7tIYhoNlntfsEXPytXQLOFTBU2EhEfiU7o4Q8OUmPIUXvAVUDvX4lgr9oYfEeFAZsuHrD8nqLSB/s400/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games.....jpg" width="355" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I mixed a sequence of 13 colors with small intervals. A 13 x 13 grid of squares was laid out covering the whole area of a large canvas. The raw canvas was stained. Then, the colors numbered to correspond to 13 playing cards...were chosen one at a time by selecting a card from the newly shuffled</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">deck. This process was repeated for all the 169 squares. The placement for the chosen colors was from top to bottom, right to left, as if one were reading Japanese text. The painted edge of the squares was precise but not [hard edged], maintaining a slight softness and painterly feel... The resultant all over field of color pulsed with a subtle uncertainty.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcMMacZYMtH1b4DXSdafschRxn5cslD5OXw3YtL1gXOcMyDRWTzLMpN2ylAJYqaL3TqiNTHoEl3w_WT741AvIRGJRxj8Hnm5BKHXUgJ2WKlYOC1m_Q9vNdT7-hGjsLdcnGhL1chNaJAyf/s1600/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRcMMacZYMtH1b4DXSdafschRxn5cslD5OXw3YtL1gXOcMyDRWTzLMpN2ylAJYqaL3TqiNTHoEl3w_WT741AvIRGJRxj8Hnm5BKHXUgJ2WKlYOC1m_Q9vNdT7-hGjsLdcnGhL1chNaJAyf/s400/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games+7.jpg" width="378" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This desire to get himself “out of the way” can also be seen in his approach to small works on paper that were part of the Cold Mountain phase. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jH3sRrLYwSgcP3X4cDvZnid1JAtnPup-yU646M7ruPa3talGTLXIVqEm-ZTAfvSV-TIBGWU823wpvYkppToZOQjlUY6PH1tZ_OVLGbM2xxgsMLoS5aMp5zkQ5g0bDUW2-_XU71nsLvtG/s1600/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jH3sRrLYwSgcP3X4cDvZnid1JAtnPup-yU646M7ruPa3talGTLXIVqEm-ZTAfvSV-TIBGWU823wpvYkppToZOQjlUY6PH1tZ_OVLGbM2xxgsMLoS5aMp5zkQ5g0bDUW2-_XU71nsLvtG/s400/Titled+Oriental+Card+Games.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I prepared from one to three acrylic colors that were very liquid, like ordinary watercolors. I chose from one to three sumi brushes of different sizes. Then, sitting meditation style on a low cushion, I’d allow my mind to settle, grow still and quiet. When I felt fully settled, yet alert, I would pick up a brush and carefully load it with paint. Once again, I’d wait, growing even more silent and still in the mind. My aim was to paint spontaneously, before thought emerged to take control. Thought-induced demands to paint [immediately] surfaced, insisting that I paint now. But, by waiting them out, they vanished, leaving my less corrupted awareness in waiting.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This process might take a short time or go on for over half an hour. Then, suddenly, without intention, the brush swept across the paper with [the] fierce, quick energy of a Samurai sword and the painting was done. I called this form of painting ‘Painting With a Beginner’s Mind’...a combination of Zen meditation and action painting.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A particularly elegant and austere, meditation-inspiring group of paintings is Teachout’s CIRCLE SERIES, each a large canvas displaying usually three concentric rings of color interacting like the notes of a harmonious musical chord. To achieve full effect, these paintings must be properly lit and viewed from the right distance. And in these paintings the affect of color merges with the powerfully symbolic form of the circle.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpY_48Id5kFjlEV4nLcO6IC_sOwgqrak584YuQyLnEhPXku45GMQRL_srcaIu4wqdtPLQTqa3FCpvkfSIjzaFf8tt9IvIsnlZVsVzfKBXkpPbwXB7kT0vRKkjIkTwpnrfIjbYMMoGlpUuO/s1600/David+Teachout+with+circle+painting+at+Medar+St.+Studio+S.C.+Calif.+The+year+was+1968..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpY_48Id5kFjlEV4nLcO6IC_sOwgqrak584YuQyLnEhPXku45GMQRL_srcaIu4wqdtPLQTqa3FCpvkfSIjzaFf8tt9IvIsnlZVsVzfKBXkpPbwXB7kT0vRKkjIkTwpnrfIjbYMMoGlpUuO/s400/David+Teachout+with+circle+painting+at+Medar+St.+Studio+S.C.+Calif.+The+year+was+1968..jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Teachout with circle painting at Medar St. Studio S.C. Calif. The year was 1968.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In 1912, Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky, possibly the first painter to create a purely abstract painting in the modern sense, made the bold Romantic claim in his famous essay, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, that the artist is the prophet of the coming New Age, standing alone at the apex of a pyramid making new discoveries and ushering in tomorrow’s reality. A natural synesthete, Kandinsky believed that the colors and forms of abstract painting could impart spiritual meanings and had the capacity to move the soul, as did the purely abstract art of music. Attempting to roughly codify the meaning of many basic geometric shapes, he said that the circle is the most peaceful shape representing the wholeness of the Self and that color is a means of exerting a direct influence upon the soul.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGSoPBe_1GJdglvzCvLeJekT9u30ca63UIreMGHS1b1Q7J4npq09WiiumpQd2GDfcMpsaWAYGEHWP6qUO4EF15lTebzTJGfgVgWQpxVw1mVCryIIv1Dik9Wp7F-WfitVYwomlyDt9lIl5x/s1600/Circle....jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="388" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGSoPBe_1GJdglvzCvLeJekT9u30ca63UIreMGHS1b1Q7J4npq09WiiumpQd2GDfcMpsaWAYGEHWP6qUO4EF15lTebzTJGfgVgWQpxVw1mVCryIIv1Dik9Wp7F-WfitVYwomlyDt9lIl5x/s400/Circle....jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It is clear from David Teachout’s writing, his wonderful poetry and autobiography as well as video interviews, that he thought of and experienced his painting as at root a spiritual practice in the same way that meditation is a foundation for many spiritual practices. He says in his autobiography:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Looking back, I can see that I viewed the painter’s life as a spiritual life. In some way, a painter could transcend the limits of ordinary reality, gather the potentials that dwelled in the mystery, and return to shape the transcendent harvest into sublime expressions of color and form. This irreducible encounter with essence, with uncorrupted insight and pure intention, was a powerful motivator to draw me into a covenant with something intangible, yet present, which both energized and sustained me as an artist....Beyond the formal structure of the painting, color considerations are primary. And more deeply and much more difficult to articulate, is the feeling of being an organic part of an evolutionary creative movement in which objects we call paintings manifest as resultants of a process that is mostly a mystery.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And yet there was a certain burden to bear. Even as by 1966 his work was being included in important competitive shows in San Francisco and galleries were showing interest,</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">he was caught up in the protest movement against the war in Viet Nam and the dangers of nuclear war which he knew all too well as a former navy pilot. Repeated letters to congressional representatives and participation in the protest movement seemed to have no effect. He says of this period:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“With all this chaos, warring and brutality, of what importance is art? The absurd activity of closing oneself in a room with canvas and paint and making marks, what possible meaning could this have in a suffering world on fire? But, isn’t the highest human calling to become self aware, to respond to one’s conscience, to follow one’s heart wherever it might lead? To reference this awareness and not the social chaos, is to create a world, a small personal world to be sure, that does not have as its basis, the fragmentation that is inevitable in a hostile world of power and greed and domination. When the ever present, relentless and conflicted world occupies the mind, [becomes] the shape of the mind, then the artist is lost. Then the avaricious, dark wide winds of desire and power sweep away the subtle insights, the quietude, and wins.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii6Qkyd1COcNFihn5PUGoICZIcalxe-XJuxZ3iOp0gxEybZvJ1p92jY9RDCMQEVga4KV9ZmoyrJ6eytVqOkcWzwklYJq4l4DZqpIPI1U2bgB4BfuCq3VrfqU0fTm14oAgq6CHLVPivwxFo/s1600/IMG_1788a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii6Qkyd1COcNFihn5PUGoICZIcalxe-XJuxZ3iOp0gxEybZvJ1p92jY9RDCMQEVga4KV9ZmoyrJ6eytVqOkcWzwklYJq4l4DZqpIPI1U2bgB4BfuCq3VrfqU0fTm14oAgq6CHLVPivwxFo/s400/IMG_1788a.jpg" width="346" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the 1980s Teachout began studies on paper for what would become his SANTA CRUZ SERIES of paintings. Starting with views out of his studio window for inspiration, as well as drawing from the figure, he progressively moved, as is his wont, toward abstractions that only bore faint resemblance to the scenes that inspired them. And as always, primary shapes began to manifest: diagonals that crossed into X-shapes, then squares.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnytMK8gbahSYoeA9MCUxWTQ1J73l17M3bb6B_S0DuI1SVaVmgiZlaG1w6AV65Wn2xgaXV7XfTJjyAZC4ekJRdErTh84P7HzTvSvSGWe9hbTOZ5gQI8Eiz5QJt4Q5pNg49bQyIP0XYV-NV/s1600/IMG_1801a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnytMK8gbahSYoeA9MCUxWTQ1J73l17M3bb6B_S0DuI1SVaVmgiZlaG1w6AV65Wn2xgaXV7XfTJjyAZC4ekJRdErTh84P7HzTvSvSGWe9hbTOZ5gQI8Eiz5QJt4Q5pNg49bQyIP0XYV-NV/s400/IMG_1801a.jpg" width="380" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Morse Peckham in his essay, “Art and Disorder”, notes that children all over the world start making the same visual signs more or less in the same order: the smear, the line, the cross, the X, the square, the circle, the triangle, and finally the free or biomorphic closed form—the implicit forms of perception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We have the evidence of phosphenes, those shapes that appear when pressure is applied to the closed eye, revealing geometric displays intrinsic to the physiology of seeing. And then there is the Indian tradition of the Yantra, geometric diagrams used as visual aids for meditation in addition to aural mantras. Mystical yantras are believed to reveal the inner basis of the forms and shapes abounding in the universe, a yogic vision concentrating the variegated picture of world-appearances into an ultimate form-equation of a specific energy manifesting in the world. These simple form-equations are held to epitomize the real nature of the cosmos as abstracted from the concrete. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9bYgcHOwqEGspOnYv_nA6fb96HyWkXStVMBCVycPCaEx-ffisFDlEE4G6w_ZstwXnphcCI8GkVkHBicDcMGT4seOT91tjDTSoh0arZNiA-dyhdK-JSrJJTMhLGYmVqPZ1bS9jn7F7DgR/s1600/IMG_1809.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9bYgcHOwqEGspOnYv_nA6fb96HyWkXStVMBCVycPCaEx-ffisFDlEE4G6w_ZstwXnphcCI8GkVkHBicDcMGT4seOT91tjDTSoh0arZNiA-dyhdK-JSrJJTMhLGYmVqPZ1bS9jn7F7DgR/s400/IMG_1809.JPG" width="348" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> All of which is to suggest that David Teachout has been one of those intrepid explorers in the practice of modern art that was envisioned by Kandinsky near the beginning of the last century, someone who has given his all to his practice. He says:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“In painting, the less emphasis given to predetermination, the more likely something larger than one’s concept or idea will emerge. And that larger expression is what reaches beyond the painter’s life with the painting. It is a universal quality, evidence or traces of spirit, so to speak. This spiritual evidence is the real life of the painting and is what keep the painter at the task of painting.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYv8uwzclXnnI5Gy0uMZuk8njbR07jaDB8GvUWSkU3kYwKNE7GG1oA-OOaVIqNapPzp7GpeN_76O9iSHaFEQbwIuds6QS73C2lQH_TQ4nh_NZr1BLIoy0ekjME2JK6ndOAzRl1mWMJCwU/s1600/David+Teachout+1st+ave+S.C.+11-28-1984+Seabright+studio+phot+by+the+photographer+Ron+Starr..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBYv8uwzclXnnI5Gy0uMZuk8njbR07jaDB8GvUWSkU3kYwKNE7GG1oA-OOaVIqNapPzp7GpeN_76O9iSHaFEQbwIuds6QS73C2lQH_TQ4nh_NZr1BLIoy0ekjME2JK6ndOAzRl1mWMJCwU/s400/David+Teachout+1st+ave+S.C.+11-28-1984+Seabright+studio+phot+by+the+photographer+Ron+Starr..jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Teachout 1st ave S.C. 11-28-1984 Seabright studio phot by the photographer Ron Starr.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And as David Teachout looks back over the years from his home in the Santa Cruz hills, he says:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Many years ago I vowed to live a simple life with a minimum of possessions, one where time was wealth and creativity ruled. How I live each day is my contribution to a saner world.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A statement that might have been made by the ancient sage of Cold Mountain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essay by Will Cloughley (second draft 9/21/15)</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-66948461485922905992015-10-29T14:29:00.004-07:002015-10-30T14:59:43.206-07:00"Tim NORDIN : L’éloquence dans l’ordre" Hussein HUSSEIN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">Tim Nordin est un artiste américain, né en 1945 à Jamestown, New York. Il fit de nombreux voyages entre Massachussetts, la Floride, Wisconsin, Minnesota et la Suède avant de finalement s’installer en Californie où il étudia les beaux arts au ‘‘Cerritos College’’ pour que son rêve de devenir artiste s’exauce enfin. Il poursuivit ainsi ses études entre ‘‘California State University’’ au Long Beach et ‘‘Chapman College’’ où il se concentra sur l’imprimerie jusqu'à obtenir un diplôme en art en 1970 et un master de ‘‘Claremont Graduate School’’ en 1972. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Ses ‘‘Prints’’ distingués ne l’empêcheront pas de s’adonner à la peinture pour y expérimenter ses diverses variétés techniques. Il chevauche ainsi les styles sur différents supports communs, et inhabituels comme le vinyle et le plastique. Sa recherche assidue et sa détermination à atteindre une parfaite harmonie que le support flexible de la toile ne lui offrira pas, le mène vers la surface dure. C’est dans le Plexi et la toile collée sur le bois qu’il s’élance vers une expérimentation intense utilisant des medias comme l’acrylique en majeure partie, l’aquarelle, la bombe aérosol et d’autres encore qui généreront un art non objectif auquel s’adonnera entièrement Tim Nordin.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWsb7iG9Aqy8AHsDoT_0352Hc08_lIhtm7uLuMpHPoednQvTBS8UScFIvWMQLz-FMG1BUzK7AsIxS3m198cssx9Yyivy0wMuPCd3YCz0HVR_TQbG1fpjfPV_yfpT7IUlo8_9NTI4VhBy1V/s1600/page-12.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWsb7iG9Aqy8AHsDoT_0352Hc08_lIhtm7uLuMpHPoednQvTBS8UScFIvWMQLz-FMG1BUzK7AsIxS3m198cssx9Yyivy0wMuPCd3YCz0HVR_TQbG1fpjfPV_yfpT7IUlo8_9NTI4VhBy1V/s400/page-12.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b> La dualité ‘‘Passion-Raison’'</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Bien que l’artiste ait lui-même mentionné une influence par Rothko, surtout par la touche lumineuse et transparente, ou la similitude à première vue avec l’Art Optique géométrique, de par la répartition des formes sur la surface ou la vibration des couleurs, à l’instar du graphisme sur ordinateur, où par un quelconque rapprochement des œuvres du mouvement ‘‘ Color Field painting’’, l’œuvre de Nordin reste dans sa finalité, individuelle et répond à des conventions qui lui sont propres et originales. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Le début des années soixante dix, fut celui de la série de tableaux sur plexi, le résultat devra être vu au revers, et cette technique caractérisée par des formes organiques flottantes, bulleuses et fluides provoque une texture visuelle spectaculaire sur une surface où se créent des forces de tension entres les formes et le fond en contraste avec elles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘‘Mark over marks’’ séries</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ce même langage est décelable dans d’autres œuvres baptisées ‘‘Mark over marks séries’’ où les touches qui semblent simples, s’organisent sur le support qui plus tard sera une surface sur laquelle il applique plusieurs couches de gesso, où la dernière rendue lisse et polie supporte des traces à structure complexe. Ce clonage organisé de touches, répond à un ordre stricte amorti par les couleurs, la luminosité et l’éclat dont l’œuvre est munie. Sur des formats assez larges, Nordin génère un processus de ‘‘pattern’’ où l’application de la touche par une brosse spéciale, crée un ensemble renfermant action, ordre, fréquence et émotion.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Le rythme crée la stabilité. La répétition calculée, une harmonie métaphysique et spirituelle. Le tout une structure complexe pourtant simple à première vue. Cette manipulation contrôlée et intellectuelle permet à Nordin d’éviter l’imperfection qui sera une distraction pour cet ordre où la force émanant de la simple touche, et reprise sur toute la surface, attribue à l’œuvre sa suprême valeur pour que le centre d’intérêt devienne la totalité du tableau. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">La fluidité cède à la géométrisation, et divise la surface formant des limites diffuses entre les couleurs qui se superposent suggérant la profondeur, une touche dense et opaque s’impose, le rythme vacille à travers des blocks de forme semi géométrique, l’organisation reste, mais moins soumise à un ordre contrôlé. Chaque tâche dépend d’une autre et avec la dernière touche</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">s’accomplit le tableau.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidFPr1OIG7Lo1Ofr_vqwGGTdE5kwQZA6blsTBjkzvEeUnNEpLM694-lRlYSYP5hqdT6ZaS9bXKtJiL8c_Yg8_m68zlHG4_4zH-BgIv5zMksj8L3IPgSIsTYNEw2PJeAlJZYlEYafPIOdHO/s1600/page-25.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidFPr1OIG7Lo1Ofr_vqwGGTdE5kwQZA6blsTBjkzvEeUnNEpLM694-lRlYSYP5hqdT6ZaS9bXKtJiL8c_Yg8_m68zlHG4_4zH-BgIv5zMksj8L3IPgSIsTYNEw2PJeAlJZYlEYafPIOdHO/s400/page-25.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘‘Mark series’’</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">La surface n’est plus nécessairement lisse, les épaisseurs de la peinture moins identiques, la disposition des formes où un espace linéaire symptomatique surgit entre elles évoquant la libération de l’artiste vers une phase plus émotionnelle que logique.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Peintre du vague, de la transparence, de l’éclat et de l’ordre, Tim Nordin, à travers son œuvre minutieuse et intellectuelle explore la spiritualité de l’action et de l’organisation. Les formes cellulaires précoces, fluides et transparentes, finissent par s’opacifier, deviennent plus denses, plus fortes et atteignent une maturité progressive, logique mais émotionnelle. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Hussein HUSSEIN</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">12/06/2015</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://timnordin.wordpress.com/">https://timnordin.wordpress.com/ </a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-48752826994321386142015-10-22T10:16:00.001-07:002015-10-22T10:16:17.879-07:00جوزيه رايمون ليرما: الخروج عن التصنيفات الجاهزة, بقلم شاكر لعيبي<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">جوزيه رايمون ليرما, المأزق , مجموعة متحف فرحات </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لا يمكن لقارئ أعمال جوزيه رايمون ليرما José Ramón Lerma أن يضعه، بثقةٍ واطمئنانٍ، في تيار أو مذهب فنيّ أو تيار تشكيليّ محدّد. تشير منعرجات وبحوث ومنجزات ليرما أنه يمرق عن التصنيفات الجاهزة، وينتقل مدفوعاً بحوافز التجربة الداخلية من رؤية لأخرى، ومن تقنية إلى أخرى، منذ الخمسينيات حتى اليوم.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">صحيح أنه كان في نطاق هذا المجموعة من الفنانين التي تخرجت من معاهد سان فرانيسكو بعد الحرب، سنوات الخمسينيات (هاسل سميث Hassel Smith، إدوارد كوربيت Edward Corbett وجيمس بود ديكسون James Budd Dixon) والتي وُصفت أعمالها بقربها من التجريدية التعبيرية، لكن ليس من الصحيح تماماً وصف أعماله الخمسينية والستينية بانشغالات هذا الاتجاه وحدها، حتى لو أنها لامسته، من قريب أحياناً أو بعيد أحياناً. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية، يميل النقد، مُتسامحاً أحياناً، إلى الحديث عن التجارب المتنوعة التي تشترك بالتجريد وبحريّة استخدام التلوين، بمصطلح التجريدية التعبيرية. علينا فيما يخصّ ليرما أخذ خصوصياته الفردية في هذا الإطار، وخاصة اهتمامه منذ ذلك الوقت بتقنية (المواد المختلفة Mixed Media) التي كانت قد ثَبًتت بصفته وسيلة تعبيرية طليعية أكثر مما مضى.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">جوزيه رايمون ليرما , القلب المقدس, مجموعة متحف فرحات </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ويبدو أن هذه (المواد المختلفة)، لا تشكل بالنسبة لليرما محض تقنية: إنها تستجيب بعمق لنزعاته الاحتجاجية المتجلية، منذ الخمسينيات، في اقترابه من حركة (ثقافة البييت Beat Culture) أو (جيل بييت) التي كانت تتمظهر على الأصعدة الشعرية والتشكيلية والموسيقية والسياسية، والتي ذهبت إلى العقارات المهلوسة والتحرّر الجنسيّ عبر استفزاز العري والاهتمام بالديانات الشرقية (أنجز ليرما عام 1950 تقريباً لوحة بعنوان "الدعوة إلى محمد" Call To Mohammad) والريبة من الرأسمالية والعناية بالطبيعة والاهتمام بالفضاءات الكبيرة، وكان كلٌّ من ألن غينسبرغ وويليام بوروز William S. Burroughs وجاك كيرواك Jack Kerouac من أهمّ تعبيراتها الأدبية.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">تشكيلياً كان الاقتراب من مفاهيم حركة (ثقافة البييت) يتطلب مفاهيم ومعالجات وتقنيات تصويرية غير تقليدية، كانت (المواد المختلفة) واحدة منها بالطبع، لأنها تتفلّت من أمرين: السطح الموحّد والبعدين البصريين (الطول والعرض). قد يقدّم رَفْضُ هذين الأمرين، من جهته، استعارة لرفض السطح الاجتماعيّ الموحّد والأبعاد الثابتة في الحياة. وهنا جوهر ثقافة البييت، وربما جوهر ظهور استخدامات (المواد المختلفة) واسعة النطاق منذ ذلك الوقت.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لقد واظب ليرما على هذه التقنية التي ستتقلب بين جميع أنواع الكولاجات وتوظيف حاجيات ثلاثية الأبعاد على السطح التصويري واستخدام الفوتوغراف والعودة إلى البوب أرت والاستشهاد بأعمال فنانين آخرين (في لوحته "عاصفة الصحراء Desert Storm Box, 1992" يستشهد في آن واحد بالغورنيكا وولادة فينوس والموناليزا) واستخدام الخشب والقصاصات والكتابة، وغير ذلك.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">جوزيه رامون ليرما, عاصفة الصحراء</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لا يتعلق الأمر بمألوفية التقنية، إنما بدلالة استخدامها وفق رؤية فرديّة: ففي (المواد المختلفة) لسنا البتة في عملية تجميع لمواد مختلطة، إنما، قبل ذلك، بالعملية التوليفية التي تُبْدع من المُخْتلِف كياناً مُؤتلفاً. السطح التقليديّ هو المستهدف في محاولة للإطاحة به وتهشيمه. بعبارة أخرى ثمة مسعى واعٍ لاختراق المبدأ التصويريّ التقليديّ، وهنا سيقع السطح التجريديّ نفسه في مرجعيات التقليدية. قدرة المبصور على الإقناع تظل الفاعل الكبير في (المواد المختلطة) عبر جماع المواد المستخدَمة التي صارت كياناً مختلفاً مغايراً لجميع الوسائط مُنْفرِدَة. من الممكن الحديث بعدئذ عن إصرار ليرما منذ بداياته على التقنية هذه: إنها أحد مداخله الأثيرة لصنع عالمه الحداثيّ، ولاختطاط طريق جماليّ يقطع مع الأنماط التقليدية أو التي صارت تقليدية في الفن.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">من الضروريّ التوقف أيضاً عند تجريدياته الخالصة سنوات الستينيات. فهذه التجربة هي من اللحظات التجريبيةً ذات الصفاء بل الشعرية، ولعلها تًمثل مرحلة انتقالية من روح أعمال الفنان الشاب في الخمسينيات إلى ما سيكون نهجه منذ سنوات السبعينيات وما تلاها. حينها ستظهر الكولاجات التي تظلّ تحترم السطح، من دون نتوءات ولا حاجيات ثلاثية الأبعاد. ويظهر انشداد للألوان الصافية، مرة عبر المساحات الهندسية وشبه الهندسية، ومرة عبر اللطخات اللونية التي قد تذكّر المرء بالفعل بالتعبيرية التجريدية. في هذه الفترة عينها ثمة انتباه للحامل الورقيّ الذي تمارس طبقاته المتكوّمة على بعضها نوعاً من مَلْمَس ومن كولاج خاص.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">جوزيه رايمون ليرما , مجموعة متحف فرحات </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">في السنوات بين 1981 – 1991 ثمة عديد من الأعمال التي تشير إلى معاودة عمل الفنان على سطح أقلّ تعقيداً، للوهلة الأولى، وليس أقلّ اغتناءً، نكاد القول سطحاً صافياً بأقلّ المفردات. سطحاً "منيمال"، رغم خشونة السطوح والحذر أحيانا من الإفراط بـ (المواد) التي يستمر الفنان باستثمارها هنا مع ذلك. وضع الفنان للكثير من لوحاته في هذه السنوات نفسها عنوان (بلا عنوان)، لكنها دون شك تنهمك بالسحريّ والطقوسيّ والغامض. لذا يمكن الحديث عن رمزية ما، تقع دلالاتها في الرغبة بالاستبطان والذهاب أبعد من المرئيّ والمحسوس.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ومثلما أشرنا إلى الدلالة الداخلية العميقة لاستخدام تقنية (المواد المختلطة)، نشير إلى دلالات اكتفاء عدد كبير من الفنانين بعنوان من قبيل (بلا عنوان Untitled) ومنهم ليرما. إن الهدف من ذلك، على ما يبدو، هو ترك معنى العمل طافياً في المجرّد والتجريديّ ليتلاءم مع طبيعته المرئية، طالما تعلق الأمر بعمل ليس (سردياً)، ليس تشخيصياً، وإنْ تضمّن أحياناً هيئاتٍ معروفة للجميع. بدون عنوان إحالة على مفهوم عام، على رؤية شاملة ينطوي العمل البلاستيكيّ عليها، وعلينا نحن المُشاهِدين المساهمة مع الفنان في تلمُّسها والتواصُل معها.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">جوزيه رايمون ليرما , مجموعة متحف فرحات </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يمكن أن تُنتج هذه المزاوجة المستمرة بين (المواد المختلفة) و(بلا عنوان)، الأثرَ المأمولَ الذي يريده الفنان: ترك المشاهِد يعيد صياغته الخاصة للمقترَح الذي قدّمه له الفنان، وقد اتخذ الأخير المسافة الضرورية التي تسمح للعمل بأن يتحدّث من فضائه، ويُوْصل رسالته. رسائل ليرما ليست غامضة دوماً، وليست صريحة على طول الخط. إنه يتأرجح في بثّ الرسائل بين الوضوح والالتباس، بين استدعاء أشياء العالم الواقعيّ وإطفائها</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">من حينها تتعقد تجربة الفنان وتتنوّع مستوياتها. وهو يَتمثّل في حقله الجماليّ تجارب العصر التشكيلية، خاصة التيارات الطاغية في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية. وقع الحديث عن تماسه مع البوب أرت والاتجاه المفاهيمي. لا كثير، في تقديري، من الاتجاه المفهوميّ في مسيرة ليرما. هذا الاتجاه لا يتماشي مع همّه في الحقيقة، بقدر ما لا تتماشى قصيدة (عواء Howl and Other Poems 1956) لغينسبرغ Allen Ginsberg سوى مع صرخة احتجاج مفهومة، غير تأملية. ثمة في لوحاته طُرْفة تغمز، من طرف ليس خفياً تماماً، من قضايا العصر الملحّة، غمزة فردية بقدر ما هي جماعية. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لكن استثمار ليرما للبوب أرت يبدو واضحاً (دون أن يكون فنان بوب أرت)، وينسجم مع الخطوط العامة لمشروعه التشكيليّ. فالمنتجات البصرية الشعبية واسعة الانتشار معزولة في لوحاته عن سياقاتها، ومرتبطة بحاجيات أخرى ليست من طبيعتها، مثل استخدامه للعلم الأمريكيّ ولُعَب تعليم الحساب للأطفال والأيقونات المسيحية الشائعة ونسخ طباعية من اللوحات المعروفة، كالموناليزا، وما إلى ذلك. كل ذلك موصول بشكل خفيّ بالتلويح النقديّ بالطبيعة الاستهلاكية للمجتمع الأمريكي، لكن أكثر من ذلك من أجل تصعيد نزعة طرفوية، تَخْمد في آن واحد أيّ خطاب مباشر وأيّ لون تزويقيّ صارخ. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وفي هذا السياق علينا أن نفهم استدعاء ليرما للحاجيات اليومية المبتذلة. إنه تذكير بابتذال اليوميّ، وعدم القبول بتشييء العالم. موقف وجوديّ، يستمد طاقته الثقافية، حتى لا نقول الفلسفية من حركات الفكر والفن التي ميّزت الاتجاهات الفنية العالمية منذ الخمسينيات، وتصاعدتْ خاصة في الستينيات من القرن الماضي.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">كيف نفهم معارَضة ليرما لفكرة المتاجرة بالفن وجعله سلعة عادية من بين السلع الأخرى؟. هذا الهمّ كان شرطاً حَكَمَ أيضاً جيل ليرما. لقد فهم ذلك الجيل الشرس أن تسليع الفن ينتهي في آخر المطاف بتسليع الفنان، وبالتالي، سلبه الحرية الداخلية التي من دونها لا قيامة للفن برمته. هنا يصير العمل التشكيليّ من جديد عملاً نقدياً، وفق طريقة الفن ولغته وإيحاءاته. ويصير موقفاً من العالم المعاصر ومن الوجود.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">جوزيه رايمون ليرما, عذراء فيتنام , مجموعة متحف فرحات </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">في مجمل عمل ليرما، فإن الطرفويّ يجاور الكابوسيّ، والرمزيّ يرافق اليوميّ، والطقوسيّ يغدو بعضاً من العالم الحيّ، النشوة تحاوِر الألم، بينما ليست المعجزة سوى محض حلم أو العكس. هذا هو الطابع شبه الثابت الذي يَسِمُ انشغالات ليرما. ونحسب أن هذا الطابع يصدر عن اتصال ليرما، الفنان الأمريكيّ، ثقافياً وروحياً، بإرث أمريكيّ لاتينيّ أيضاً. يبرهن عمله أن مساره الجماليّ كان تقاطعاً معاصراً مُخصَّباً، غير مرئي للوهلة الأولى، بين ثقافتين. ذلك أنه رغم أنه وُلد في كاليفورنيا ودَرَسَ الفن في سان فرانسيسكو وعاش حياتها كلها فيها، فإن هواجس إضافية تتصاعد من ثنايا عمله.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ها هنا تتقدّم الثقافة الأمريكو – إسبانية américano-hispaniques بوصفها رافداً أصلياً في المجتمع الأمريكيّ الحديث. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لعل ليرما يرمز لتلاقح تشكيليّ أصليّ ناجع، في قارة تكوّنت بالأصل من عملية تلاقح تاريخيّ وجغرافي وسكانيّ.</span></div>
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https://joseramonlerma.wordpress.com/</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-48215121041752664682015-10-02T09:51:00.000-07:002015-10-02T09:51:14.718-07:00الأخوان بايير: من الاستشراق إلى سرديات الشرق - شاكر لعيبي <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">قد لا ينطبق مفهوم الغرائبية exotisme تماماً على أعمال الأخوة بايير. دوماً ما كانت الغرائبية سمة من سمات الرسم الاستشراقيّ. وإذا كانت الأصول اللغوية اليونانية للمفردة لا تفسّر جميع نزوعات الرسم الاستشراقيّ في القرن التاسع عشر، فإنها قد تُلقي بعض الظلال على الممارسة الاستشراقية المتعلقة خاصة بالشرق العربيّ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لدى اليونان تذهب مفردة إكزوستزم إلى معنى الخارج والغريب، التَوَلّه بكل ما هو غريب، لكنه وَلَهٌ يضع مسافة واضحة مع الغريب وينظر إليه بصفته موضوعاً للفضول والغرابة والتعجّب، وأحياناً الدونيّة المُضِمَرة. في عصر التجارة الدولية عبر البحار ثم في عصر الكولونياليات تَوطَّد، قليلاً، هذا البعد السالب للإكزوتيزم وإنْ تغطى بلبوس الفضول بل محبة الآخر، محبة من نوع خاص، إلا لدى الفنانين الكبار الذين استلهموا، بطريقة حديثة وضمن مشغل مفهوميّ جماليّ خالص، فنون الشرق وأفريقيا مثل ماتيس بالنسبة للفن الإسلاميّ، والانطباعيين بالنسبة للدمغات اليابانية وبيكاسو بالنسبة للفن الأفريقي وغيرهم.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لم يستلهم عموم الرسم الاستشراقيّ الشرق في سياق بحث جمالي حداثيّ محض. ويمكننا تمييز نوعين أساسيين من هذا الرسم في القرن التاسع عشر:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">الأول: واقعيّ، إبهاريّ، محفوف بالقليل والكثير من الأوهام الثقافية والإسقاطات الجنسية، وينطلق من صورة ثابتة لشرقٍ متخيّل.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">الثاني: أقرب للروح الانطباعية الناهضة نهاية القرن التاسع عشر، الباحثة عن الألوان القوية وتغيرات الظلّ والضوء في مشهد طبيعيّ مضروب بالشمس، وكائنات بشرية بأزياء مزركشة بالنسبة للنساء، وألوان صارخة مُوحَّدة بالنسبة للرجال.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">وما بين هذين النسقين ثمة مختلف الأنساق الأخرى التي قد لا تستطيع إلا بصعوبة النهوض وحدها كتيار أو أسلوب متفرّد فريد في الرسم الاستشراقيّ.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">أعمال الأخوة بايير في بداية القرن العشرين، تتأرجح بين هذا وذاك، ولا تُصاب بالأكزوتيكية المُصفّاة لأسباب عدة، أولها تمايز العلاقة التاريخية للولايات المتحدة الأمريكية، وبالتالي الثقافة الأمريكية، مع بلدان الشرق: إنها لا تمتلك معها أي علاقة كولونيالية مباشرة في ذلك الوقت. نتائج الأمر على المستوى التشكيلي تؤدّي إلى فارق موضوعيّ مُرْهف بين الاستشراق الأوربيّ ومثيله الأمريكيّ، على مستويات المفهوم النظريّ، البعد السياكولوجيّ والمعالجات البصرية.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">فمارتن بابير المولود في شكاغو عام 1894 والمتوفى عام 1961، كان قد ذهب عام 1924 إلى باريس، ولعل لقاءه مع فنانين حديثين مثل بيكاسو وسوتين و كريمين Pinchus Kremeń ( (1890-1981، بين الأعوام 1924 و1940، كان قد منحه مذاقاً مختلفا للفن المعاصر. أما أسلوب بيكاسو فكان معروفاً منتصف عشرينيات القرن العشرين، بينما كان حاييم سوتين يشتغل على تعبيرية عنيفة مذكرا بأسلوب أوجين شيلي أو مودلياني لاحقاً، وكان كريمين تعبيريا بدوره وفي نطاق أسلوب سوتين.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">عندما قام مارتن برحلته إلى الجزائر (بين رحلات أخرى إلى إسبانيا وإنجلترا وبلجيكا وهولندا)، كان ذلك قد جعله على مسافة أكيدة واحتراس لكي لا يذهب إلى نسقي الرسم الاستشراقي الموصوفين أعلاه، </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">الأخ جورج (George Baer (1895 – 1971، لم يبعد كثيراً عن ذلك، بعد التأثيرات الانطباعية القوية التي تعرَّض لها الأخوان كليهما. خاصة جورج الذي ما زلنا نرى في أعماله، أكثر من أعمال مارتن، لمسة انطباعية تخلى الأخير عنها تماماً.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>إن أعمالهما الاستشراقية المعروفة تستلهم قرية الأغواط على أطراف الصحراء الجزائرية. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">إن تنوُّع المشاهد وتباينها، بين الريفيّ والمدينيّ والصحراويّ، في لوحات الأخوين بايير، مثل لوحة مارتن (زُهرة) حاملة الورود، ولوحة جورج (بائعة الخبز)، تفسّر بأن الأغواط (وهي مدينة جزائرية اليوم)، لم تكن محض بلدة صحراوية، فهي تشتهر بالنخيل والبساتين والواحات، وتمتاز مدينتها العتيقة بطابعها العربيّ الذي يعود إلى مؤسسيها الهلالين خلال القرن الحادي عشر الميلادي، والتي قرّر المستعمر الفرنسيّ جعلها منطقة ذات حكم عسكريّ فلم يتدخّل في معمارها الأصليّ كثيراً.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">غالبية المشاهد (الرقص العربيّ، مشاهد الجموع البشرية في الأغواط Les chleux، الطفلة خديجة من وهران، القايد عمر بلقاسم.. الخ) تبرهن على أن اختيارهما للمواضيع، مارتن خاصة، وزوايا النظر والمعالجات البلاستيكية، لم يكن محكومة بأي هاجس استشراقيّ زخرفي، تخيلي، إبهاريّ. في هذه اللوحات نحن على مسافة من المفهوم المعتاد للرسم الاستشراقي، بل نحن مع قطيعة معه حتى لو استثمر الرسّام مناخات مشابهة ظاهرياً لفن الاستشراق للتعبير عن هواجسه الجمالية. وفي رأيي لم يعد من مقام، في هذه اللوحات، للحديث عن رسم استشراقيّ. نحن في فن الرسم وحده بكل بساطة.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لا تستهدف غرائبية المشاهد المذكورة إثارة الفضول الإكزوتيكي. فالمشهد فيها تعلة للتعبير الفنيّ، لروح الفنان التي تجد في المشهد وشخوصه بعض ما يثير إشكالياتها الفكرية والجمالية في المقام الأول. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>مارتن بايير, زهرة , مجموعة متحف فرحات</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">عند قراءة العملين النقديين المعروفين المكرسين للأخوين بايير:"فن مارتن بايير، جورج بايير" (The art of Martin Baer, George Baer) عام 1928، و"كاتلوغ رسوم مارتن بايير، جورج بايير" (A Catalogue of Paintings by Martin Baer, George Baer) عام 1926، يستشف المرء أن النقد الفرنسيّ والأمريكيّ يومها لم يفوت الفرصة للإشارة إلى الطابع الطلسميّ لأعمالهما، لم يصمت عن المقاربة بينها وبين أعمال غوغان في تاهيتي، والمقارنة بينها وبين صوفية الغريكو، ورمزية غوستاف مورو، فهل كان الأخوان متديّنين؟. هل كانا شغوفين بقصص الكتاب المقدّس التي وجداها، لا شعورياً ربما ومن بعيد، في المشاهد الجزائرية وهما في حمى الانشغال بهواجس التعبيرية الألمانية ذات الروح الغامض والكئيب؟.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لم تُناقَش هذه الفرضية، مع أهميتها بسبب بعض الغموض التاريخيّ المحيط بسيرتهما الذاتية ومعتقداتهما الروحية. جميع عناصر أعمالهما تستطيع دعمها من قريب، رغم اللحظة الأوربية التي عُرِفا بها لم تكن لتسمح بإطلاقها بالوضوح الكافي، فاقتصرت على استدعاء الغموض التعبيري والروح السريّ الطاغي فيها الذي يُبْعِدها بوضوح (وهو ما لم يفت على ذلك النقد) عن الأعمال الاستشراقية.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">جوهر أعمالهما ذو دفق تأمليّ، روحانيّ بالأحرى، يمكن أن يجعلنا نفكّر، لكن بتحفُّظ وحذر شديدين، بجوهر أعمال جورج روول Georges Henri Rouault (1871-1958) الرسّام الفرنسي المتدين، الكاثوليكيّ، ليس من الناحية الأسلوبية، فشتان بين أسلوبه وأسلوبهما، ولكن لجهة حيرة وغموض وتيه وعذاب شخوصها. شخصيات روول وشخصياتهما في قَدَرِ العذاب Passion نفسه، وفي الغنائية المُعذَّبة عينها.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">حتى نساء الأخوين بايير تمتلك بعد الأسى، ولا يمسّها ملمح استشراقيّ بارز، احتفاليّ، شبه أيروتيكيّ معروف كان موضع استعادة دؤوب عند الرسامين المستشرقين.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">أكفّ الشخصيات جميعاً خارجة من خشونة جارحة، من عمل داخليّ، ومواقفهما attitudes كذلك، فهي تقف باجتماع غامض، سري، في مكان معتم ضيق، كأنها وقفات قدّيسي الكتاب المقدس في منمنمات الإنجيل الأوربية. لا شيء يختلف في ذلك سوى الأزياء. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">هذه المقاربة لا يمكن أن تكون اعتباطية، ونحن نرى عصا الراعي وخِرافة التي يمكننا رؤية آلاف الأمثلة لها في تاريخ الفن، أليس هذا هو الراعي الطيب نفسه، المسيح؟، ألسنا هنا أمام حَمْل الرب؟. خذ على سبيل المثال موزاييك الراعي الطيب في رافينا Ravenna (Mausolée de Galla Placidia) من القرن الخامس الميلاديّ الذي يُقدِّم المشهد نفسه. ألا يذكر هذا المشهد عينه، على مستوى أسلوبيّ آخر وبشخصيات دينية أخرى، ببعض منمنمات مخطوطة (Madrid Skylitzes ) المحفوظة في مدريد (نحو عام 1070م)؟.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لا يصعب الاقتناع بذلك، إذا ما أخذنا بنظر الاعتبار المحرّكات اللاشعورية والإرث المسيحي الطويل في الذاكرة الفنية الأوربية والأمريكية. لقد وقع تحويل للمشهد الدينيّ العريق، وقذفه إلى مكان قريب من الشرق وفي مناخاته تحت حجة ممتازة، وفي شروط إنتاج مغايرة، وفي سياق نقديّ لم يكن ليقيم حساباً لمثل هذا التحويل.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">من جهة أخرى، لو تأملنا عميقا نساء بايير، لوجدنا غشاوة من الكآبة الوجودية على وجوههن (لوحة جورج "نساء مغربيات أثناء العمل")، ولالتقينا في طبيعته (لوحة جورج "منظر طبيعيّ") نزعة إجمالية، شبه نظامية، ولرأينا كذلك في بعضها الآخر حالة قيامية Apocalyptique (لوحة جورج "البائع") تُذكّرنا دون شك بفنانين اشتغلوا على موضوعات دينية قيامية، قديماً وحديثاً.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">تلك الكآبة وذاك النزوع نحو اختصار الطبيعة، وذلك التصوير القياميّ، ليست مستمدة من الاستشراق، إلا بمعنى التذكير بالروايات الدينية عن الشرق. حائكاته وطبيعته وقيامته موجودة في سرديات ليست سردية الوعي الاستشراقيّ. إنها سردية النص الدينيّ المعروف. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>جورج يايير , يائعة الخبز, مجموعة متحف فرحات</b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">لو صحّت القراءة، فنحن أمام طمر نقدي غير متعمَّد للأصل المرجعيّ لأعمال الأخوين بايير، لصالح لحظة كانت منتبهة فقط للجماليات الأكزوتيكية المبحوث عنها يومها بأي ثمن. لحظة تاريخية لعلها كانت تمارس إسقاطا لرغباتها على الثيمات الفعلية التي عالجتها عمليا لوحات الأخوين الأمريكيين.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">راقصة الأخوين بايير، قد تكون دليلاً قوياً على مرجعية النص المقدّس. راقصته ليست من شهوانيات نساء الاستشراق. تنعدم الإثارة في وقفتها. نظرتها تنطوي على غموض كبير، وفيها بعض الشرّ. حركة يديها الحادة المتوترة المعوجة تُسْقِط عنها كل رغبة، وتحوّلها إلى كائن رمزي بصيغة أنثى. مشاهدوها من الطبيعة نفسها، بجلستهم ونظراتهم التي تماثل نظرتها. هناك امرأة أخرى في عمق اللوحة تراقب المشهد، وهذه تبدو من الصالحات بثوبها المحتشم والعمل الذي تقوم به. لقد خرجت هذه اللوحة تماماً من عالم الاستشراق، واحتفظت بتعبيرية صافية من طراز ألمانيّ ذات بعد رمزيّ، حتى يمكن للمرء أن يتساءل فيما إذا كان أمام سالومة Salomé العهد الجديد ثانية. وفي الحكاية الشهيرة أنها كانت راقصة بارعة مغناج، وأنها طلبت من هيرودوس الثمل أثناء رقصها أن يقتل يحيى (يوحنا المعمدان Jean Baptiste) ويقدّمه لها في طست من فضة. ألسنا أمام سالومة راقصة الشرق التي استمدت منها عشرات الأعمال الفنية والأدبية، ترقص بين شخصيات ثملة؟. يبدو الأمر محتملاً و قابلاً للتصديق.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">.الخلاصة أن أعمال الأخوين بايير تنطلق من لحظة الاستشراق المهيمنة حينها، لتتحايل عليها وهي تُنجز أعمالاً عن قصص الشرق، في إطار البحث الجماليّ الحديث الذي لا صلة كبيرة له بهموم الرسم الاستشراقيّ السائدة.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-4722313434941222452015-08-24T14:56:00.000-07:002015-08-24T14:56:00.755-07:00AESTHETIC ALCHEMY IN THE ART OF ERIK D’AZEVEDO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erik d'Azevedo</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hermetically sealed in his various studios in Oakland , Emeryville and Berkeley, abstract artist Erik d’Azevedo has labored for over thirty five years to produce “alchemical gold” from the often lumpy, dark and disturbing prima materia of </span><span style="font-size: large;">the urban and industrial environment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As a young boy Erik d’Azevdo participated in swimming and drawing “water </span><span style="font-size: large;">spirits” with his black African friends in a world that has disappeared since then into continual war and holocaust. Erik doubts that any of the boys he knew as friends are still alive. Thrust back into the urban culture of the U.S. , he felt like </span><span style="font-size: large;">an outsider and confesses to feeling rebellious and angry. Then he discovered </span><span style="font-size: large;">art again and that became his destiny, his struggle, his reason for being, his spiritual salvation. And so it was with the ancient alchemists, who sought not </span><span style="font-size: large;">just to turn base metal into immortal gold, but to explore a corollary change </span><span style="font-size: large;">within themselves, a purification on the spiritual level which they represented </span><span style="font-size: large;">as the quest for the philosopher’s stone. Carl Jung felt that ancient alchemy </span><span style="font-size: large;">had been an opportunity for consciousness to explore itself through material means, a symbolic representation of what he called in his psychology, the </span><span style="font-size: large;">process of individuation which we must all experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">He favors large canvasses worked on the floor (something that he can trace back, not to the images of Pollock at work on drip paintings, but to the wildchild art he did on the floor of his parent’s house at the age of six with his school mates in Liberia where his anthropologist father was studying the Gola peoples.) And like an alchemist staring into the chaos of bubbling retorts, he developed techniques </span><span style="font-size: large;">in which he would be guided by his process and what was taking shape before him that in the best instances would produce wonderful surprises and a finished work of art that would “sing” as he says, with “...the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.”</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Berkeley 1976</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the studio D’Azevedo slathers a large sheet of plastic with layers of paint, in some phases of exploration using roofing paint, oil-based metal paint used for waterproofing rooftops, or acrylics made from metallic powders mixed in a blender with a clear liquid base. Then the wet sheet is rolled out over the canvas and pressed with hands and feet, transferring the color to the canvas in the manner of making a Rorschach ink blot. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“What makes it interesting for me,” he says, “is the surprise element, the fact </span><span style="font-size: large;">that I never know quite how it’s going to turn out.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Working on several large canvasses at once spread out on the studio floor, he </span><span style="font-size: large;">may venture deep into chaos. Recalling a certain moment of discovery, he says, “...the floor was covered with paint, sticks, matchbooks, [just] stuff that was on the floor. It would sort of get glued together in this mass and "I started liking what was on the floor more than what was on the canvas...”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Chaos is a reaction to rigidity and structure,”he reflects. But he insists there </span><span style="font-size: large;">is such a thing as “Purposeful chaos". "There’s a kind of order to the chaos that </span><span style="font-size: large;">I make.... The idea of intentionality makes the difference. In other words, the idea of a controlled accident, that’s a deliberate attempt to make a mistake, to see what happens. If it works, you stick with it.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">D’Azevedo references a book, Man’s Rage for Chaos, by art historian and aesthetic philosopher, Morse Peckham, that has influenced his thinking. Peckham avers that—contrary to common belief-- art does not unify and order experience. He believes that we are seduced into the fallacy that art satisfies our need for</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">order by the neat packaging in which art objects are presented in concert halls, museums, metrics and buildings. Too often in the name of order we eliminate </span><span style="font-size: large;">the very quality in a work of art which might lead our consciousness into new </span><span style="font-size: large;">fields of perception.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In a special series from the mid seventies that d’Azevedo calls “The Industrial Paintings,” he began to hunt hardware or hobby stores and scour trash piles looking for things that would catch his eye. Things like PVC plumbing pipes and fittings, wooden dowels and odd shapes of Styrofoam and foam core that he </span><span style="font-size: large;">could glue directly onto the canvas and then paint over. In an uncharacteristically austere group of paintings that might be characterized as minimalist steampunk, he romances the look of large riveted steel structures like the vintage bridges </span><span style="font-size: large;">that connect the conurbation of the Bay Area.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">“Steampunk” was a word put into cultural circulation by the noir sci-fi writer, William Gibson, in his novel (with collaborator Bruce Sterling) The Difference Engine. And indeed it would be easy to imagine many of d’Azevedo’s paintings </span><span style="font-size: large;">as components in set designs for movies based on novels by this author, who </span><span style="font-size: large;">gave us as well, the words cyberpunk and cyberspace and defined a genre that mingled lowlife with high tech.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But there is also beauty in d’Azevedo’s paintings, of the sort that one might associate with the art brut, or raw art of Jean Dubuffet who in the early days </span><span style="font-size: large;">of modernist movements approached with the radical understanding that beauty must be fertilized with ugliness to keep art alive. Like d’Azevedo, Dubuffet was drawn to unorthodox materials such as cement, plaster, tar and asphalt scraped, carved and drawn upon with a rudimentary, spontaneous line. Dubuffet was also drawn to the art of the insane and the untrained artist, what we now call outsider art. And it is interesting that even though Erik d’Azevedo holds a BFA and an MFA from CCAC and has received several grants and awards, he recalls being worried</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">at the outset of his formal training in art that formal training would ruin him.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">d'Azevedo 2003 Acrylic 96x75 inches Farhat Art Museum collection</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since the advent of modern abstract art in the 1940s and 50s—and continuing </span><span style="font-size: large;">into the present—our eyes have been opened, not only to new ideas of what a painting can be, but also to new kinds of beauty to be seen everywhere. The flattened milk carton beside a skid mark on the pavement forms a perfect composition or a gorgeous plume of bright orange running down from a rusted</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">nail driven into the siding of a weathered house may suddenly be seen as “a painting,” a formal arrangement of shape and color with great beauty. And </span><span style="font-size: large;">things in the world around us seem to take on a mysterious life of their own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The sterile monotony of the rectilinear designs of the city environment—seen in the grid of streets, boxy buildings, the sky framed by windows—is continually assaulted by the ever-present forces of Nature, including that original, pre-civilized nature that is still operative within our own psyche. Rain washes, cracks appear,</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">a trail of ants streams up the cabinet to the jar of honey inside, raccoons go through the garbage cans, the homeless encamp with their refuse under the elevated freeways while tidier forms of corruption go down in city hall, and the radio gives the daily traffic report of crashes across the lanes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have styled Erik d’Azevedo as an art-alchemist not because he professes to be an alchemist or even an interest in historic alchemy, but because it seems to be the perfect metaphor for understanding his art. The medieval alchemists had observed the paradox that Nature produced good and edible things from the rot of compost and they sought to emulate this transformative power of natural process in their laboratories. Expressing himself in several self-published books of poetry as well as painting, d’Azevedo offers this description of “urban compost”—</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I hear the garbage trucks as they go</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> predawn squealing machinery gathering</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> filthy loads wet with raw</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> and undigested food, baby diapers.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> I hear siren’s anxiety signals</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> a punctuation of pointless life.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Computers keep score of an environment</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> that lives on black refuse, fed black gas</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> of burning rubber, fat and gristle.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As Taun Relihan notes in her short essay on alchemy in the catalogue to the SUPERTITION show at the San Francisco Center for the Book: “Alchemical work was difficult, tedious, expensive, lonely and often deadly. Alchemists were noted to be a depressed lot, prone to melancholy, as in Albrecht Durer’s engraving, Melancholia I... Whatever else, the images and literature of Alchemy are fascinating, luring us to further exploration of the wonders of ourselves, the works of nature, and the transformative depths of art.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The same can be said, I believe, of the art and poetry of Erik d’Azevedo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">from APPLIANCE POEMS, Erik d’Azevedo (1988, Albino Press)</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Dismantle anyone who can’t give self</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> completely to it...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Hands of 1000 moments forgotten either</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> too good</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> For or not good enough to make stones</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> cry out and be more than vulgar</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> colorless variations of a known thing...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Something to remember at the end of a</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> day</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> At the end of a youth</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> when the mind ponders what it created of</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> A body of best years...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Essay: AESTHETIC ALCHEMY IN THE ART OF ERIK d’AZEVEDO </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">by Will Cloughley, August 2015 </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-27755588358236270062015-06-08T07:04:00.001-07:002015-06-08T07:12:57.001-07:00"La Danse du Printemps Arabe" Exposition de Nour Ballouk, Article par Hussein Hussein<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rituals (Gaza) , Nour Ballouk 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">L’œuvre de Nour Ballouk se présente à nous, encore une fois, dévoilant la grâce de la femme, mais dans un contexte qui, loin d’être ordinaire, est composé de plusieurs notions, d’habitude difficilement miscibles. L’artiste crée un nouveau langage, qu’elle puise de plusieurs autres, de temps différents, et le rend accessible au spectateur qui, après une brève méditation en face de l’œuvre, parvient à en déceler le message.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Nour Ballouk aborde, de façon frôlant le sarcasme, le thème du « printemps arabe » qui s’est avéré être indépendant des principes par lesquels il fut annoncé. Ce qui devait être l’aube des peuples de la région, se muta en guerre dévastatrice, auparavant inimaginable. L’artiste nous incite, par une manipulation picturale intelligente et minutieuse, à concentrer notre attention sur le contraste de la beauté, la grâce, la féminité et la vie par rapport à la laideur de la guerre, la cruauté de la destruction, la perte et la mort… </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Map, Nour Ballouk 2014</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Á première vue, la surface picturale traitée soumet notre logique visuelle, poussant notre raison vers une sélective lecture de la scène où se juxtaposent des éléments qui ne peuvent être mis dans le même contexte. C’est exactement ainsi que l’artiste veut nous présenter son œuvre. Le coté visuel est précis et clair ; des ruines de villages et de villes détruites qui composent la totalité du fond dans quelques œuvres, pour n’en couvrir qu’une partie dans d’autres. De ce chaos émergent des figures dansantes que l’artiste emprunte de photos populaires de danse et dont la plupart est tirée de différents ballets, mais, celles-ci détiennent cependant un principal point commun : la représentation de la femme par d’anciennes photos en noir et blanc. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Loin du hasard, ces figures montées sur le fond répondent à une composition profondément étudiée par l’artiste. Les éléments visuels qui s’y ajoutent découpant la surface de part et d’autre par des bandes pleines et colorées, ou se formant en groupe de lignes de différentes épaisseurs, sont en majorité horizontales et adhérent parfaitement à l’ensemble. Cette ligne limite donne à l’œuvre un équilibre amorçant la chaotique répartition de quelques éléments du fond, tout en la couvrant d’un lourd silence. D’autres éléments utilisés, à l’instar d’une carte entre les bras d’une des figures qui semble s’en vêtir, dénote un territoire précis en relation avec celui où se déroule le soi-disant « printemps arabe ». Parfois, une danse en groupe semble être un rituel autour d’un feu attisé par les ruines et consumant ce que jusque là l’homme avait bâti.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nour Ballouk 2015</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Après cette visualisation d’apparence simple, se dégage inévitablement un sens métaphysique et spirituel profond qui capte le regard du spectateur. Une femme qui tend les bras, semble par magie présenter un dôme surplombant les ruines où des enfants sautillent, ou s’acharnent à la recherche de leur demeure. Images de destruction totale d’où s’élève une figure frivole sur une bande jaune. Des gens qui discutent désespérés, leurs pertes communes, des restes éparpillés d’objets dénudés de leur valeur initiale, qui acquièrent un concept nouveau, grâce à l’œil analytique de l’artiste qui insère une figure féminine jaillissant de nulle part et qui, de sa beauté et de sa grâce atténue la pesanteur douloureuse de la scène en promettant le calme éternel. L’image de la femme dansante semble figée dans son temps, le reste des éléments, dans le leur. Gracieuse et légère, la figure dans l’œuvre de Nour Ballouk, danse sur une musique dont on sent la présence, mais qui, à la place d’être auditive, ne s’écoute qu’à travers l’âme. Il est difficile d’éviter un raisonnement d’au delà, cette danse semble bel et bien effectuée par des fantômes. Peut être celui des martyrs, de la femme mère, à l’origine de l’homme, l’homme victime, et l’homme bourreau. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Le choix de la danse dans le contexte où Nour Ballouk la place n’est pas hasardeux. La danse est le premier-né des arts. Chez l’artiste, elle tend vers le rituel, dénote le repentir et devient prière. Á travers celle-ci, le corps passe à l'état d'objet et sert d’outil à exprimer les émotions par les mouvements, l'art devient le corps. Pour certains la danse est liée à la beauté féminine, pour d’autres la danse conjure le sort, danse de la pluie ou danse de prière, ou sert à plaire aux dieux comme dans l’antiquité romaine. Etant un symbole expressif avant tout, Nour Ballouk y ajoute une dimension métaphysique qui lui est propre et qui sans aucun doute ne laissera pas indifférents ceux qui verront son œuvre.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hussein HUSSEIN</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-32553190006638427182015-05-03T21:08:00.003-07:002015-05-03T21:08:37.483-07:00 أعمال الفنان خوسيه رامون ليرما المزج الفني بصورة معاصرة ـضحى عبد الرؤوف المل<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">من أعمال الفنان رامون ليرما , مجموعة متحف فرحات</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">يتجرأ الفنان «خوسيه رامون ليرما» (José Ramón Lerma) على المزج الفني بصورة معاصرة يجمع فيها بين القديم والجديد ضمن رؤية أيقونية في ايحاءاتها المبنية على منح الحس البصري تعبيرات تجربدية ذات رؤية توحي بفن متنوّع في تطلعاته الابداعية، المتعلقة بخلق مؤثرات بصرية تتسم بالوعي الفني الموحي بأيقونية الرؤية المعاصرة، وتكنيك مفرداتها الجمالية المغايرة لمفهوم الكلاسيكية المتمرّد عليها «خوسيه رامون ليرما» والمتوافق معها. إنما يقدمها بأسلوب فن ذي خصائص تراثية أو معرفية أو حتى رياضية وهندسية، ليحاكي بشعبيتها البصرية الحس الإنساني بدفء بساطة خاضعة لمفاهيم هندسية يخفيها ضمن الأبعاد الثلاثية، كخدعة بصرية تتناسب بمفرداتها البصرية مع سيكولوجية الشكل المحاط بالألوان الخاصة، ومعانيها الخاضعه لتفاعلاته النفسية المؤثرة على ألوانه المميّزة من حيث التعتيق التجريدي، المؤدي الى بث اللوحة جمالية تحيط بها الخطوط على اسطح يمنحها ثلاثية أبعاد تميل الى خداع البصر أحيانا، ليوحي بأيقونية الشكل التجريدي تعبيرا عن مفاهيم وجدانية يبوح بها من خلال لوحة تشكيلية معاصرة.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">تجريد تعبيري متماسك وهندسة فنية تتحوّل عناصرها الى لغة ذات تحوّلات ينجزها «خوسيه رامون ليرما» كابجدية تراثية مقروءة بصريا يمنحها لذة الاستقراء، فايقاع الخطوط والأشكال المتقاربة والمتباعدة تثير الأنماط المركبة أو الترتيبية في رؤاها التصميمية، المنفذة بتوازن ذي مقدرة تكشف عن حقائق حياتية مجردة بتكويناتها ذات البعد التطوري، المتخذ من فن التصوير الرؤية الانعكاسية المحبوكة مع المعاني التجريدية والتعبيرية، والمفاهيم الأخرى التي يمزجها مع مسارات توحي بالايقونية المركبة عبر خلق انطباعات تثير الخيال، وتنطلق بصريا مع الحس الهندسي نحو مقاييس اللوحة وقوتها المرتبطة بالمفاهيم الرياضية وخصائصها المميّزة من حيث الكبير والصغير، والبعيد والقريب، والضيثق والمتسع موضحا للتراث الانساني القابل لمفهوم التحولات التشكيلية الخاضعة لجدلية الفن المعاصر.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">تمثيل تشكيلي يؤكد على التناقض الحركي والتناغم الساكن في الألوان المركبة، وبإحاطة تشتمل على قواعد خاصة بأسلوب الفنان «خوسيه رامون ليرما» إذ يستثير الحس من خلال مستقبلات اللون التي تتفاعل مع العاطفة، تاركا لعقلانية اللوحة اثبات قيمة الخطوط والابعاد، والمنظور المعكوس على تحديد الأشكال، ونقاط بدايتها ونهايتها، وسماتها الفنية المرتبطة بالحس الجمالي وعلامات التعجب التي يثيرها هذا الفن السهل الممتنع، الملامس بمرونته لفن يدوي تمثل بلوحة تشكيلية تعيد له رمزيته الخاصة. إذ تبدو الأسهم، والصحن، وأوراق اللعب، ووحدات القياس من العناصر المهمة في تشكيل اللوحة، عبر صورة ذهنية تحيا تراثيا من خلال عناصرها الجوهرية التي تحاكي الأزمنة والأمكنة برؤية ابداعية، وبتجانس متزن مع الأبعاد وفروقاتها النابعة من الابتكار المعاصر في التصميم التشكيلي، وقدرته على تحريك ذهنية الصورة الراسخة المكوّنة من الأشياء حولنا، وبساطتها الداخلية والخارجية عبر حدس لا شعوري يعيدنا بوعي الى الطفولة وفطرية الإنسان في رؤية الجمال.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">أعمال الفنان «خوسيه رامون ليرما» (José Ramón Lerma) من مجموعة متحف فرحات.</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-77328254682246034172015-02-27T13:41:00.002-08:002015-02-27T13:41:37.972-08:00Vanessa Stafford’s Journey, By Brian Mc Cracker<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cleaning Ballet, Farhat Art Museum collection</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"A lively expression of color…”, says Emily thoughtfully.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Whoa! Totally sick!” brays Rosie the Barrista.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">They are both complementing the paintings of Vanessa Stafford, an artist who specializes in the subtlety of night scenes, of light and water, and city scenes… a visualist painter, a narrative artist, whose current canvasses have the tones and flavors of Klee, Gaugin, Chagall, and James Doolin. Her earlier work is surrealistic whimsy that floats closer to Peter Max or Aubrey Beardsley than Heironymous Bosch. Current paintings are more structured and harmonic, but still tinged with a dream-state and a curiously muted intensity. A musical rhythm is evident in her orchestration of movement that unifies disparate elements. That is an extension of her training as a cellist, as well as the influence of her parents, both jazz musicians.There is also a sense of boldness of imagination and a willingness to pursue it. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">For nearly thirty years Ms. Stafford has been a significant artist in the seaside community of Santa Cruz, California. She began at the age of fourteen decorating eggs in traditional Baltic style and colors, selling them for eight dollars each. Today, her canvasses hang on the walls of collectors and, tellingly, on the walls of other artists. She has exhibited at San Francisco’s Palace of the Legion of Honor as well as at galleries across the United States and internationally.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Birthday, Farhat Art Museum collection</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">“I respect her work quite a bit” declares Russel Brutsche, a Santa Cruz artist who exhibits extensively in the West. As a mutual member of Artwork Network, an informal artist support group, Mr. Brutsche has watched Ms. Stafford’s style and technique progress for ten years. He notes her interest in capturing movement and the quality of light in night scenes as an indicator of her personality and style. ”She uses a lot of glazing in her acrylic…in fact, to the max…to get a sense of depth. But it is not just her unique and distinctive style that strikes me. It is the fact that she chooses challenging projects. She really takes chances. Vanessa is not a safe painter.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Another artist, Kevork Mourad, says, “Vanessa Stafford is highly gifted. She has an insightful use of light. I love her colors… Her colors are vibrant.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">“Doing realistic scenes and going after the essence of nature, including the chaos, is crucial in art because that is where original ideas come from.” says Stafford. “A combination of order and chaos is important. Too much orderliness is sterile. Too much chaos is self-destructive. I grew up in a very chaotic background. I wanted order. But looking back I see the value in the chaos. I am pleased when images manifest themselves on paper or canvas. I do art for my own satisfaction but I do like to show and I do care what other people think of my art. I want the people who buy my works to see them as joyful, magical. They should be warm, graceful, to be loved.”</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chaos and Order, Farhat Art Museum collection</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Stafford paints scenes of inner journeys and external realities with command of her mediums, which include watercolor, pen and ink, oil, acrylic, and inlaid glass mosaic. “I especially like the intensity, biting vibrancy, and versatility of acrylic,” she explains. “Oil I use when I want a softer effect. Something I am getting interested in is hiking and discovering the patterns in nature, for example, the abstract quality of streams. You can see the pattern of strips of sunlight going through to the bottom, and then you can see the shadows. I am very intrigued and challenged by the transparent quality of water and of the patterning in different layers as it appears, disappears, and reappears very quickly. I focus on the different levels of light and shadow: at the surface, in the middle of the water, and the bottom, integrating them with their patterning on plants, boulders, muddy ripples, coarse pebbles, sodden leaves, fine sand, moss, and organic debris. It’s tricky stuff but that’s what’s challenging to me. It’s totally thrilling and challenging, because it’s like, IMPOSSIBLE! Most people think it’s impossible, but I think, ‘Yes, I can!’, and I will!” Ms. Stafford’s ability to become absorbed in reflection over the puzzles of patterns during her walks has a hazard: “I sometimes walk into trees!“, she says.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">From her home on a bluff overlooking Santa Cruz Harbor, the sound of breaking surf and barking elephant seals rolls faintly through the screen door. The air in her living room is scented with sea salt and linseed oil. One wall is a shrine to her mother. The other walls are covered with her framed paintings. More are stacked in a corner. In another corner is her painter desk speckled and daubed, an elegant black cat sleeping in a banded rectangle of sunlight leaking through the Venetian blinds. A bookcase spills books onto the carpet, especially her favorite author, Katherine Anne Porter. CDs, classical and jazz, are stacked near the boom box pointed at her work area. Debussy is playing as she paints. “I get visual images while listening to music. I don’t like to draw silence or be in silence as I create.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Ms. Stafford’s journey to her current level of technical expertise was a long and thoughtful one: “When I first started painting I used watercolors, and I would lay down the idea with ink lines. I used a German technical instrument called the Rapidograph. My other school chums had them as well, and we loved using them. We used the tiniest line imaginable, called a four ot line (in terms of line width). I would draw these very fragile outlines and then paint in the colors with watercolor. My beginning watercolors were very pale, as I applied the color hesitantly. I was a teenager (14 years old) and was shy. Those paintings looked shy. About twenty years later I had exhausted the possibilities of watercolor. I wanted to use colors that were stronger, or different, or be able to get a different ‘look’ to my paintings. I started using acrylics. Acrylics are sort of like watercolors, since they are water-based, but they have a polymer binder in the pigments which allows you to paint in an ‘opaque’ way. I started with acrylics by squeezing the color out of the tube, onto a palette, and thinning them down quite a bit. I painted the so called ‘undercoat’, the very basic background colors. Then with the next applications of color I would squeeze the color out of the tube and not thin it down as much, so that the brush strokes began to be opaque. I would use the opaque strokes selectively, like the side of a building for example. That's a good place to lay down opaque brush strokes. I would use a flat brush of different sizes, anywhere from a 4 "000" (small tip) to a 1 "0" (wider tip). I experimented using opaque brush strokes and fusing water into a part of that brush stroke to make it suddenly thin. That would create a variety of opaque levels, as well as create a change in texture. An example might be a boat harbor scene where the surface of the water changes and has opaque parts and translucent parts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">I also wanted to become proficient at oil paintings since they are so traditional. I was determined to ‘conquer’ oils. Oil paint is basically opaque: you can achieve a translucent layer with enough linseed oil, but it looks funky because it produces a very uneven surface texture if you thin it too much. I painted "nature" subject matter, like dead tree branches halfway submerged in a pool of water. I painted outdoor scenes, like that salt pool place in Moss Landing. I did get a lot of practice in. I was out there in the fields with other artists, and it was a blast. Very exciting and adventurous. But my back paid a price for hauling around all these heavy easels, canvases, boxes with oil tubes, and brushes.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">It was a lot of physical work but I painted a lot and when you keep painting you develop this automatic response, kind of like driving a car. You're not thinking about every little maneuver when you're driving, it becomes automatic. You know when to down-shift and do it evenly, without thinking about it. That's the way it is with painting when you do enough of it. Part of the painting process becomes automatic, and you can experiment while in that automatic mode. It’s like combining opposite modes(automatic with experimental) to achieve something new.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There's an intuitive aspect to experimenting. You have to try things without analyzing it too much, otherwise there's a premeditated look, a kind of predictable flatness that happens. If you let these weird brush stroke combinations of thick and thin, opaque and translucent happen, it has this fresh spontaneity. I think it takes years to paint in a stream of consciousness kind of way. You have to be very familiar with the media you're using. Usually in the beginning, when a painter is not familiar with the media, the paintings look stilted. It's interesting how brush strokes and applications of color can portray confidence , or lack of it!”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Another aspect of Stafford’s career is her teaching. She has a teaching credential in Art from San Jose State University. “I’ve taught art classes in public schools”, she says. “I like the enthusiasm of elementary school students. They usually like my classes because I have really fun art projects. I design art lessons for the different age groups. There are lessons I have that involve introducing watercolors as a medium, as well as other mediums. For example: pastels, colored pencils. I give short, entertaining lectures (for short attentions spans) and teach the basics. At older ages I'll introduce one point, two point perspective lessons. I'll show the railroad tracks disappearing into the horizon, explaining the vanishing point as the rail road tracks come to a point off in the distance. Nine year olds are old enough to grasp some of these concepts, as long as you use concrete examples. Perspective can get very confusing and tedious but it's important. Otherwise they might be in a state of ignorance for the rest of their lives. The fun part is opening their world. For a lot of them, this is the first time that they have experienced Art. I like teaching. I like opening the door of possibilities for other people."</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-43460883583316897532015-02-20T11:51:00.000-08:002015-02-20T11:51:48.916-08:00أعمال عدنان يحيى ... لوحات ترفض الموت بقوة الحياة ,بقلم محمد أبو زريق<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">عدنان يحيى , صبرا وشاتيلا, مجموعة متحف فرحات</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">عدنان يحيى من الفنانين القلائل الذين كرسوا ابداعهم للقضية الفلسطينية او تحت ضغطها ووعيها ابتداء من هول التهجير القصري الى المجازر والشهداء وصولا الى معايشات الواقع الراهن من حصار وقمع وارهاب وقد تناول ذلك كله بأسلوب فني يجمع ما بين الاحتراف والتمييز من حيث طرح الخطاب وانفعاليته مستندا على تقنيات وأساليب متعددة كالميل الى الكاريكاتير أو اللجوء الى استعمال الرمز أو الاشارة والحروفية والخط واللون في اجواء سوريالية وتعبيرية مختلفة .</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">بدأ مشواره الفني بداية الثمانينيات من القرن الماضي معتمدا على التعبيرية الخطية مستفيدا من قراءاته الروائية في رسم الشخصيات خاصة تلك التي تعود لكبار الروائيين العالميين وقد كانت تلك المرحلة كنوع من البحث عن شخصيته المستقلة التي لا ترى في الفن الا ذلك الجانب التعبيري الملتزم بقضايا الانسان خاصة ما يتقاطع منها مع قضيته الأولى فلسطين ولعل الحدث المهم الذي ثور لوحاته هو مجزرة صبرا وشاتيلا التي أخذت منه العديد من السنوات وهو يحاول التعبير عن هولها وقد جاءت هذه الأعمال بالأبيض والأسود تسندها خطوط تعبيرية واستفادات كاريكاتيرية عبرت عن مأساة الحدث ثم بدأت الألوان تدخل لوحاته بشكل خجول في البداية وعبر المراحل المختلفة التي تطور بها فنه الى ان اصبح اللون العنصر الأهم في لوحاته .</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">عدنان يحيى, الشرق الأوسط,2003 , مجموعة متحف فرحات</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ولأن عدنان لا يقنع بمنجزه خاصة تحت ضغط الأحداث المأساوية التي تحدث كل يوم في فلسطين فإن مجزرة الحرم الإبراهيمي في الخليل ستحدث نقلة اخرى لديه مستفيدا من شاهد الضريح وأرضية الحرم لتصبح منصة الحدث ورمزا له ، فقد لعب على هذا المشهد في أعمال كأنها تخطيطات ملونة لنصب تذكارية يمجد فيها الشهادة بل ان هذه النصب ستتحول تدريجيا الى كتل بيضاوية تتطور لتأخذ شكل الرأس الإنساني ، والذي اتخذ منه وسيلة للتعبير عن شخصية الديكتاتور كرأس ضخم يرتكز على آلاف المسحوقين من البشر ثم يصوره مفرغا من المحتوى من خلال البيضة المتآكلة الفارغة او من خلال الذات المتضخمة التي تتكدس على صدرها الشارات والنياشين والتي افرغت من محتواها لمفارقتها مع الشخصية التي تحتل بزتها العسكرية .</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ان الأشكال الإنسانية التي تتكدس وتتناثر كأنها زواحف او حشرات هو تعبير عن السحق والنعاناة وتحول الانساني الى ما هو أدنى وهي حيوات تتصادم وتذوب في كتلة تبدو متحدة لكنها تحمل سمات تنافرها على المستوى الموضوعي ، وهي تمثل رؤيته كشاهد رأي وعايش الحالة الانسانية من داخلها فما كان منه الا ان يستعين بما قرأه وشاهده وعايشه فتحول الانسان الى صرصار يعيدنا الى كافكا وابرازه للأم كشخصية قوية يعود الى رواية الأم جوركي ، بل انه لا يرتكز على قراءاته الروائية وعلاقة ذلك بحياته الشخصية فقط ولكنه يسندها بحس كاريكاتيري سوداوي كأداء ، وتقنيات التحبير والتلوين كخامات ، وصولا الى تعبيرية تتطابق تماما مع شخصيته ، حين وجد نفسه وجها لوجه مع واقع اليم هو أحد ضحاياه ، فقد عانى النفي والتشرد كغيره من الفلسطينيين ، ولم تكن مذبحة صبرا وشاتيلا ، إلا الشرارة التي حولت خطوطه المغرقة في تفاصيل هائمة غامضة ، الى خطوط تتطابق مع ما يحس به ، فكما لو أن الموت والعنف والدمار ، قد وجد نقيضه في لوحة ترفض الموت بقوة الحياة المتمردة الكامنة فيها .</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-12070079258140248652015-02-11T14:32:00.000-08:002015-02-11T14:34:44.816-08:00L'artiste Brenda Louie , par Hussein HUSSEIN<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">L'artiste Brenda Louie </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">C’est à Toi Shan, un village d’une des provinces de Chine, que verra le jour Brenda Louie en 1953, d’un père calligraphe (Lui Chiu Sheung) par lequel elle sera ultérieurement influencée. Elle voyagera à Hong Kong au début des années soixante puis immigrera aux Etats Unis en 1972. Ses études en économie ne l’empêcheront pas de poursuivre d’autres en Histoire de l’art et en calligraphie chinoise, qui forment avec la littérature, la philosophie et l’art, sa vraie passion. Elle obtiendra une Maîtrise en peinture de l’université de l’Etat de Sacramento (CSUS) en 1991 et une autre en Beaux Arts de la prestigieuse Université de Stanford en 1993. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Abordant en majeure partie la peinture, la sculpture et l’installation, l’art de Louie est un livre ouvert à l’esprit qui le convoite ralliant le visuel au mental. Son art est une fusion entre l’esthétique des cultures qui l’empreignent, celle de son pays natal et celle de l’Amérique, sa deuxième patrie, à la recherche de la ‘‘lingua franca’’ ou langue véhiculaire qu’elle se sentait responsable de trouver afin d’éduquer le public avec une approche originale à travers une technique où s’harmonisent aquarelle, encre de chine rouge ou noir, papier, graphite medias qui répondent à des conventions propres à l’artiste.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Figure
</span><!--[if supportFields]><span style='font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
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field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">1</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
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style='mso-element:field-end'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"> </span><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The white wedding</span></i><span lang="FR" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> Á la recherche de l’Eternité</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Dès ses premières œuvres les influences par l’écriture chinoise sont traduites par une abstraction frôlant un divisionnisme reflété par des touches organisées, légèrement étendues, comme soumises à une attraction qui les rapproche les unes aux autres pour reconstituer de nouvelles formes qui au fur et a mesure se géométrisent, puis s’aplatissent en une couleur franche qui contraste avec le pointillisme étincelant et coloré des touches en pétales qui semblent soumises à une force centrifuge qui leur trace une trajectoire, parfois en spirale, parfois en cercle, évoquant un cycle eternel qui frôle l’acte de la fécondité et contraste avec la fatalité du sujet. Ce dynamisme en spirale se serait déjà manifesté dans une des installations antérieures Le Mariage blanc (Fig.1) où des pierres légèrement rapprochées les unes des autres prennent un mouvement en spirale, celles-ci, comme étiquetées en guise d’identité, semblent dégager une tension magnétique dirigée vers le centre et s’élevant vers un tissu blanc suspendu. Cette sensation d’apesanteur semble figer le temps. La spirale dans la double hélice de l’ADN au tourbillon des galaxies, à la notion de mouvement et d’évolution, symbole de la vie en mouvement et en inachèvement, est aussi la mise en dialectique du temps humain et de l’éternité.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Tout semble répondre à un code que l’artiste nous invite à déchiffrer à travers des structures biomorphiques qui l’organisent et d’où surpassent des cercles et des ovales, en phloèmes, en xylèmes ou en cellules humaines. La vie est omniprésente dans l’œuvre de l’artiste qui tente de dépasser l’apparence et s’infiltre dans la composition microscopique de la matière (fig. 2).</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Figure
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<i><span style="color: #00b0f0; font-size: 10.0pt;">Flowers from the sky series,
the Earth, watercolors, white graphic ink and Chinese ink on treated cotton
paper, 2007</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Le thème de la nature, fréquent, se manifeste en rivière ou en fleurs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Le concept de l’eau, traduit par la rivière, est un excellent élément de communication ayant mit naissance à la culture. Chaque rivière possède son identité mais toutes servent l’humanité en connectant les peuples. Elle reconnait elle-même que la rivière jaune et dorée sont des concepts profondément enfouis dans ses origines. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">La série des Fleurs du ciel (Flowers from the Sky Series, the Earth (fig.2) évoque un espace, où les planètes se trouvent recouvertes de cellules, en cercles adhérent l’une a l’autre, en une agglomération qui forme des sphères retenues sur des tiges, et le tout en fleurs rependant leur pollen. Toute cette flore, Louie la regroupe dans un jardin qui lui est propre ralliant flore et constellations en touches gracieuses organisées. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>La transfiguration de la pensée </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">L’organisation est un attribut de l’œuvre de Louie qui dénote d’une forte spiritualité, ses cercles, que ce soit sur le sol ou sur le mur créent une tension par l’écart calculé qui accentue la dimension mentale de l’œuvre (fig.2) et (fig. 5). Les éléments répondent à un ordre qui semble ralentir le temps, un silence s’établit, silence d’un temple où est vénéré l’homme. Elle dira elle-même qu’elle considère son studio être comme son temple.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Figure 3</span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;"> </span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mapping of memory series I, graphite on Mylar
over collage materials</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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Figure 4 The foot journey series, <i>graphite on Mylar over collage materials</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cette dimension mentale se manifeste au mieux à travers les installations et dessins par l’intermédiaire desquels Louie visualise le mécanisme de stockage et de l’interprétation de la mémoire en généralisant quelques critères que le public est incité à découvrir d’une nouvelle façon en généralisant sa propre perception qu’elle rend presque commune à l’humanité, les œuvres The Mapping of Memory (fig.3) et Foot Journey series (fig. 4) en témoignent. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Même si la conception que prône l’artiste n’accède pas facilement au public, l’œuvre retient au minimum ce dernier et le plonge dans une méditation qui ne le laissera pas indifférent. Ces œuvres puisent des cartes ancestrales et des essais d’anatomie populaires en chines, à l’instar de ceux de l’acupuncture. Un quadrillage adéquat et mystérieux, des dispositions stellaires, le coloris du support usé, tentant de localiser le temps à travers la liberté de l’homme qu’elle traduit par le pied symbole de la marche et de la conquête, et le cerveau, symbole de l’intellect et le savoir. L’emploi fréquent du cercle dans l’œuvre de Louie n’est pas hasardeux il répond à une notion philosophique et mathématique qui introduit un langage visuel supplémentaire, comme dans The Book of Zero (Fig. 5).</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Figure 5 </span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Book of Zero series II, 2004, Crocker Art Museum
Sacramento, California</span></i><i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Le cercle dans son symbolisme commun représente le tout fini et infini, l'unité et le multiple, le plein et la perfection comme l'est le Créateur de l'Univers, en Zéro il symbolise l’absence et l’énergie primaire ou point de départ de tout comme l’explique Louie, et incarne l’œil à travers duquel on voit l’univers. L’artiste interprète cet effet en utilisant l’encaustique et des couches représentant le monde caché, avec un collage obscur qui fait allusion à la mémoire tout en alternant des éléments personnels que Louie emprunte des calligraphies de son propre père, donnant à l’œuvre une subjectivité ralliant l’œuvre à l’artiste. Louie se verra concernée par les souffrances de l’humanité, elle le manifestera à plusieurs reprises dans des œuvres comme The Rat Fest, évoquant la famine, et Let’s A Hundred Flowers Blossom Series, qui ramène à ‘‘La campagne des Cent fleurs’’, une tragédie qui fera des milliers de victimes en 1957, ou The Book of Zero honorant les martyrs des peuples ayant sacrifié des vies. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">La rencontre avec John Cage influencera la pensée créative de Louie et à travers des professeurs comme Oliver Jackson, Joan Moment, William Allen, Roger Vail, Gerald Walburg, Nathan Oliveira, David Hannah, Kristina Branch, Joel Leivick, Frank Lobdell, Richard Randell, Larry Thomas et d’autres. L’art de Brenda Louie s’est individualisé dans sa recherche du dialogue entre le conceptuel, l’abstrait et la représentation qu’il traduit d’une façon assez originale qui lui valent une reconnaissance des musées et galeries de la communauté artistique aux Etats Unis, aussi bien que de nombreux prix lui furent décernés. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Comme elle l’a dit elle-même, son œuvre reflète la fusion et le mélange unique de la culture Américaine contemporaine et les traditions de l’Est. Sa production est abondante et ses expositions nombreuses. Aborder son art de façon détaillée ne pourra être cerné en quelques pages, chaque exposition individuelle se caractérise par un concept particulier, mais on peut en déduire une atmosphère imprégnée de spiritualité et de sérénité incontestables.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hussein HUSSEIN.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Le 2.02.2014</b></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-71420316570193232732015-01-02T05:03:00.004-08:002015-01-02T05:07:01.132-08:00David Lee Baughan, La Recréation du créé <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">David Lee Baughan est un sculpteur contemporain américain, vivant et travaillant à San Francisco, en Californie. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Il achève ses études à l’Université de Charleston en 1987 et obtient son diplôme d’études supérieures en art à Laguna Beach Art Institute, en 1993. Dès la fin des années quatre vingt dix il commence à exhiber ses œuvres à travers des expositions collectives et individuelles en majorité à San Francisco en Californie </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">L’œuvre de David Lee Baughan varie entre des masses simples presque abstraites et une agglomération complexe à première vue, pour acquérir ensuite une certaine forme souvent organique qui finit par donner vie à des membres et organes suggérés au départ, puis facilement reconnaissables.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>La Recréation du créé</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">L’œuvre de David Lee Baughan est repartie entre des formes géométriques auxquelles il attribue le caractère organique qui constitue la majorité du reste de ses sculptures. La femme est un thème majeur, mais la forme féminine se présente à nous dans une logique de création qui semble être le fruit d’une improvisation consciente, elle s’offre à nos yeux en parties déconstruites, puis reconstruites d’une manière à nous proposer une perception philosophique nouvelle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Figure 1 Venus de Lespugue, ca. 23000 B.C.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Figure <!--[if supportFields]><span
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Mother/ child, Sandstone, 72 L x 18 W x 14 D, 2014</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Les figures de Baughan semblent ramener à celles des venus du Paléolithique, à l’exemple de celles de Lespugue (fig. 1) ou de Willendorf avec leurs extrémités effilées contournant un élargissement exagéré au niveau des seins ou des fesses. En revanches les bras, les pieds ou la tête sont souvent réduites et ébauchées. Tout comme celles-ci, les sculptures déformées de l’artiste suggèrent une recréation d’un organisme nouveau qui, bien qu’extraordinaire conserve une certaine humanité et une capricieuse sensibilité. C’est une forme inerte rappelant l’immobilité des statues pharaoniennes s’animant chez l’artiste par la texture rugueuse qui contraste avec un raffinage sur des courbes qui renforce la notion de vie-inertie. La plupart de ses œuvres ont l’impression d’être intentionnellement inachevées, elles offrent ainsi au spectateur le plaisir de l’ambigüité que lui offre cette forme primitive, qui ne se défait pas de l’harmonie et de la féminité sensuelle indissociable de l’aspect de la femme ou de la mère, comme dans Mother/ Child (fig. 2). </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Figure <!--[if supportFields]><span
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Icarus, chlorite 35 18 19 inch.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> La figure semble parfois être piégée dans le bloc de pierre, sans essayer de s’en libérer, la pierre est partie intégrante de la forme organique retenue dans une autre dimension, géométrique. Comme si la forme se retenait d’elle-même, à l’instar de l’œuvre Icarus (fig. 3).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">On distingue les différentes parties d’un corps humain, replacées dans un autre contexte, semblant vouloir se libérer, mais pas de la pierre. Même dans les œuvres plus abstraites, il ya cette présence organique, évoquant la féminité à son état pur, la représentant en une seule masse dans un processus d’auto guérison vers lequel l’artiste tend lui-même.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Comme les statues primitives, les œuvres de David Lee Baughan ne dégagent pas, bien que présent parfois, d’érotisme dérangeant. La femme « Baughanienne » est un objet d’adoration qui frôle la divinité. L’installation de ses sculptures dans la place de la cathédrale de Grace à San Francisco ne semble pas vulgariser la spiritualité du lieu, bien au contraire le labyrinthe de ce dernier fait écho à l’œuvre en totem équilibré de l’artiste.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">La sculpture de l’artiste David Lee Baughan, bronze qu’elle soit ou pierre, est avant tout, selon lui, le résultat d’un processus d’interaction conscient de l’inconscient, émanant de la profondeur intuitive et de la sensibilité de l’imagination. Dans l’ambition subversive de réinventer la création en mettant en avant l’inconscient, Baughan semble en concordance avec un surréalisme qui ne se défait pas du réel mais le conserve partiellement en le réinterprétant de façon à l’agglomérer à des masses primitives. Il reconnait lui-même être un admirateur de Carl Jung et plaide l’incarnation de ses œuvres de la philosophie féminine qui semble satisfaire son âme. Ce mécanisme de la créativité semble lui fournir une satiété philosophique remède par lequel il attribue à l’œuvre son psyché.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8HOEP-EvYhufG1_rGBA_DsesM_D6-MeJ62kr40GyBdJX4FQZAiykAnYAvlz4VIq8e2QxOGLps9I8ujuNRp4oDhb2vZpSk9ULWpuKPyPFtLGyJ8QhMz7KVuRs99zPy62ErlNeHairPu9g/s1600/10849876_10154954336405553_6585436896911676684_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB8HOEP-EvYhufG1_rGBA_DsesM_D6-MeJ62kr40GyBdJX4FQZAiykAnYAvlz4VIq8e2QxOGLps9I8ujuNRp4oDhb2vZpSk9ULWpuKPyPFtLGyJ8QhMz7KVuRs99zPy62ErlNeHairPu9g/s1600/10849876_10154954336405553_6585436896911676684_n.jpg" height="400" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: 13px;">Lessons of Love, 2005 ,Bronze, 56 x 26 x 16 inches, </span></td><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: 13px;"> FARHAT ART MUSEUM COLLECTION</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">David Lee Baughan sculpte certes dans la pierre, mais lui donne une valeur qui émane de lui-même, elle perd de sa caractéristique matérielle pour en acquérir une, spirituelle, humaine mais différente de celle que nous, jusque là connaissions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Hussein Hussein. 2014</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.davidleebaughan.wordpress.com/">www.davidleebaughan.wordpress.com</a></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-36853357765800342222014-11-01T15:43:00.004-07:002014-11-01T16:01:08.152-07:00The Bonfils Story, A Legacy Of Light (from the Aramco World, Nov-Dec 1983)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">Written by Will H. Rockett </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Photographed by Felix, Adrien and Lydie Bonfils </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixjdKJ5uAQOYR_3uzrR_mhdresiRTFN6zncImTIhr_wsOm-5DFvqwHE5vQ4vk4mVaYy4tFLQtn0Fc4oMhQx5n7yhisSz27gzaP0VlEvlQVIzhQ89epCFQ_wtRl4cNtVuULNmMXt3l1YqOJ/s1600/This+image+by+the+firm+of+Maison+Bonfils+depicts+the+city+of+Beirut,+Lebanon,+sometime+in+the+last+third+of+the+19th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixjdKJ5uAQOYR_3uzrR_mhdresiRTFN6zncImTIhr_wsOm-5DFvqwHE5vQ4vk4mVaYy4tFLQtn0Fc4oMhQx5n7yhisSz27gzaP0VlEvlQVIzhQ89epCFQ_wtRl4cNtVuULNmMXt3l1YqOJ/s1600/This+image+by+the+firm+of+Maison+Bonfils+depicts+the+city+of+Beirut,+Lebanon,+sometime+in+the+last+third+of+the+19th.jpg" height="69" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> This image by the firm of Maison Bonfils depicts the city of Beirut, Lebanon, sometime in the last third of the 19th century. Maison Bonfils was the extraordinarily prolific venture of the French photographer Félix Bonfils (1831–85), his wife Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils (1837–1918), and their son, Adrien Bonfils (1861–1928). </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The Arabic phrase musawwir shamsi - one who makes pictures by the sun is probably the earliest Arabic term for photographer, and tradition has it that scholars, in considering Islamic prohibitions against graven images, decided photographs merely recorded the shadows cast by God's sunlight.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">There was, nevertheless, opposition to photography among most religious groups in the Middle East, and, as a result, visual records of peoples, monuments and scenes of the region have been usually made and preserved throughout history by foreigners.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Among the best examples of this are the famous Roberts Prints, by 19th-century British artist David Roberts (See Aramco World, March-April 1970). Another earlier example is the encydopedic record made by some 2,000 European artists, draftsmen and skilled engravers who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte's army on its 1798 Egyptian campaign and helped to produce the 20-volume Description de l'Egypte (See Aramco World, March-April 1976). A monumental work, Description incorporated generally excellent drawings of the ruins and monuments of Egypt.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDa7yRb24t7HirUHGrU-j44K0vRDc9LuF2FtgWssm-y87155GY-ZP_T4rHFfLaxEToYC0A8lrt80GE9tg7uGRGBGAucfIVCYoqzv9fFwnG15Jv5MhEXT-sPwPHFJS_JNJPABbx4yaUgMFb/s1600/farhat+(6).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDa7yRb24t7HirUHGrU-j44K0vRDc9LuF2FtgWssm-y87155GY-ZP_T4rHFfLaxEToYC0A8lrt80GE9tg7uGRGBGAucfIVCYoqzv9fFwnG15Jv5MhEXT-sPwPHFJS_JNJPABbx4yaUgMFb/s1600/farhat+(6).jpg" height="271" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">David Roberts, Farhat Art Museum collection</span></span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDnL4ECVIHMPCQzPpaKQM7u3qpxhlpOLodgdEtzcmHt7ps993KoszGuwao0WuuXmb6k1179FwPFicqGDtwL53wWTRc0Cjx8xqjWYEOIBYGDmbuD9e3ybuUdSv8GdEUamSCgh0Q62VbMmO/s1600/farhat+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDnL4ECVIHMPCQzPpaKQM7u3qpxhlpOLodgdEtzcmHt7ps993KoszGuwao0WuuXmb6k1179FwPFicqGDtwL53wWTRc0Cjx8xqjWYEOIBYGDmbuD9e3ybuUdSv8GdEUamSCgh0Q62VbMmO/s1600/farhat+(2).jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">David Roberts, Farhat Art Museum collection</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Such illustrations, unfortunately, were not always as accurate as they might have been, since they were subject to dlange as they went from the artists on the spot to engravers and publishers; engravers of that period tended to "translate" illustrations as they made plates for publication. Until rotogravure printing came along, this was a process that would affect all sudh illustrations - as Dr. Carney Gavin, curator of the Harvard Semitic Museum (HSM), made dear in this example of 19th-century illustrations: "An Irish nobleman made a sketch of Beirut harbor in 1836. He then gave it to an artist at the Royal Academy, who prettied it up. It was then passed on to a German engraver, who in turn gave it to John Murray of Albemarle Street, a publisher. In the end, what the public saw wasn't at all bad; but it was really a drawing-by-committee."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then, in 1839, Louis-Jacques Mande Daguerre ushered in the age of photography with a public announcement of the first practical photographic process - the daguerreotype - and within weeks, reportedly, so-called "Excursions Daguerriennes" began recording the sights of the Eastfor an avid European audience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">For years before that, Western interest in the Middle East had been whetted by the then - widespread knowledge of the Bible, and by such travel literature as Alexander William Kinglake's Eothen, and William Makepeace Thackeray's Notes of a lourney from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, published under the pseudonym "Titmarsh" As a result, hardy - and wealthy - souls had begun to add Egypt and the Holy Land to their "Grand Tour" itineraries, and they in turn began to publish reminiscences and sketches that stimulated still more interest. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now, with photography, travelers could begin to capture such exotica with greater fidelity than was possible with pen and ink - though even the daguerreotype had limitations. A one-shot affair, the daguerreotype image was fixed forever upon a metal plate, and could not be readily reproduced. Engravers, therefore, still had to be brought in - initially to copy the work on a separate printing plate, later to engrave lines directly onto the photographic plate itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">In 1841, the invention of the paper negative, or "calotype," by William Fox Talbot permitted the reproduction of multiple images from one original, but Daguerre's method which offered a sharper, more durable image, held sway among photographers until Frederick Scott Archer introduced a process using glass negatives in 1851. Prints could be made from these negatives, and then "tipped" onto the pages oft ravel books-i.e. pasted in by hand, in effect making each copy an album of original photographs.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYK5xrmZ6DOoZjqoSCfnNge6AadrD4W8gsiUdcDlrNYA5-_mT-tnHpRFf5AEtKdLDpJX0yEvvUzq6EjQj0X0d2-UdP9Abxj6jb2IvPgL-BkQyoehovbak3Zv65ZaAZBwg_tQKUEur4E7Y/s1600/Frederick+Scott+Archer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAYK5xrmZ6DOoZjqoSCfnNge6AadrD4W8gsiUdcDlrNYA5-_mT-tnHpRFf5AEtKdLDpJX0yEvvUzq6EjQj0X0d2-UdP9Abxj6jb2IvPgL-BkQyoehovbak3Zv65ZaAZBwg_tQKUEur4E7Y/s1600/Frederick+Scott+Archer.jpg" height="400" width="273" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;">Frederick Scott Archer</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most of the earliest European photographers of the Middle East - Horace Vernet, Joly de Lotbiniere and others -were daguerreotypists, but Maxime Du Camp, who accompanied Flaubert on the poet's 1849-51 excursion to the Middle East, got excellent results with paper negatives, and Francis Frith, photographer and publisher, secured a firm place in the history of photography using glass negatives. As an Athenaeum critic wrote in 1858, "Mr. Frith, who makes light of everything, brings us the Sun's opinion of Egypt, which is better than Champollion's... Eothen's or Titmarsh's"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As for Frith, he deemed himself an artist in league with the sun, writing, "The Sun himself condescends to pigmify (the image),and pop it bodily into the boxw hich your artist provided". And at one point he gleefully recounted the envy of a French artisthe encountered at MedinetHabu:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">"When, in a few minutes, I had possessed myself of more accuracy than his labor of perhaps days would yield, he exclaimed with politeness-and (let us hope) with no dash of bitterness, nor scornfulnes, nor envy - 'Ah, Monsieur! que wus etes vite, vite!'"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Acceptance of photography as a fine art was erratic, but it did catch on as a popular art. The Times of London proclaimed that Frith's photographs "carry us far beyond anything that is in the power of the most accomplished artist to transfer to his canvas," and Queen Victoria compiled 110 albums of photographs. Frith, meanwhile, had turned book publisher, and in addition to various portfolios and volumes of his pictures, brought out a special Queen's Bible in 1862-3. It featured 20 photographic views from his collection, and sold in a limited edition for 50 guineas, a very considerable sum at that time. The British Journal of Photography said Frith's books were "got up in a style that renders them fit ornament for any drawing room", and since the public agreed, Frith's enterprises prospered.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMP8UjanXulonZlK1gh52h2HZV6_jTzQdW6FcZw3VDwxPAkV5eszPr2-Q_hQepKyKPeJXHEf6uCHXfjlM2saIEPT2Qf2UYomCP5k2Irp-gBikcTcgFiqXBOktNhon-_Mut1FyRkPqTg2nP/s1600/The+Holy+Bible+Illustrated+with+Photographs+by+%5BFrancis%5D+Frith.+Glasgow+Printed+and+published+by+William+Mackenzie,+1862+1863.+Albumen+silver+print..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMP8UjanXulonZlK1gh52h2HZV6_jTzQdW6FcZw3VDwxPAkV5eszPr2-Q_hQepKyKPeJXHEf6uCHXfjlM2saIEPT2Qf2UYomCP5k2Irp-gBikcTcgFiqXBOktNhon-_Mut1FyRkPqTg2nP/s1600/The+Holy+Bible+Illustrated+with+Photographs+by+%5BFrancis%5D+Frith.+Glasgow+Printed+and+published+by+William+Mackenzie,+1862+1863.+Albumen+silver+print..jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Holy Bible Illustrated with Photographs by [Francis] Frith. Glasgow: Printed and published by William Mackenzie, 1862-1863. Albumen silver print.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBYmgtonCCdk2h0vnqFhewj_905lIflwE8LAW2tpWlKDjSTGNqUrIvegEZFectVGoX951AOoL6is5x6nVhSmLeDO2r61zMxlOSzOU0CijiWedeiyvARXjEVKAgiMcEWip1b8ufilS1ZH1q/s1600/firth+holy5-thumb-420x343-4988.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBYmgtonCCdk2h0vnqFhewj_905lIflwE8LAW2tpWlKDjSTGNqUrIvegEZFectVGoX951AOoL6is5x6nVhSmLeDO2r61zMxlOSzOU0CijiWedeiyvARXjEVKAgiMcEWip1b8ufilS1ZH1q/s1600/firth+holy5-thumb-420x343-4988.jpg" height="326" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francis Frith, one of the 20 photos of the Bible</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At the root of this popularity was the "awe and wonder with which Victorian viewers greeted Frith's startlingly truthful photographs of the most ancient and his- toric lands known to them", as historian Julia van Haaften wrote in an edition of Frith's Egyptian photographs. But there was another element too: the need for travelers to bring back souvenirs.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Toward the end of the 19th century, middle class Europeans were beginning to travel in such great numbers that some observers had begun to object. Journalist William Howard Russell, for example, protested in The Times that tourists "...crowd the sites which ought to be approached in reverential silence..."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Like their counterparts today, these travelers also demanded keepsakes - and thought that they had a right to them. A Father Geramb, for example, reportedly told Muhammad Ali the ruler of Egypt in 1833, that "it would hardly be respectable, on one's return from Egypt, to present oneself in Europe without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other" Thus, when some governments in the Middle East began to crack down on such looting, daguerreotypes and other forms of photography offered travelers an attractive alternative - particularly when they were made and marketed by "Bonfils".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-WDfDdi1m4bn5Mn2Qd0IClcJa-aCNobioVLwSPyYDG-z2aa1Svx3YJ4f1Qdn2F5RcznHzVjldgwj7Q4RBIo3PqpxQwHBLUbM3JFBlKs5zY0TnFnBwepc3R0MLxW5ugs7H9XqSfCNtFEr/s1600/Bonfils,+F%C3%A9lix+(1831-1885)%2B-%2B672.%2BFemmes%2Bmusulmanes%2BSyriennes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-WDfDdi1m4bn5Mn2Qd0IClcJa-aCNobioVLwSPyYDG-z2aa1Svx3YJ4f1Qdn2F5RcznHzVjldgwj7Q4RBIo3PqpxQwHBLUbM3JFBlKs5zY0TnFnBwepc3R0MLxW5ugs7H9XqSfCNtFEr/s1600/Bonfils,+F%C3%A9lix+(1831-1885)%2B-%2B672.%2BFemmes%2Bmusulmanes%2BSyriennes.jpg" height="400" width="310" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bonfils, Félix (1831-1885) - 672. Femmes musulmanes Syriennes</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bonfils was by no means the only good photographer of the period; between the time Daguerre introduced his process and the time Bonfils began to take and market photographs, some 200 known photographers were in business - some of them quite good. In Luxor, for example, prints by a man named Beato were on sale, and in Istanbul prints by a photographer named Sebah could be sent home rolled up in metal tubes. But few of them compared to the photography produced by the Bonfils farnily-as Gratien Charvet, founderof the Societe Saentifique et Litteraire in Ales, France, would vehemently argue.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">he man who wrote the introduction to the Bonfils' 1878 collection of photographs, Souvenirs d'Orient, Charvet said enthusiastically that the "collection of photographs of the Orient's principal sites - initiated, executed and completed by Monsieur F. Bonfils with unequaled perseverance - should be regarded as one of the most considerable achievements - picturesque, artistic and scientific - of our epoch". </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihiOSHew4vX1i50-Ir7scA81rauQbKzuXhq-UdUAYbmaStfoI-SG47eEbQ-YxIZqnAgSpMZrYw9qtjWhMpLWSvHHGDPHFoNSoEFA1HCGwvDOL7ZT_ExLcDU5jclSbP0gAAKT1mDuM-0ZnR/s1600/Arab+man+smoking+pipe,+late+1800s..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihiOSHew4vX1i50-Ir7scA81rauQbKzuXhq-UdUAYbmaStfoI-SG47eEbQ-YxIZqnAgSpMZrYw9qtjWhMpLWSvHHGDPHFoNSoEFA1HCGwvDOL7ZT_ExLcDU5jclSbP0gAAKT1mDuM-0ZnR/s1600/Arab+man+smoking+pipe,+late+1800s..jpg" height="400" width="292" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arab man smoking pipe, late 1800s. F. Bonfils</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Despite this, the Bonfils family had virtually vanished from history by the time that Father Gavin and his staff began to dig into the family history. "All we know of Bonfils", said photographic historian Beaumont Newhall, in answer to Gavin's inquiries, "is that he was a genius".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As recently as two years ago, Gavin wrote in the journal Nineteenth Century: "No one remembers the photographers Bonfils - not even the Sub-Prefect M. Maurice Bonfils - not even the staff of the Evangelical Library in nearby Saint Hippo- Iyte dedicated to collecting biographies of local sons - not even the region's oldest printers and photographers. And at the time of Felix Bonfils', death in 1885, no obituary nor even notice was published in local journals".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since then, however, Dr. Gavin and his staff have learned a lot about the Bonfils family. In fact, it was two of Dr. Gavin's volunteers - Al and Phyllis Weisman - who first turned up evidence that there was more than one Bonfils photographer: in a New Hampshire barn, they came across the effects of a missionary who had photographic prints signed, "A. Bonfils". "Until then", Dr. Gavin said, "we had found only 'F. Bonfils'".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"They were an incredible family", said Dr. Gavin. They were descendants of Theodore, the emperor of Abysinia, and are related through marriage to the actor Peter Ustinov. One of them, Adrien, was alternately a sergeant brigadier of the Chasseurs d'Afrique, a photographer in his father's studio and a Beirut hotelier. The father, Felix, was the son of a wood-lathe worker, but built up a photographic business with connections in Cairo, Alexandr. ia, Paris and London, as well as Beirut and Ales, the Bonfils home in France. And when Lydie Bonfils, the third photographer, left Beirut in 1916, it was as an evacuee on the deck of the U.S.S. DesMoines.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Litte of that was known at first, but bit by bit over the last 12 years, research by Dr. Gavin and his staff has pieced the story together. It is a story of affection, piety and devotion - to each other and to their adopted homeland, Lebanon - and it begins in the small French town of Ales about 1860 when the family Bonfils set of for Beirut one after the other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The first to go was Felix Bonfils. Born in 1831, Felix took up the trade of bookbinder, but in 1860 joined General d'Hautpoul's expedition to the Levant to end an outbreak of factional fighting. Evidence suggests that Felix became a photographer sometime after his return from Lebanon, possibly as an amateur. Then, however, when his son Adrien fell ill, felix remembered the cool green hills around Beirut and sent him there to recover. With him went Felix's wife Lydie Bonfils, and when she returned, apparently as enthusiastic about the Middle East as Felix had been, they decided to return en famille.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpZnd3EmXzTGsbRdvPKJ5C-jEQnJQ79jPNwKtZbccWgTOJNUA39Rq2jmoW5sn28p-YHTRCxflCOonNGydaPZcAjzj8IP44aIW29VyXqrhy21uf2R6XZ_DIfjQIaTndNAJLlf5kWk1QD07/s1600/photography+of+Bonfils+studio+in+Beirut,+private+collection,+documentation+of+Fouad+Debbas,+TFDC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpZnd3EmXzTGsbRdvPKJ5C-jEQnJQ79jPNwKtZbccWgTOJNUA39Rq2jmoW5sn28p-YHTRCxflCOonNGydaPZcAjzj8IP44aIW29VyXqrhy21uf2R6XZ_DIfjQIaTndNAJLlf5kWk1QD07/s1600/photography+of+Bonfils+studio+in+Beirut,+private+collection,+documentation+of+Fouad+Debbas,+TFDC.jpg" height="261" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photography of Bonfils studio in Beirut, private collection, documentation of Fouad Debbas, TFDC<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since Felix was by then working in Ales as a printer, producing heliogravures - a photographic process invented by Abel Niepce de St. Victor, cousin of the man frequently called "the father of photography", Joseph Nicephore Niepce - he decided to try and support himself in Lebanon by taking up the trade of la photographie. Though it may seem like an odd decision, it turned out well; in 1867, the Bonfils family arrived in Beirut and four years later Felix reported the results of what must have been staggering labor: 15,000 prints of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece, and 9,000 stereoscopicviews.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Those negatives were made on glass plates, coated with a collodion solution sensitized with silver nitrate. The plates had to be prepared on the spot-usually in a tent in the Middle East, although Francis Frith occasionally used cool tombs and temples as well. Then they were exposed and developed immediately afterwards. Prints could be made later, quite literally by sunlight: paper impregnated with a silver salt solution was stretched against the glass plate in a frame, and then exposed out of doors under direct sunlight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Though the prints, golden in tone, were beautiful, the photographers had to use eggwhite, or albumen, as a binding agent on the paper and this eventually became unpleasant since the Bonfils family apparently prepared the egg-white themselves. Lydie Bonfils in 1917 was heard to mutter, "I never want to smell another egg again", and supposedly forbade them at her breakfast table thereafter.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqm2mFM2axxGONL1zmtnKnnt2DDspA6AkLefJJV233lccqIeWUYx2Y5VpfaFzkcOKW4El1jAuSyXjt9VHgSPIqQRHmCzEa6pEZrCAEujCa7Ticyon4cEkdFWTCDdZUG2onvEXAyp4VTq6/s1600/portrait+of+Lydie+Bonfils,+private+collection,+documentation+of+Fouad+Debbas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqm2mFM2axxGONL1zmtnKnnt2DDspA6AkLefJJV233lccqIeWUYx2Y5VpfaFzkcOKW4El1jAuSyXjt9VHgSPIqQRHmCzEa6pEZrCAEujCa7Ticyon4cEkdFWTCDdZUG2onvEXAyp4VTq6/s1600/portrait+of+Lydie+Bonfils,+private+collection,+documentation+of+Fouad+Debbas.jpg" height="400" width="275" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of Lydie Bonfils, private collection, documentation of Fouad Debbas<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The process could also be dangerous- particularly in the hot climate of the Middle East. As Frith wrote, "When (at the Second Cataract, one thousand miles from the mouth of the Nile, with the thermometer at 110 degrees in my tent) the collodion actually boiled when poured upon the glass plate, I almost despaired of success".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The second Bonfils photographer was Felix's son, Adrien. Born at Ales in 1861, Adrien was six when the family moved permanently to Beirut Like his father he did military service - as a brigadier in a cavalry regiment in Algeria - but on the death of Felix in 1885, he returned to Beirut to take over the family business, and was soon setting off on new photographic expeditions and launching publishing projects that easily matched Frith's in quality and quantity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was Adrien to whom a London agent named Mansell was referring when he wrote, in 1892, to a certain David Gordon Lyon, "I hear from Bonfils that he has made an addition of 150 views to his Egyptian series - shall send these to you when I receive them".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6fcFIz8nJDw6b6FdCJQ53bmxZyyPAKqj3SylZ66GXnxjFifr2RkrFyZW0LE3WhZyEmEvmazPCq21GNNDkn86bs7ebBpNMSc5rGHqo_VoiKTvo3U24Zq-XfE-h1sMne-QLOG9XhaxXM_24/s1600/Lind+and+Adrien+Bonfils,+Lebanon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6fcFIz8nJDw6b6FdCJQ53bmxZyyPAKqj3SylZ66GXnxjFifr2RkrFyZW0LE3WhZyEmEvmazPCq21GNNDkn86bs7ebBpNMSc5rGHqo_VoiKTvo3U24Zq-XfE-h1sMne-QLOG9XhaxXM_24/s1600/Lind+and+Adrien+Bonfils,+Lebanon.jpg" height="400" width="261" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lind and Adrien Bonfils</span></td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption"><br /></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Iu5WShuV7ozFZ_GsAsj1u2Hky9bPTC7rav2WVUXsyUDAa1QK7Id1BNZS9_0XlRe8GRntxdIGZfsGsgRvRG3iw1JZ0BvIfppxuQLuty2KpEmp1v1uGBkEsxzvdhp3zJ7fLkoThrvYioCL/s1600/image001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5Iu5WShuV7ozFZ_GsAsj1u2Hky9bPTC7rav2WVUXsyUDAa1QK7Id1BNZS9_0XlRe8GRntxdIGZfsGsgRvRG3iw1JZ0BvIfppxuQLuty2KpEmp1v1uGBkEsxzvdhp3zJ7fLkoThrvYioCL/s1600/image001.jpg" height="400" width="272" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUR4bHPVP9KBSMxbeObdLrFfqh9PbIbXVhkh8YOCYprc6IHN4RuyhviDyRuAxBJ4Fw000xsLWKJKA6XVv3VrWbMqnAPHLi2ERGaBei1Ddry7y12ZWkLdexOnRmMp3rkDURRCKE0Ka0xOAZ/s1600/Rachel+new+bonfils+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUR4bHPVP9KBSMxbeObdLrFfqh9PbIbXVhkh8YOCYprc6IHN4RuyhviDyRuAxBJ4Fw000xsLWKJKA6XVv3VrWbMqnAPHLi2ERGaBei1Ddry7y12ZWkLdexOnRmMp3rkDURRCKE0Ka0xOAZ/s1600/Rachel+new+bonfils+2.jpg" height="333" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rachel's tomb (circa late 19th century) by Adrien Bonfils.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Adrien Bonfils outside the family's Beirut studio, from which flowered a prolofic output of meticulously processed prints. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">This, says Dr. Gavin's staff, seems to be the first reference to what was becoming the Bonfils collection and to the man who took it upon himself to acquire the photographs: Professor Lyon, the first curator of a new museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts: the Harvard Semitic Museum. Founded in 1899 - with donations from Jacob Henry Schiff of the New York bank ing house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company- HSM, according to its charter, was intended to provide "a thorough study and a better knowledge of Semitic history and civilization, so that the world shall better understand and acknowledge the debt it owes to the Semitic people".</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">To that end, Lyon began to collect artifacts from the Middle East, particularly the Bonfils photographs. It is not known whether he realized haw valuable they would be in archeology, but it's unlikely. It is only now, Gavin says, that researchers are coming to realize the value of photographs. aLibrarians have leamed to pay careful attention to handwritten notes and diaries, as well as to books and manuscripts. Curators carefully tend sketch pads and ok engravings as 'works of art' But photographs... have until recently remained forgotten".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKpUQt8wfGtVo0ZfPAS7SgF9GSU8EASRZGdAtgSCiGzNFfUMScEAR-QKlN4N8NSbpt4BJI3gAEAOg66NQ_GKLk_3NPBS-6VMdZAd5nuwqkaxWbm016NGuvd81BSv4djduZ1GL0-9YN7QZ_/s1600/Bedouin+mothers+carrying+their+children+on+their+shoulders.+Color+photo+taken+in+the+late+19th+century+by+the+French+photographer+F%C3%A9lix+Bonfils.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKpUQt8wfGtVo0ZfPAS7SgF9GSU8EASRZGdAtgSCiGzNFfUMScEAR-QKlN4N8NSbpt4BJI3gAEAOg66NQ_GKLk_3NPBS-6VMdZAd5nuwqkaxWbm016NGuvd81BSv4djduZ1GL0-9YN7QZ_/s1600/Bedouin+mothers+carrying+their+children+on+their+shoulders.+Color+photo+taken+in+the+late+19th+century+by+the+French+photographer+F%C3%A9lix+Bonfils.jpg" height="400" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bedouin mothers carrying their children on their shoulders. Color photo taken in the late 19th century by the French photographer Félix Bonfils</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nevertheless, Dr. Gavin says, Lyon did work hard at collecting Bonfils photographs. "Lyon's interest was encyclopedic; one can infer from the Mansell note that he's told the agent he wants all the photographs". Furthermore, he nearly succeeded; despite occasional difficulties with U.S. Customs, he secured nearly half of what was available and went on to catalog them, giving them English titles and museum code numbers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is known, because Adrien himself had issued three catalogs, organizing 1,684 photographs into nine groups covering Lower and Upper Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia and Greece. In addition, there was a series of 25 "panoramas" consisting of two or more separate pictures which, when placed side by side, showed broad cityscapes of such Eastern centers as Cairo, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Damascus and, of course, Beirut. The series was rounded out by a selection of Egyptian views and costumes - including desert scenes and a wedding and a collection of scenes and costurnes of Palestine and Syria.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As these catalogs suggest, Adrierl's output was prolific. But in addition to this expansion of his father's business, he was also experimenting with mechanically colored prints - they were done in Zurich, by the photochromie process - and made four trips to Philadelphia to explore publication opportunities, including a proposed New Testament Illustrated with Photographs, and a book on the journeys of St. Paul.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile, the Bonfils family had added a third photographer to its roster: Lydie Bonfils, a fact that emerged when the HSM staff found a reference by an English clergyman named Manning, in his 1874 volume, Palestine lllustrated by Pen and Pencil, to photographers whose prints he used in preparing his own sketches. Among them was "Madame Bonfils of Beyrout".</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXuc6OAEyojQ-OVQjIXSvkhGZGxLE_jcN-UQ5lq3IO2NPmfYjmZk3dR_PzOdbBljcXvfYNoiSD-1_bC_7dfMHxMpY2MZaCzg2QaTfe3zziRbBCget7FIbossYMwG7EN4ba_WmzeLWRcg-S/s1600/Young+woman+from+Lebanon,+albumin+print,+attributed+to+Lydie+Bonfils.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXuc6OAEyojQ-OVQjIXSvkhGZGxLE_jcN-UQ5lq3IO2NPmfYjmZk3dR_PzOdbBljcXvfYNoiSD-1_bC_7dfMHxMpY2MZaCzg2QaTfe3zziRbBCget7FIbossYMwG7EN4ba_WmzeLWRcg-S/s1600/Young+woman+from+Lebanon,+albumin+print,+attributed+to+Lydie+Bonfils.jpg" height="400" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Young woman from Lebanon, albumin print, attributed to Lydie Bonfils</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Lydie, it seems, had decided that mixing albumen for her husband and son was not enough, and apparently got involved in portraits and costume studies in the Beirut studios; descendants, in fact, have confirmed that she worked in the family's Beirut studio for some time after her son abandoned the trade in the early 1900s. There is evidence too that she ranged more widely. In Brummana, a member of the Maksad family told of "Lady Bonfils" stopping a Druze shaikh to pose for her one morning, just after the outbreak of the First World War. And her own photo, according to Nitza Rosovsky, an historian of old Jerusalem, appears in one of the prints in the Harvard cache; she is standing on the pyramid at Giza.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thus Lydie, despite a growing distaste for eggs, apparently continued the business after Adrien had begun to turn his attention to a proposed medical spa in the mountains of Lebanon - even issuing her own catalog until the First World War forced her removal from Beirut and brought an end to the prolific photographic output of this remarkable family.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By then, however, the work of the Bonfils family was not only extensive, but of an unparalleled quality. Tt is, in fact, an incomparable legacy to both history and art.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-79027668006379141812014-10-06T12:05:00.001-07:002014-10-06T12:05:11.791-07:00الفنان النحات بسام كيرلوس : ما يُنحت هو الأجمل والأعمق <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">النحت القديم متجذِّر في ذاكرتي</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">ترتبط منحوتات الفنان «بسام كيرلوس» بالماضي كجزء من ميثولوجيا ذات مدلولات تستجيب لمفاهيم نحتية يسخرها بقوة فعل حركي، لتحاكي حركة الزمن عبر مادة تختلط خاماتها بالافكار التي تتضمن تاريخا، ورؤية تكوينية تتخذ من الكتل الصماء احيانا تجاويف تتميز بمحاكاة الطبيعة، وبفراغات ذات حركة فيزيائية تفرض بخطوطها مساحات تتناقض ما بين الظاهر والداخل عبر حركة بناها من كينونة عناصر ترتبط بنوعية المادة التي يستعملها، وفق مفهوم نحتي جوهري يتخذ من المرونة صلابته في بناء الاشكال والفراغات والاحجام، بثبات نستقرىء من خلاله المتغيرات الزمنية التي يبتكرها. لتظهر ميثولوجياته متحركة زمنيا، ونلامس الماضي بصيغة حاضر اشبه بنقطة سابحة في فضاءات مخيلته الباحثة عن التحليق او الابعاد العميقة الرؤيا نحتيا وزواياها الحسية المدركة، لتوازنات العمل الفني من كافة جوانبه، وبديناميكية تؤثر على الانسجام الداخلي والخارجي للمنحوتة، وتتابع تفاصيلها بشمولية ذات طابع تجذب الفكر اليها، ليستوحي من اثارها ميثولوجيا تتناسب وذهنية العمل النحتي الذي يقدمه «بسام كيرلوس» في هذا المعرض، وبما يتوافق مع الايقاع الزمني والمكاني. لتتضح عناصر مكوناته وملامستها للطبيعة حيث تكتسب تنويعات مختلفة. مما ينعكس على حركة المنحوتات كل حسب مقاييسها واحجامها واشكالها ومساحاتها، وحتى الطول الاستطيقي لها الذي يحقق بنية اتصالية بمعنى كجسر يصل الماضي والحاضر مع الحركة والسكون ان فيزيائيا بمعناها الخارجي او تمثيليا بمعناها الداخلي المتآخي مع مضمون فكرة كل منحوتة قدمها بأسلوبه القديم الجديد، وهذا يولد تساؤلات كان لا بد من الاضاءة عليها من خلال حوارنا معه عن بعض المفاهيم...</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">طائر الفينيق المصلوب, من مجموعة متحف فرحات </td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* «بسام كيرلوس» والميثولوجيا، متى يبدأ بالنحت واين ينتهي العمل؟ </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- العمل النحتي ليس فقط كتلة ثلاثية الابعاد يمكن رؤيتها ولمسها، فما لم ينحت هو الاجمل والاعمق. ما وراء العمل النحتي هو ابعاد لا تنتهي للانسان والوجود. لذلك عمل الفنان يبقى عملية تدخل قسرياً للفت النظر وللايحاء، ومحظوظ الفنان اللذي ينجح في الاقتراب من تلك الحقيقة. بالنسبة لي الحقيقة بدأت بجدية مع الميثولوجيا ولم تتحقق بشكل منجز مع الدين والفلسفة، وهكذا هو الفن بدأ ويبدأ مع الميثولوجيا ويكمل في الدين ويتوه في الفلسفة، فيتوقف في لحظة غرور الفنان واذعانه بأنه اكتشف شيئا «ولعل بعض الكبار اكتشفوا شيئا» من الحقيقة وجعلوا مشوارنا الى الشمس اقرب بخطوة. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* متأثر بالمفاهيم النحتية المعاصرة نوعا ما وتحافظ على الاساليب الكلاسيكية في النحت اين الخطأ والصواب في ذلك؟</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- العمل الفني ولا سيما النحتي لا يكون معاصرا «الا اذا استطاع ان يختزل كل الازمنة الماضية ليستحق ان يكون معاصرا» اليوم اللغة التشكيلية مفتوحة على كل وسائل التعبير، والفنان مسؤول عن تاريخ الفن قبل ان يكون مكلفاً بانجاز عمل غير مسبوق، فلا إعادة انتاج الماضي بالامر المشرف، ولا الغرق في موجات رائجة يقدم خدمة للفن. انما صياغة تجربة فنية متجذرة بقالب يتبنى المفاهيم المعاصرة ويراعي احساس الفنان، يمكن ان ينتج عنه عمل نحتي معاصر وجدي. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* «بسام كيرلوس» وميثولوجيات برونزية هل تعيد امجاد النحت القديم بلغة عصرية؟.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- الى حد ما، فالنحت القديم متجذر في ذاكرتي ووضعيات الاجساد التي استخدمت سابقا نقلتها من تاريخها، ومسحت عنها غبار الامس لأضعها ضمن اطار معاصر وكأن المشهد هو مزيج من مضمون قديم بصورة اطار حديث معاصر.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* هل تعيق مادة البرونز تقنية الآداء ام ان الفكرة قوية في تكوينها وتستطيع تحدي المادة البرونزية؟</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- كون مادة البرونز مادة مطواعة وتحتمل التفاصيل الدقيقة، فهي تتوافق مع المواضيع التي اعالجها وبخاصة فكرة الطيران، فالحجر على سبيل المثال يمكن ان يكون عرضة للكسر في حال تم اضعاف الكتلة لضرورات التأليف. بالنسبة لي، خصائص البرونز كمادة معدنية قوية ومتماسكة بما يكفي، تسهل ابراز تفاصيل دقيقة في العمل النحتي، اضافة الى خصوصية هذه المادة النادرة في التاريخ، فهي تستحضر الماضي ببلاغة.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">الأم المنتحبة, من مجموعة متحف فرحات</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* تختلف انواع الفراغات في اعمالك ما الهدف من ذلك؟ </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- ان عملية تزاوج الكتل الممتلئة بالمساحات الفارغة في النحت تشبه عملية تشابك الكواكب بالفضاء، فلا هذا الاخير جذاب بانعدام المجرات ولا هذه الاخيرة مهمة بانفرادها . اذأ الفراغ هو جزء ضروري في العمل النحتي. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">* لمست في بعض المنحوتات كتلة صماء برز فيها بعض التجاويف. ماذا تقصد بذلك؟ </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">- ان بروز بعض التجاويف هو تأكيد على تبيان المساحة المشغولة وكأنها خام، بينما الاجزاء الاخرى فهي مشغولة اكثر، ترمز هذه العملية الى انبثاق الروح من المادة. هذا اولا أما ثانيا فتترك التجاويف اثرا عميقا للمتلقي وتأخذه الى التجاويف التي ترسسمها الطبيعه على الاشجار وخاصة الزيتون منها التي نجدها بكثرة في بلدتي. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">حاورته: ضحى عبدالرؤوف المل</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">dohamol@hotmail.com</span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-51782629904460595892014-10-06T11:37:00.001-07:002014-10-06T11:37:53.129-07:00Selection of Sculptures from the Farhat Art Museum, Quizas Quizas Quizas...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/I2BWzTu7olM" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-3225691921969004562014-08-26T17:35:00.003-07:002014-08-26T17:35:54.216-07:00The Art of David Lee Baughan, Presented by the Farhat Art Museum, Miles ...<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GvdCfWKLR54?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" width="459"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-64122930626750409082014-08-26T17:35:00.001-07:002014-08-26T17:35:32.954-07:00مدينة صيدا اللبنانية قديما, أجداد العرب, عندك بحرية وديع الصافي<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/F5s19b3WScA?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" width="459"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-11639724215577178152014-08-26T17:34:00.003-07:002014-08-26T17:34:58.220-07:00طرابلس لبنان, أجداد العرب , موسيقى عود شرقية نصير شما<iframe width="459" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/do0XZAEfIk0?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" frameborder="0" allowFullScreen=""></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-76017508741056626582014-08-26T17:34:00.001-07:002014-08-26T17:34:02.512-07:00مدينة صور قديما , أجداد العرب , فيروز شايف البحر شو كبير<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/02Vihl5Sc2E?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" width="459"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-65413632266146576542014-08-26T17:33:00.001-07:002014-08-26T17:33:18.588-07:00لبنان, أجداد العرب , وديع الصافي "لوين يا مروان"<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/by9cXo7eUZg?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1993893101485940859.post-21210554131429544082014-07-18T14:49:00.001-07:002014-07-18T14:49:44.676-07:00"Abusing the System (The war on Libya)" Gerardo Gomez, Farhat Art Museum<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Z0TENoV_25M?list=UUm_yPocCfKsHdDMOhk7Q8AQ" width="459"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2