Historical Constructions of Arab Art and Visual Culture
By Maymanah Farhat

Throughout history, art has served as an imperative form of communication, as visual culture is part of the essential makeup of any given society. Art has the ability to function as a universal language capable of expressing the ideas, experiences and sentiments of an individual or people across cultural, societal and political borders. Under ideal and uninhibited circumstances, art as an outward manifestation of self-expression can initiate cross-cultural exchanges.

Yet within the contemporary art world, cultural, societal and political borders remain nearly impossible to transcend, as class, race and gender still determine the amount and type of exposure an artist’s work receives. As cross pollinization between the art world and political climates occur, it is difficult for artists of politically marginalized communities to break ground in the supposedly “borderless” art world.

It is for this very reason that modern and contemporary Arab art remains underexposed. Although the Arab world has been home to a flourishing art scene throughout the modern period, its art, artists and schools are virtually unknown in the realm of international art. In diaspora, Arab artists face the challenge of having to explain their work not only along formalistic lines but within historical, cultural, aesthetic and political frameworks.

Over the past century, their artistic influences alone have been multifaceted in nature and require a thorough understanding of the evolution of modern artistic practice within the region. The origins of contemporary Arab art are deeply rooted in regional and global evolutions of artistic practice that have transpired in the Arab world for centuries. The use of figurative representation has its foundation in some of the most influential historical developments in art of the region. Evidence of Sumerian, Pharaonic, Babylonian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Nabatean and Byzantium visual culture has contributed to current aesthetic practice. The use of abstraction has its roots in Islamic art, which was later reiterated by the influence of European and American painters of the twentieth century.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, as several Arab countries had recently won their independence from European colonization, the search for national identities and self-determined political movements fostered creative and intellectual momentum. Modern Arab art flourished during this time and was closely aligned with emerging international artistic trends and developments, as many Arab artists traveled abroad to further their artistic training. Influential artistic schools emerged throughout the Arab world. Notable artists of the time include: Palestinian artists Ismail Shammout and Mustapha Hallaj, Syrian artists Fateh Moudarres and Louay Kayyali, Iraqi artists Jawad Salim and Dia Azzawi and Egyptian artists Gaziba Sirry and Hamed Owais. Many artists, poets, writers and political thinkers were active in transnational exchanges of ideas that enriched Arab art and culture of the time.

Despite such rich artistic and historical backgrounds (like many of their non-Western counterparts) contemporary Arab artists remain excluded from the majority of current art historical discourse. This creates immense difficulties for artists attempting to exhibit their work to an international audience.

Throughout the social history of art, art historical discourse has often acted as a gatekeeper of information, impairing the fluidity of artistic and cultural dialogue through blatant censorship evident in the exclusion or disparagement of certain art and visual culture within its systematic methods of examination.

Censorship has impacted understandings of non-Western (African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, Latino and Native American) art and visual culture for centuries. Art historical classification and documentation of non-Western art and visual culture has been influenced by archaeological studies conducted during the colonial and imperial endeavors of nineteenth century European governments. Masking intentions of economic exploitation and political dominance, colonial and imperial activities were justified by propagations of racial, cultural and theological superiority.

Reflecting such notions, archaeological studies of the time formulated a denigrated categorization of indigenous art and culture. Evidence of early indigenous artistic production was classified as belonging to the expansive, all encompassing category of “Ancient Art” instead of attributing it to that of the specific non-Western culture in which it was found. This worked to sidestep the direct link between non-Western peoples and their historical heritage (which has directly influenced the progression of Western art) so that Western notions of superiority could be maintained.
Such classification, coupled with the emergence of anthropology in the nineteenth century (which in its early stages was also used to maintain Western notions of racial supremacy), labeled indigenous art and visual culture as “primitive” or “naiveté.” With a growing increase in ethnographies and travel between the West and its colonies, the demand for the material consumption of “exotic” culture led to the exportation of “objects” made by the “other” for Western consumption, reducing indigenous art forms to nothing more than commodities.

During this time, art history materialized as an academic discipline, using archeological and anthropological “findings” and categories as a basis for the historical, conceptual and aesthetic analysis of non-Western visual culture. Deeply rooted in colonial and imperial sociopolitical traditions, art historical discourse has been plagued by institutionalized cultural hierarchy that retains non-Western art as substandard to its Western equivalent.

In diaspora, non-Western contemporary artists encounter immense challenges, as they are often typecast to fulfill Western expectations of the “other.” If their work employs the slightest resemblance to that of past or present Western art schools or movements, the success and artistic freedom of their work is attributed to their “adoption” of Western modes of representation. Modernism and its subsequent evolutions in art are understood as solely and specifically Western historical advancements. Western art translates as avant-garde while non-Western art remains “backward, waiting to catch up.”

Since current American military and economic dominance in the Arab world further accentuates Arab artists’ positions as “other” within American society, those living in the United States face even greater adversities when exhibiting their work and attempting to impact art historical discourse. While the omnipresent influence of Orientalism still afflicts Western conceptions of the Arab world, the present political climate has not only strengthened such misconceptions but ignited an even greater assault, as Arab artists living in the West experience the colonization of their creative expression.
This occurs through American art institutions, art galleries and the art market with the promotion of art that is ambivalent to or adopts the political views of Western hegemony in the Arab world. The promoting of such art fills the token spaces allotted for Arab creative expression in the “borderless” environment of contemporary international art. Stereotypical aesthetic representations of Arab culture and society are then perpetuated through work that examines the Arab world using current American political discourse, so that as Orientalist views become reinforced, an Arab name and face is attached to this reiteration.

Arab artists whose work does not conform to this specific framework are therefore either excluded from the majority of mainstream art activity and American art historical discourse or are subject to a depoliticized analysis and contextualization of their work.

Excerpted from the exhibition catalog Three Arab Painters in New York: Samia Halaby, Sumayyah Samaha and Athir Shayota, Copyrighted to Maymanah Farhat and Al Jisser Group, May 2006