Lebanon - Art & Culture - Galerie Alice Mogabgab
Nishee
A single view from two perspectives
Helen Khal
Special to The Daily Star
For those who like paintings of people, this weekend’s exhibition agenda
spotlights two figurative artists, Ghada Saghieh and Maya Eid.
Each views humankind from a different perspective; both are critical of
its condition.
Ghada Saghieh, at Galerie Alice Mogabgab, paints her people spending
their leisure hours in social gatherings, at home or in theaters, dance
halls or gambling rooms. They should be enjoying these amusements, but
we see no expressions of pleasure. The faces are unsmiling and the
bodies are marked by a pervasive aura of boredom and solitude.
As Saghieh explains it: “What I’m trying to say is that outwardly
people may appear to be enjoying life, but inwardly they’re unhappy.
Everything they’re living is an illusion even happiness.”
She renders this disturbing ennui with a strong intuitive grasp of its
telling signs the wearied slope of a body, the tired tilt of a head,
the empty glance of an eye.
“She’s a true humanist,” said Monsignor Elias Audi, Bishop of the Greek
Orthodox Diocese of Beirut, who happened to be at the gallery when I
stopped in. He had spent a good half-hour closely looking at the
paintings, one after another, and commenting on the details of each.
The monsignor, who mentioned that as a young man he had surrendered to
parental objections and given up his dream of becoming an artist, also
talked about what art means to him: “Art is the communication of
absolute truths, a dialogue of the spirit that helps us understand life
in all its mystery, ambiguity and promise,” he said. “It doesn’t matter
whether the painting is figurative or abstract. If the artist has real
talent, the spiritual message will always come through, will make itself
felt in the pure, glorious harmony of colors and forms, as it does in
music.”
Of Saghieh’s paintings, he said: “Her people are very real, very human.
She expresses their spiritual pain in a few strokes the twist of a
lip, the droop of an eye, the shrug of a shoulder. She’s very sensitive
to the malaise of the soul. These are paintings which have to be read
with the same sensitivity, with a compassion born out of the experience
of suffering.”
Apart from appreciating the monsignor’s observations on the artist’s
message, we must also admire Saghieh’s sure hand in composing the exact
elements of reality needed to support her perceptions of the human
predicament. She says she is tired of all the literal details of
figurative painting and wants to go abstract. It would be difficult to
imagine ennui in the abstract. But it may be that Saghieh has finished
with ennui and wants to move on to another, more pro-active response to
life.
Maya Eid is well known for her papier-mache sculptures of the
high-society women of Beirut the self-assured, full-breasted,
tight-corseted, high-heeled dames of this city who for decades wielded
formidable power in the drawing rooms of a patriarchal society that kept
trying to subdue them.
In her current exhibition at Epreuve d’Artiste, she has turned away from
these characters of a vanished past to give us her commentary on how
society has rendered people, both male and female, anonymous. She sees
them lost in the crowd, trapped in the homogenizing morass of modern
urban existence.
But she wants to set them free and in this, she invites our
participation. Instead of immobilizing her people within the static
perimeters of a frame, she paints them on cut-out, moveable slabs of
wood that she asks us to separate and reassemble at will. When we look
at a dozen or more of the sad faces crowded together across the wall,
they melt into a joyless chorus line.
But when we move the figures and let one, two or three stand alone, free
from the strangling crowd, each assumes an individual identity marked by
personal experience.
The mood is somber, almost funereal. The robes, painted in dark umbers
alternating with ochres, siennas and creamy whites, move in an abstract
vertical rhythm that ends abruptly at the shoulders, making the
realistically rendered heads appear detached, as though they were
positioned behind a flat piece of theatrical scenery.
The faces, painted in a harsh, lifeless chiaroscuro of browns and chalky
whites, lack the elegant nuances of color given to the robes. This
exaggerates the separation and creates a visually awkward contrast that
I found somewhat disturbing.
The opening night audience, nevertheless, was intrigued and amused by
Eid’s innovative idea and immediately jumped into the game of choosing
separate figures. By the time the gallery closed shop that evening, all
34 figures were carrying red purchase stickers.
Saghieh at Galerie Alice Mogabgab, Avenue. Charles Malek, Achrafieh,
until May 15. Tel: (01) 336525.
Eid at Epreuve d’Artiste, Rue Sursock, Achrafieh, until May 15. Tel:
(01) 563911.