Lebanon - Art & Culture - Faysal Saltan
Nishee
The poetry painter
Helen Khal takes a look at the work of Faycal Sultan
For the past year and a half, Faycal Sultan has been engaged in
transposing the spirit of poetry into paintings. The poetry he chose to
focus on is that of Onsi el Hajj, one of Lebanon’s leading poets. The
results of Sultan’s experimentation in this synesthesia of words and
images constitute his current exhibition, which opened Tuesday evening
at Galerie Janine Rubeiz and marks his ninth solo show since 1972.
All the 76 acrylics, lithographs, engravings and silk screens on display
are inspired by “Winged Eternity,” a selected anthology of poems by Hajj
which were translated from Arabic to French and published in Paris in
1997. That Sultan is a writer who appreciates the linguistic mystery of
poetry as well as a painter who delights in the language of color, line
and form lends a rare authenticity of expression to his effort.
Sultan is a graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts of the Lebanese
University and holds a doctorate in plastic arts from the University of
Paris. It was in 1997, while on a fellowship at the Higher School of
Fine Arts in Paris and working in the graphics atelier of Jean-Pierre
Tanguy, that the Hajj anthology fired his imagination and led him into
producing his present series of “poetry-paintings.”
Modest in size and brimming with graphic details, these are paintings
that need to be read as poetry is read. For full appreciation, let your
eye move slowly along the various passages of line, color and form.
Note how the artist combines the various symbols and design elements to
evoke the seductive, harmonious whole upon which the power of poetry and
all other art depends.
The Hajj poetry is concerned with the twin universe of love and freedom,
in which the poet symbolizes woman as the powerful source of love and
looks upon the bird as the god of freedom in life. Sultan, making
copious use of these symbols throughout the series, gives them the
meditative qualities of a mythology that is Eastern in origin and
eternal in concept.
Each painting presents Sultan’s visual image of a specific verse in
Hajj’s poetry and is entitled accordingly. In some pieces, particularly
the engravings, he integrates actual lines of the poem in Arabic as an
element of design. I asked him how he managed the Arabic calligraphy so
well, considering that the graphic process demands reverse writing to
achieve legibility in print. He sighed, smiled and replied, “Practice,
practice, practice.”
l Throughout his professional life, Samir Tabet was known in Beirut
circles as a professor of chemistry at the American University of
Beirut, and at different periods during his 33-year stint in academia,
he also served the university as its dean of arts and sciences, its vice
president and its acting president. Few people knew him as an
accomplished artist who spent every spare moment of his time painting.
And those who knew looked upon this as nothing more than a pleasurable
hobby. Nothing could be further than the truth.
Had he been born of a less conservative and authoritarian father, Tabet
would have studied art, not chemistry. He would perhaps be now living
in Paris, London or New York, not Beirut. And the style of his art,
perhaps, would have been swept up into more adventurous pathways. But
life, as we all know, is more often than not a compromise. Samir Tabet
became a chemistry professor to please his father, but he also became a
painter to please himself.
All through his compromising years, he tangibly fed his dream. While at
school in Cairo, he took courses in art; while studying chemistry in
London, he attended an art academy. And after completing his doctorate
in chemistry, he went off to Florence to spend three full years under
the tutelage of the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni, internationally
known for his portraits of Queen Elizabeth, John F. Kennedy, Pope John
Paul II and other world figures.
It was in Annigoni’s atelier that the young Lebanese artist acquired all
the rigorous skills and techniques of classical painting that
distinguish his work today. The 60 oils currently on show at Galerie
Epreuve d’Artiste reveal the impressive degree to which he has honed
those skills.
This is Tabet’s fifth exhibition since 1985, when he retired from AUB
and was finally free to take up his mantle as a full-time, fully-fledged
art professional. In style and technique, his work is completely
academic classical in composition according to golden mean
proportions, totally realistic in color and form, smoothly glazed in
brushwork.
As in all his earlier exhibitions, Tabet is still concentrating on
still-lifes of fruits, vegetables, bowls, vases and flasks, quietly and
orderly poised on a simple table top against a black or atmospheric grey
background. He captures the fuzzed blush of peaches, the clouded skin of
grapes, the porcelain surface of eggs, the reflective glint of glass,
the curving folds of cloth, with the exacting eye of a camera and the
masterly hand of a well-trained artist.
Some of Tabet’s most recent paintings, however, reveal significant
change not in style or subject matter, but in emotive expression. The
cool, impersonal detachment and control that marked Tabet’s previous
work now begins to give way to a warmer, more personal communication.
The color relationships are softer, more penetratingly human, suggesting
that the artist may be opening doors to his psyche long left closed.
In a few of the paintings, he introduces certain ambiguities of
surrealism, such as an egg or a paint brush inexplicably balanced and
freestanding on the table. What, we ask, is the message? Is he making a
statement on the incongruities of life? Or is he simply exploring new
compositional ideas?
Among all the still lifes hangs the portrait of a beautiful young girl,
as romantic and enigmatic as the Mona Lisa. Tabet says that the supreme
challenge in his art has always been the portrait. He has been
commissioned to paint many throughout the decades, among them the
portraits of eight presidents of Lebanon. They had been hanging in the
presidential palace in Baabda, but were destroyed in 1990 when the
palace was bombed.
An extra benefit in this and all other Tabet exhibitions is the fact
that all income derived from the sale of his paintings goes into a fund
to provide scholarships for needy students. This, along with ownership
of a fine work of art, adds up to a satisfying purchase.
Sultan at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Raouche, until Feb. 25. Tel: (01)
868290.
Tabet at Galerie Epreuve d’Artiste, Rue Sursock, Achrafieh, until Feb.
13. Tel: (01) 563911.