Lebanon - Artuel - Contemporary Art Fair
Nishee
Contemporary art fair offers Lebanese artists the opportunity to shine
Anyone who cares about art will not want to miss Artuel, the international fair
of contemporary art that opened at Beirut Hall on Tuesday. Housed under one
roof in an excellently organized exposition of some 50 galleries hailing from a
dozen different countries, it is a ready feast of art that offers enough
variety to satisfy every taste. It also provides good opportunity to measure
Lebanon’s art against that of other countries.
Most of the galleries feature a collective display of the artists they
permanently exhibit, while some have concentrated on showing the work of a
single artist they wish to promote. Filling the 2,500 square meters of
exhibition space are at least 1,000 paintings, sculptures and graphics produced
by some 170 artists from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Tunisia,
France, Germany Italy, Switzerland, Brazil and the United States.
There is a great deal to see, much more than can possibly be covered in this
column without doing disservice to the many artists and galleries deserving of
mention that I would have to omit. I will focus instead on a few aspects of the
exposition that I found of special interest or significance.
Along with the gallery shows, Artuel has set up three workshops for
painting, sculpture and graphic art in which foreign and Lebanese artists
work together and learn from each other in full, open view of visitors to the
exposition. People gathered around the French-African sculptor Niko, for
example, watching him chip away at a thick 3-meter beam of old Turkish
cedarwood salvaged from a demolished house in Lebanon. It will become, by
Sunday, one of his tall, totem-like figures.
If this show is any indication of current trends, non-objective art is out and
figurative and conceptual art is in. Many of the artists base their work on
figurative images, which they deconstruct and reconstruct into semi-abstract
compositions that do not obliterate the image but depend more on color, linear
and textural activity for expression than on the figure or object itself. Only
a few of the works are purely abstract.
The Brazilian ambassador to Lebanon, we discover, is a professional painter.
Sergio Telles says he has been a diplomat for 35 years, but an artist for 55
years. His expressionistic oil renderings of old Lebanon the souqs of Sidon,
the ports of Jbeil and Tyre, Baalbek and valleys of olive groves were all
painted on site during the past year. Within a few hours after the fair opened,
he had already sold seven canvases more than any other gallery in the hall,
which tells us that most people still prefer nostalgic picturesque to modern
ambiguities in art.
The Artuel catalogue informed us that the Lebanese Ministry of Culture would be
showing a selection of 40 paintings from its extensive collection of Lebanese
art. I looked for it, but found only one oil, one watercolor and one charcoal
sketch hanging in an otherwise empty pavilion. Obviously, some boukra character
at the ministry took the day off and didn’t get the job done. Let’s hope
the paintings will be in place by the time you read this.
The Lebanese galleries, on the other hand, are to be applauded for the
excellence and high professionalism of their displays. The art is consistently
top-notch in caliber and, in some cases, outshines that of the foreign
galleries. This, to me, is the most significant aspect of the Artuel endeavor.
It reveals that our art is good enough to compete on the international level.
For too long, the contemporary art of developing countries has been generally
disregarded by Western critics as “derivative” of Western trends, as
lacking authenticity and originality, and hence not worthy of entry into the
international mainstream of art.
This may have been true a few decades ago, but it is not so now, for two
reasons. First, because art styles and concepts have become globalized.
Although it was initially formulated in the West, the language of modern art
has now become a universal language legitimately belonging to all artists
everywhere. To be faulted for being “derivative” in style is no longer a
valid charge.
Second, although Third World artists had a late start in adopting that
language, they lost no time in learning it and are today as thoroughly literate
and versatile in its use as Western artists. Additionally, the facility and
speed of global travel and communications have erased all barriers of cultural
isolation and continue to help artists, whatever their origin, advance beyond
the boundaries of provincial expression.
This, finally, is the fundamental value of the Artuel expo: it provides an
international platform for Lebanese and Arab art and generates opportunities
for its entry into the world market. It is beginning to pay off. Some of the
foreign galleries participating in Artuel are expressing strong interest in
exhibiting the region’s artists in their countries.
This is Artuel’s second annual fair. Its third, already scheduled for July
2000, is expected to attract double the number of this year’s exhibitors.
Plaudits must go to Laure de Hauteville, the founder, for her enterprising
professional attention to all the organizational details that went into making
Artuel the outstanding art event of the Middle East region. We also extend our
thanks to Fransabank for its continuing generous support of projects designed
to advance Lebanon’s cultural growth.
Artuel at Beirut Hall, Sin al-Fil, 4pm-10pm daily until Sunday, Oct. 24. Tel:
(01) 488-888.