Amor Ghedamsi
The sale of a banana fixed to the wall, for a huge sum, at the “Art Basel” exhibition, as a work by the Italian Maurizio Cattelan, is an example of the phenomena that have afflicted the art, emptying it of its spiritual and human meanings. In fact, certain contexts have led to this great transformation, which is the natural result of the brutality and schizophrenia linked to liberalism, relying on noble modern meanings that have freed the energy of the individual. This freedom included art, saving it from the restrictions of closed authorities and school and academic molds. But this art, which freedom was linked to the concept of Western modernity, has become under the influence of plutocrats. It is no longer a producer of wealth, but wealth, armed with media, has become the producer of art.
What is called today as the death of art or its transformation into a spectacle, does not only concern the West, because entities that include different cultures and civilizations of the world have been integrated, for more than a century, to be part of this artistic modernity by erasing its cultural and professional foundations derived from its characteristics. Even our artistic history is written by the emergence of Western media and artistic styles. This stereotype is not only done through a model or example of success, so that our artists seek glory and fame through the “banana” that will allow them to achieve it, but it is also a stereotype that is done through effective and established institutions, extending from educational institutes and museums to biennials, collections and patrons.
To confront this general degradation, which empties art of its meanings and connotations accumulated through civilizations and ages, we must reread our artistic history, from the moment of its clash with Western modernity, which is a unique and distinct moment. In fact, it is a moment that is closely linked to our cultural and civilizational baggage, and it is at the same time a moment of understanding and acceptance of the other’s modernity.
This moment of clash concerns those artists who, despite their rarity, have based their art on their cultural heritage with its spiritual and philosophical connotations to build their own modernity and creative individuality. As an example, we cite the experience of the Lebanese artist Gebran Tarazi, who sums up this noble sense of an art that resists stereotypes and tradition, in the name of identity and without falling into civilizational degradation, and in the name of modernity, being at the same time modern in its individual sense.
One of the paradoxes that demonstrates the fragility of the dominant artistic discourse is that the works of the artist Gebran Tarazi have only been accepted in the West as “valid” modern works by comparing them to those of the international artist Victor Vasarely. In fact, in 2016, in Paris, Tarazi’s works were exhibited alongside those of Vasarely. The latter relied heavily, following his style in the art of visual illusion, on oriental geometric decorations in the art of engraving and abstract construction. Indeed, this represented the trades and crafts that the family of the artist Tarazi inherited, from father to son, before the son, Gebran, made it his starting point for an artistic adventure, and his way of sculpting a singular experience.
These roots that make us soar:
Gebran Tarazi’s roots go back to his distinguished family, which practiced traditional oriental crafts, such as wood carving and arabesque. In 1860, his great-grandfather settled in Beirut, coming from Damascus. His craft workshops became famous and sought after for the decoration of palaces in Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem and Cairo. In 1946, the family settled in Morocco, where Gebran Tarazi grew up and deepened his knowledge of the characteristics of decorative crafts, especially thanks to his father who opened traditional Moroccan and oriental antique shops there. In 1959, Gebran returned with his family to Lebanon, to begin his career as an artist and writer, inspired by his cultural, civilizational and family heritage, and to build his experience, not as a craftsman reproducing the same forms, but as an artist starting from his roots, to embrace innovation as a creative self. In fact, his conflict with modernity imported by the force of colonialism, leading to disruption and exclusion of traditional structures, including crafts, did not lead him to retreat into his cultural and civilizational self, nor to throw himself into the circle of tradition and imitation, in the name of this imported modernity.
In fact, the intellectual immunity helped Gebran Tarazi to represent modernity without losing his own roots. And this is what appeared in his writings and reflections, because he believes that each local culture is part of universal cultures, however without dissolving into them. Reproducing inherited values in their rigid form is a cemetery for heritage, because it makes it unable to endure and distinguish itself from other cultures. Thus, we can see the essential difference between universality, which is based on diversity and plurality and represents the other as a human being, and globalization as hegemony, stereotyping and modeling.
According to the dictionary of modern art, we can classify the works of Gebran Tarazi in the field of geometric abstraction. But if we examine based on the principle of identification with the visual and philosophical reference of his works, which have roots prior to the classifications and concepts of the dictionary of artistic modernity, the artist’s works depend in their composition on the concept of “Qayem Nayem”, which roots are found in the art of arabesque and “unity”. That is to say, this traditional structure that abounds in our ancient cities from Damascus to Andalusia, passing through Cairo, Kairouan, Marrakech and others. The meaning of “Qayem” (rectangle – right) is vertical, while the “Nayem” is a rectangle extended horizontally, with two “Qayem Nayem” connected to each other around the surrounding square, to form the basic unit of the geometric composition, through geometric shapes that include rectangles and squares. Areas of agreement and harmony are formed to infinity. The geometric form is generated from one to multiple and from stability to movement, through what the density of color impregnates as diversity and contrast. The artist’s works appear as part of an architectural structure that goes from simple to complicated and from one to complex. It is a condensed and visual summary of the spiritual philosophy on the unity of existence, known in the East, in the mystical doctrines of the great religions, in the Greek philosophy, with its Pythagorean oriental influence on the balance between the limited and the infinite. In fact, everything in the universe requires this integration to be complete, and truths only emerge from this harmony and concordance between the limited and the infinite, among beings and the void that separates them.
Gebran Tarazi’s works seem to emerge from this spirit that resides in the details of our ancient Kairouan architecture, which extends from Levant to Andalusia. These works thus embody a moment of connection and separation at the same time, reminding us of our visual baggage manifested in this rich and marvelous architecture. At the same time, these works are independent, according to what the artist has developed and brought to them in terms of creative renewal in their geometric compositions and in their diverse colors.
The fundamental lesson of the experience of an artist like Gebran Tarazi is part of a general theme, which seeks a way to overcome, through art, this singular barbarism that includes almost everything that surrounds us, through the phenomena of domination and stereotype. It is this barbarism, as Tzvetan Todorov summarizes, that consists of egocentrism and the denial of other cultures. This condition does not only concern our societies dominated by fundamentalist and traditional thought, but it includes as well the West. Todorov says: “A culture that pushes its followers to be aware of their own traditions, and at the same time to know how to distance itself, is a superior culture compared to the one that satisfies the egocentrism of its members by assuring them that they are the best in the world and that other human groups do not deserve attention.”
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