It’s never easy to divine whether the labels attached to artworks describe reality. Museums and galleries habitually attach such labels, because they make for easier consumption of artists who are, in many cases, eccentric creatures living and working in virtual isolation.
Organisers of an exhibition on Surrealism would have an easy task, as Andre Breton did so much of the curating for them, writing the manifesto, and embracing or excommunicating the practitioners. One doesn’t have to agree to find his classifications helpful.
A disparate diaspora of art
The task of curating is made far more difficult, maybe even impossible, in the absence of a presiding figure. Add to this the arbitrary way in which artworks arrive on the market and you will understand the auctioneer’s perplexity.
In the new sale of Middle Eastern art happening in Dubai, the works are a gallimaufry of different styles and periods. Some of the artists featured are alive and kicking, others not.
They were all born in the region, yet the majority belong to a diaspora that stretches from Kyiv to the United States and beyond. Disparate is the best description that comes to me. It’s a disparate diaspora.
As an umbrella term, therefore, ‘Middle Eastern’ can have serious limitations.
The artists all born in the region, yet the majority belong to a diaspora that stretches from Kyiv to the United States and beyond. As an umbrella term, therefore, 'Middle Eastern' can have serious limitations.
Take, for instance, one of the most interesting artists here, a woman who is married to a German and lives between Berlin and Kyiv, yet who was born in Tunisia. Nadia Kaabi-Linke is best known for installations, such as a bench bristling with spikes or her Flying Carpets.
In the sale, we see Carthage Presidence (2009), another large-scale work, this time in sombre black and white, stretching away like a distressed wall.
Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Carthage Presidence
Scraps of graffiti suggests an edgy urban setting. Amid the rather grim shades, there is lettering, some of it from the Western alphabet and, to the left of the picture, illegible Arabic script.
Kaabi-Linke is of half Tunisian, half-Ukrainian heritage. Her themes have included war, patriarchy and the difficulties involved in crossing borders. It's arguable that this massive work was influenced by another (this time deceased) artist in the sale, the Iraqi Shakir Al Said, yet she could just as easily have drawn on the gloomy example of Anselm Kiefer.
Another artist who illustrates this cosmopolitan tendency is Nabil Nahas. Born in Lebanon, he has lived for years in New York. The piece in the sale, Untitled (1980), may not offer any clues to what we can see, but in the comparison with Mohamed Melehi's Wilde (see below) that is something of a relief.
Even at a recent show of his work in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, Nahas was remarkably reticent about his art, which could also be seen as an improvement on the garrulous tendencies of some of his fellow artists.
Untitled is a vibrant early work of geometric lines in blue, red, white and black. It foreshadows his later use of vivid colours but does not hint at his more recent preoccupation with the environment, as demonstrated by a large series of stricken trees.
NABIL NAHAS, Untitled
Untitled is a vibrant early work of geometric lines in blue, red, white and black. It foreshadows his later use of vivid colours but does not hint at his more recent preoccupation with the environment, as demonstrated by a large series of stricken trees.
Perhaps this choice of subject, like that of the almighty explosion in the port of Beirut, speaks for itself.
Equally enigmatic in its fidelity to geometry is the work of Dana Arwatani, a Saudi-Palestinian working in the Kingdom. Her work can be on a vast or minuscule scale.
This one, called Icosahedron Within a Dodecahedron (From the Platonic Solid Duals Series), dating from 2016, lies somewhere between. It depicts a combination of Islamic and Euclidean geometry, with a transparent shell containing a smaller polygon suspended inside.
I confess my own knowledge of geometry is not up to discerning the niceties of one tradition or the other, but the effect is of a delicate, law-governed space that conveys calm like so many of Arwatani's works.
Perhaps we can detect the same composure in Mohamed Kazem's pink square, which looks in reproduction like a prettier version of Malevich's famous black square. In the flesh, it is three-dimensional, and the purity of the pink is broken up with scratches made by a pair of scissors.
Prettiness is evident elsewhere among the lots.
Kurdish Women (2009), a charming scene of elegant lady ornithologists watching birds through what look like lorgnettes, is a pleasant mix of wood block techniques from the Far East and the Iranian style of her homeland.
Hayv Kahraman, Kurdish Women
In fact, these influences seem not to have settled entirely. The style of the figures is precise and colourful, while the tree is rendered in an exuberant Chinese swathe of black ink.
Equally pretty are the illustrations to a poem by Iraqi poet Shawqi Abdel Amir covering the concertina form of what is known as a 'leporello': the character of the discontented manservant in Mozart's Don Giovanni unfolds something similar, containing a list of his master's love conquests.
The colours in this unusual piece, called Khat wa Rasm (Line and Hand Drawing) (1986), are by Etel Adnan and do not, in their obvious gaiety, seem remotely connected to the poem's title: Stations Beyond Death.
Also pretty, yet more mysterious, is the highlight of the sale by Mohamed Melehi, the Moroccan painter. The father figure of the Casablanca school, Melehi is known for his Berber references and his fascination with the Moroccan landscape.
Here, however, we see undulating lines contrasted with ranks of precisely angled yellow squares and a title that has led me into a great deal of fruitless speculation.
As far as I can determine, Oscar Wilde was never spotted declaring his genius at the borders of that particular African kingdom, though he is known to have visited Algiers. The bearing this has, if any, on the content of the painting is an enigma deeper than the contents of any handbag left in Victoria Station.
