Syrian artist Zuhair Hassib: The soft power of art can reveal the horrors of war

The second incentive was my brother Omar, who died early in a car accident. He was a painter and I used to go with him to his studio in Al-Hasakah. I would breathe in the smell of paints and turpentine. Then I began to understand how the tubes of paint that were scattered chaotically around the studio could be transformed into harmonious pieces of art with skillful brush strokes.

I also can't forget the stunning scenes of the place where I was born. Even though it was neglected and forgotten, it was full of beauty, from golden wheat fields to cotton fields to sunflowers blossoming against the backdrop of an open horizon, bathed in sunlight. I would watch the farmers during harvest seasons and cotton picking, wearing their colourful, patterned clothes.

Those colours, lines, and shapes were imprinted in my memory as an inexhaustible visual resource. When we look at the works of great artists, we can see that their childhood memories were often their primary source of inspiration.

What role did the late Syrian plastic artist Fateh Moudarres (1922-1999) play in your life? You often mention him in your conversations.

It's true. As I grew up, I sought to refine my innate attraction to colour through academic study.

In the early 1980s, I enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts, specialising in painting at Damascus. Fortunately, one of my professors, whom I greatly admire, was Fateh Moudarres. He was the artist who nurtured that first seed in me. He not only provided a theoretical and academic vision of painting, colour, and light but also presented me with a profound human feeling.

He had a deep vision of painting, believing that it should express human concerns, aspirations, and dreams.

As you probably know, Fateh, who studied art in Rome and Paris, was not only a remarkable artist but also a writer and poet. In addition to his outstanding achievements in the plastic arts, he published two poetry collections and a collection of short stories titled Aoud Al-Nanaa (The Mint Stem).

This vast knowledge allowed him to gain a deeper understanding of painting and colour philosophy. I learned a lot from his practical and theoretical experience, especially since we became friends after my graduation, and I worked with him in his studio in Damascus for almost 15 years until he died in the late 1990s.

What about the experiences of international artists? Who influenced you? Or what experiences caught your attention?

While studying, I explored various artistic movements and schools, from the Renaissance to Baroque, Realism, Expressionism, Romanticism, Cubism, Surrealism, and more. I found that despite significant differences, each school has its aesthetic.

On a personal level, however, regardless of academic criticism, I admire the Russian artist Ilya Repin (1844-1930), one of the prominent figures of the 19th-century Russian realist movement. Art historians consider him to have a status in art similar to that of Leo Tolstoy in literature.

I am also fascinated by the work of the Swiss artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), known for his famous painting The Kiss. He's often referred to as "the golden artist" because his works are covered in gold leaves.

What is the secret behind the melancholic female face that recurs in many of your paintings?

I really don't know... Maybe it's the faces of peasant and rural women, or my mother and sisters, or the faces of my loved ones. I cannot pinpoint the exact reference to this translucent face that seems so sad in my paintings.

But I can say that, through these faces, I try to express feelings of sorrow, joy, hope, anticipation, and displacement. These are the faces of women lost amidst the carnival of colours.

I also know that when I draw these faces, I need to listen to music to give rhythm to my brush. Of course, I am not talking about the symphonies of Chopin and Mozart, but the sound of a reed flute, reminiscent of the sound of the wind on the meadow, or the captivating melodies of a mandolin. This is the only ritual I have when I paint.

The interpretation of a single painting varies with each viewer, who will filter it through their own cultural perspective, references and social environment.

However, these sweet, simple faces shouldn't confuse the audience. Without much effort, they can guess where the faces come from and why they carry their broken souls.

What do you think about the technical aspect of creating a painting?

On a technical level, at the beginning of my experience, I leaned more towards realism. Later, I found refuge in impressionism, which required specific techniques. Today, after about 35 years of experience and accumulated knowledge of the chemistry and properties of paints, I have developed my own techniques.

In addition to oil paintings, collages, and graphics, I also use sand, coloured beads, old pieces of wood, scraps of reeds with intricate patterns, fabrics with embroidery and folkloric motifs in my work.

I treat these elements and materials in specific ways on canvas, with a tendency towards experimenting and thinking outside of the box.

In plastic arts and art in general, it is often said that ideas are "tossed to the waysides," so the most crucial aspect is knowing how to express these ideas through a particular aesthetic technique.

Why do turquoise and white dominate much of your work?

Turquoise is unique to Eastern societies, from the blue beads to blue domes in Asian civilisations. Turquoise, or "fayrouzi" in Arabic, is also the colour of a gemstone. Therefore, the painting appears like a fragment of a rare gem.

Also, combining turquoise with the brownish colour of sand gives the painting a unique aesthetic and spiritual energy – a mix of earth and the sky.

As for the colour white, it's one of the most intimidating and provocative colours for plastic artists as it requires great sensitivity, precision, and patience during the painting process to achieve adequate results.

White has very delicate tones. It took years of practice, but I eventually learned how to use it, especially in combination with black and the various hues in between, to create spaces that convey a specific meaning.

How has the Syrian crisis affected your works?

Despite the awareness that painting and art in general should not be influenced emotionally and reactively by events, at the beginning of the Syrian crisis, I entered my studio with a mixture of pain, despair, and fear until my studio was flooded with red.

I drew on cardboard under the influence of strong emotions.

However, these emotions quickly subsided and gave way to way to another artistic choice: to draw love in wartime, such as lovers on the back of a tank or olive branches in the barrel of a rifle. I know that this idea is not new, but it remains relevant in the Syrian context.

In times of oppression, brutality, death, displacement, the smell of gunpowder and the noise of bullets, the artist has no choice but to emphasise love, coexistence, and tolerance, and to capture moments of beauty amidst the rubble.

It must be said that I am against the ideologisation of art, because art caught in the game of propaganda ceases to be true art and becomes a rude advertising tool that loses its relevance as soon as the event that it expresses ends.

What role does art play in such crises and wars? Can they bring about a change?

Art in general, including plastic art, is unable to bring about change. It is incapable of effecting direct and tangible change in the face of the killing machine. But at the same time, thanks to its soft power, it can reveal the horrors of wars by emphasising objects and elements that call for justice and exalt morals.

The Guernica mural by Pablo Picasso, which is 3.5m high and 7.8m wide, was inspired by the bombing of a Spanish town by German and Italian planes in support of the fascist General Franco during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. It depicts the horrors of war, portraying destruction and devastation, and has become an iconic work of art of the 20th century denouncing war and violence.

This mural in Picasso's Cubist style represents a cry of protest, full of feelings of suffering and sadness. It makes a painful human appeal that contributes to taming the beast in the human soul, a concept that the late Mamdouh Adwan encapsulated in the title of his book, The Animalisation of Man.

Novels, cinema, painting, poetry, and theatre cannot change anything. They are content to create beauty in the face of destruction and to show a beautiful face of this world and make it easier to recognise. These artists and writers are not social reformers, but rather ambassadors spreading the values of good, truth, and beauty in a troubled and complex world.

There is a huge discrepancy in the prices of paintings... Who controls this equation? How do you evaluate the painting from a material perspective?

This is a complex topic influenced by many factors that can significantly impact an artist's reputation and the price of his paintings. Factors that come into play include the size of the painting, the techniques used, and the principle of supply and demand.

In my opinion, however, the most crucial factor belongs to art galleries and auctions. Investors in the art world can increase the price of a particular artist's paintings over those of others. It's akin to the mafia. If a businessman or well-connected person supports and promotes an artist by publishing catalogues or exhibitions, this may increase the price of his painting. This practice is more widespread in the West.

In our country, rarely does an entrepreneur dare to invest in plastic art, unlike the television and film industries, which receive support from private companies.

Additionally, political parties and organisations sometimes play a role in increasing the value of an artist's painting. For example, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was adopted by the Communist Party in Mexico, which helped increase the price of her paintings. Likewise, Pablo Picasso was affiliated with the French Communist Party, which supported him artistically.

There are many paradoxes in this regard. The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh died in poverty, yet his paintings now sell for millions of dollars. This suggests that the value of a painting does not depend solely on the artwork itself, but is influenced by many other complex factors that are more related to the economy and the market than to the art.

Artificial intelligence has infiltrated all fields, including plastic arts. Do you think this may threaten the future of traditional plastic arts?

I don't know much about the subject, but within the limits of my modest knowledge, I do not believe that such enormous technological advances and artificial intelligence can replace an artist.

This is because the artist creates with his mind and emotions and, with great warmth and emotional depth, translates what is hidden deep in the soul.

Artificial intelligence does not have such emotions and feelings. It may be adept at creating virtual works of art and may be useful for archiving and other purposes, but an AI-based painting cannot be compared to a real painting in terms of its physical presence and colour, textures, lines, and forms that convey the artist's culture, ideas, and contemplations, studies, and psychological states.