Author's note: This paper was completed with the support of a Junior Faculty Research Grant from the American University of Beirut, 2008. The author thanks those individuals who have preserved the private papers of the artists studied: Hani Farroukh, Ihsan and May Onsi, and Joseph Matar. Early versions of this paper were presented at the World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies in 2001, the Center for Behavioral Research in 2004, and the Middle East Studies Association in 2006. I am indebted for the development of my analysis to the insight and encouragement of Hildred Geertz, Todd Porterfield, Jessica Winegar, Silvia Naef, Ussama Makdisi, Saleh Barakat, Joan Holladay, Elizabeth Thompson, Lara Deeb, Nasser Rabbat, Nadya Sbaiti, Keith Watenpaugh, Heghnar Watenpaugh, Sherene Seikaly, Lisa Wynn, Lori Allen, Sarah Pinto, Tom Strong, Jens Hanssen, Livia Wick, Kristin Monroe, Samir Khalaf, Stephen Sheehi, Maha Yehya, Sami Ofeish, and Mayssun Sukarieh. I am also very grateful to the people who helped with the writing of this paper: Heghnar Yeghiayan, the challenging anonymous IJMES reviewers, the IJMES editorial staff, both outgoing and incoming, and especially Beth Baron and Sara Pursley for their scrupulous, patient revisions.

¹ Throughout this article I follow the artists’ preferred English spellings of their names.

² See Farroukh, Moustapha, Tariqi ila al-Fann (My Road to Art) (Beirut: Dar Naufal, 1986), 171Google Scholar. Lebanon was formed as an administrative territory and mandated to French caretaking by the League of Nations in 1920. In 1943 the French state renounced this position. I use “Lebanese,” following Elizabeth Thompson's definition of the populace as colonial citizens of Mandate Lebanon to facilitate discussion but in recognition that it was a contested label. Thompson, Elizabeth, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

³ Massad, Joseph, Desiring Arabs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Clifford Geertz coined this term to indicate something between “culture members” and “other people.” See Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 364. I use it to indicate the deliberate sense of enrolling, easily or agonistically, other people as part of one's social setting.

⁵ See Cooper, Frederick and Stoler, Ann Laura, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Cooper and Stoler (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997), 1–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Musée Nicholas Sursock, Moustafa Farroukh, 1901–1957, Exhibition Catalogue (Beirut: January–February 2003), 127.

⁷ Lebanon—The Artist's View: 200 Years of Lebanese Painting, Exhibition Catalogue (London: British Lebanese Association, 1989), 148.

⁸ Samir Sayigh, “ʿAriyat Muhajjabat wa Shaʿiriyyat Masdaruha al-ʿAql” (Veiled Nudes and Poeticism Stemming from the Mind), in Omar Onsi 1901–1969, Exhibition Catalogue (Beirut: Musée Sursock, 14 February–14 April 1997), 24.

⁹ Sylvia Agémian, “Omar Onsi au Musée Sursock,” in Omar Onsi 1901–1969, 20.

¹⁰ Several of Onsi's heirs, who wish to remain anonymous, showed me dozens of unpublished, large nudes in oil paint.

¹¹ Sylvia Agémian, interview, Beirut, 20 June 2000.

¹² Umayma Ghandur Idris and Asmaʾ Idris al-Dik, interview, Beirut, 27 July 2000.

¹³ Nayla Tannous Akkrawi, interview, 11 November 2004. Originally published in 1923, the book was regularly discussed in the local press during the 1930s.

¹⁴ See Sultan, Maha, Ruwwad min Nahda al-Fann al-Tashkili fi Lubnan (Pioneers of the Plastic Arts in Lebanon) (Kaslik, Lebanon: Université de la Sainte Esprit, 2006)Google Scholar; Saleeby, Samir, Khalil Saleeby: A Painter from Lebanon (Beirut: Lebanese University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Jawaba, “Al-Musawwirun al-Wataniyyun wa-l-Ajanib Yaʿridun Atharahum al-Fanniyya” (National and Foreign Artists Exhibit their Artistic Works), Al-Maʿrad, no. 935, 22 January 1931, 8–9.

¹⁶ “Lait Epilatoire Ambré,” Al-Makshuf, no. 47, 3 May 1936, 8.

¹⁷ Al-Nahar, no. 85, 25 November, 1933, 6.

¹⁸ Exposition Omar Onsi, Peinture, Aquarelles, Exhibition Catalogue (Beirut: Ecole des Arts et Lettres, 21–28 February 1932), Joseph Matar Archives, Edde, Lebanon.

¹⁹ Accounting Book, n.d., Hani Farroukh Archives, Beirut, Lebanon.

²⁰ “Convergent” suggests neither a teleological forward movement nor a divergent outward movement. Jonathan Shannon describes convergent modernity as an “improvisation” by people sharing certain standards and knowledge but no single script. Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 69.

²¹ This assumption was articulated by many of the artists, gallerists, critics, and exhibition goers I interviewed for my fieldwork in Beirut from 1997 to 2005. It underlies all the standard works on Lebanese art production: Wijdan Ali, Contemporary Art from the Islamic World (London: Scorpion Publishing, 1990); Naef, Silvia, A la recherche d'une modernité arabe: L'évolution des arts plastiques en Egypte, au Liban et en Irak (Geneva, Switzerland: Slaktine Editions, 1996), 140Google Scholar; Lahoud, Edouard, Al-Fann al-Muʿasir fi Lubnan, trans. Michaux, Phillippe (Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 1974)Google Scholar; Nammour, Caesar, Mathaf al-Fann al-Hadith fi Lubnan: Dirasa Awwaliyya (Beirut: Dar Nammour, 1987)Google Scholar; Kamel, Salah Maurice, al-Fann al-Lubnani (Beirut: Fine Arts Division, Ministry of National Education and Fine Arts, 1956)Google Scholar.

²² An example of a Eurocentric, albeit sympathetic, theory of modernity is Naef, A la recherche.

²³ A search of newspaper archives and artists’ private papers has revealed no documentation of earlier events devoted to the display of painting. The 1921 Beirut Industrial Fair included one of Saleeby's nudes. See Debbas, Fouad, Beyrouth: Notre Memoire (Paris: Editions Henri Berger, 1986), 262Google Scholar.

²⁴ Garb, Tamar, Sisters of the Brush: Women's Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 138Google Scholar.

²⁵ I have used the same distinction for sake of clarity.

²⁶ Clark, Kenneth, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1956), 3, 4, 71, 120, and 315Google Scholar.

²⁷ On the conjoined bias against women and foreigners in European art academies, see Nochlin, Linda, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in Women, Art, and Power, and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row), 145–78Google Scholar, and Becker, Jane and Weisberg, Gabriel, eds., Overcoming All Obstacles: The Women of the Académie Julian (New York: The Dahesh Museum, 1999)Google Scholar.

²⁸ The idea is so common it almost numbs the mind and hinders tracking it properly. However, for examples of influential sources, see Ali, Contemporary Art, 200 and Shabout, Nada, Modern Arab Art: Formation of Arab Aesthetics (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 2007), 17Google Scholar.

²⁹ Deniz Artun demonstrates the role Turkish artists had in maintaining the vitality of this besieged type of training. Artun, “Zuwwar ila Akadamiyyat Julian min al-Imbaraturiyya al-ʿUthmaniyya wa-l-Jumhuriyya al-Turkiyya” (Visitors to the Julian Academy from the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic), Al-Adab 51(1–2): 57–61.

³⁰ Muhi al-Din al-Nsuli, “Khitab al-Raʾis,” Al-Kashaf, January 1927, 52–56.

³¹ Of significance, the former term implies ability to vary skill or technique while the latter refers to that which is made, a picture.

³² Al-Nsuli, “Khitab,” 56.

³³ Quoted in Moustapha Farroukh, Tariqi, 149.

³⁴ Al-Nsuli, “Khitab,” 56.

³⁵ Gell, Alfred, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology,” in Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 42Google Scholar. This theory is developed by Gell in The Agency of Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

³⁶ Crary, Jonathan, Techniques of the Observer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993), 10Google Scholar.

³⁷ Makdisi, Ussama, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008), chap. 7Google Scholar.

³⁸ In his speech, al-Nsuli condemned an unidentified Muslim religious scholar who promised Farroukh brimstone and hellfire for drawing human figures. Al-Nsuli, “Khitab,” 54.

³⁹ Watenpaugh, Keith David, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 294–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dueck, Jennifer, “A Muslim Jamboree: Scouting and Youth Culture in Lebanon under the French Mandate,” French Historical Studies 30 (2007): 485–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the crisis of masculinity, see Thompson, Colonial Citizens and Massad, Desiring Arabs.

⁴⁰ Farroukh, Tariqi, 171.

⁴¹ For an overview, see Porterfield, Todd, The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French Imperialism, 1798–1836 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁴² For an overview of these terms in Arabic literature today, see Massad, Desiring Arabs, 16–29. Shannon discusses the etymological origins and contemporary usages of these terms in Among the Jasmine Trees, 7, 56. My findings do not support Shannon's assumption that the two terms are interchangeable.

⁴³ Farroukh, Tariqi, 153.

⁴⁴ With the term “borrowed” I seek to emphasize the way art practices in Lebanon are applied with the sense of difference preserved. For example, despite local roots, art discourse maintains the sense of a foreign origin by regularly using “art,” “vernissage,” and “portrait” rather than their Arabic equivalents.

⁴⁵ I use “aesthetic” to refer to “bodily ways of knowing.” See Geurts, Kathryn Linn, Culture and the Senses: Embodiment, Identity, and Well-Being in an African Community (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar. Raymond Firth, a founder of the anthropology of art, defines aesthetics as the capacity for “sensual perception,” which may vary culturally. See Firth, “Art and Anthropology,” in Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, ed. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 18.

⁴⁶ See Massad, Desiring Arabs, 47, 61.

⁴⁷ Inspiring exceptions include Berque, Jacques, Cultural Expressions in Arab Society Today, trans. Stokey, Robert (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Winegar, Jessica, Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees; Salamandra, Christa, A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Winegar, Creative Reckonings, 23.

⁴⁹ Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees, 6.

⁵⁰ This has been meticulously documented by Khater, Akram, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Watenpaugh, Being Modern; and Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar, among others.

⁵¹ Skovgaard-Peterson, Jakob, “Introduction,” in Middle Eastern Cities 1900–1950: Public Places and Public Spheres in Transformation, ed. Nielsen, Hans Chr. Korsholm and Skovgaard-Peterson, Jakob (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2001), 9Google Scholar.

⁵² Malek Sharif, personal communication, 16 July 2008. The suggested translations are Sharif's.

⁵³ Çinar, Alev, Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 7Google Scholar. Likewise, Deeb argues that “modernity” is best studied as a quest to establish connections with “dominant global and transnational discourses.” Deeb, Lara, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʿi Lebanon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005), 16Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ In fact, Farroukh's competitor, Caesar Gemayel, employed Miryam Khiru as his full-time nude model, but her presence, too, was “kept secret” by the art community. Nammar, Nadia, Hikayat Jasad (Story of a Body) (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar, 2001)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Mitchell, Timothy, “The Stage of Modernity,” in Questions of Modernity (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 3–8Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Gaonkar, Dilip, “On Alternative Modernities,” in Alternative Modernities (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 21Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ From the Arabic root th-q-f, which means to straighten or train (e.g., a cultivated seedling). It is telling that another translation of muthaqqaf is “a cultured person.” Intellectuals are those who are trained in certain skills that are believed to be capable of straightening bent or misguided matters and who share their training with others. See ʿAbd al-Ilah Balqaziz, “ʿAtaʾ al-Muthaqqaf al-ʿArabi: Fi al-Tawjih al-Ijtimaʿi wa-l-Siyyasi” (The Contribution of the Arab Intellectual: Social and Political Guidance), in Al-Muthaqqaf al-ʿArabi: Humumuhu wa ʿAtaʾuhu (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wahda al-ʿArabiyya, 1995).

⁵⁸ Farroukh, Tariqi, 153.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 171.

⁶¹ The term “patriotic motherhood” is from Thompson, Colonial Citizens. Farroukh's debt to Bustani and Qasim al-Amin is clear. His appeal, though, is directed to women and men equally and emphasizes the aesthetic dimension of social development.

⁶² There is insufficient evidence to argue that Farroukh intended the female prisoner to represent Lebanon in an iconographic manner comparable to that of Egyptian artists. No national symbols are emblazoned on her, and visual clues underscore her alien, artificial status. My argument is that Farroukh's odalisque is less of a symbol than an instantiation. See Beth Baron, “Nationalist Iconography: Egypt as a Woman,” in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East, ed. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/jankowski/jank06.html (accessed 10 September 2008).

⁶³ See Khemir, Mounira, “The Orient in the Photographer's Mirror,” Orientalism: From Delacroix to Klee, Exhibition Catalogue, ed. Benjamin, Roger (Sydney, Australia: The Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998), 189–233Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Crary, Techniques, 127.

⁶⁵ See, for example, “Al-Ustadh Farrukh fi Maʿradihi” (Mr. Farroukh at His Exhibition), Al-Maʿrad, no. 859, 9 June 1929, 4.

⁶⁶ Jawaba, “Maʿrad al-Fannan ʿUmar al-Unsi,” Al Maʿrad, no. 988, 28 February 1932, 20.

⁶⁷ Exposition Onsi, Exhibition Catalogue (Beirut: Ecole des Arts et Métiers, 11–25 December 1932), Joseph Matar Archives, ʿIdda, Lebanon.

⁶⁸ Jawaba, “Maʿrad.”

⁶⁹ Farroukh also painted this scene in 1936.

⁷⁰ Jawaba, “Maʿrad.”

⁷¹ I thank Tom Strong for noting the importance of Farroukh's not connecting his art to Early Mediterranean nudes that were excavated during the Mandate era and discussed in the local press. See, for example, “Athar al-Finiqiyyin fi Ifriqiya” (Phoenician Ruins in Africa), Al-Muqtataf, no. 66 (March 1925): 250–55.

⁷² Farroukh, Tariqi, 63–65.

⁷³ Ibid., 63–65.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 63.

⁷⁵ Ostle, Robin, “Alexandria: A Mediterranean Cosmopolitan Center of Cultural Production,” in Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, ed. Fawaz, Leila and Bayley, C. A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 314–29Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Shannon, Among the Jasmine Trees, 60.

⁷⁷ Artun, “Zuwwar.”

⁷⁸ See also Salomon, Nanette, “The Venus Pudica: Uncovering Art History's ‘Hidden Agendas’ and Pernicious Pedigrees,” in Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings, ed. Pollock, Griselda (London: Routledge, 1996), 69–87Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Maurice Debbaneh, “Une tournée dans le studio dans un quart d'heure avec le peintre Moustapha Farroukh,” L'Orient, 13 December 1932, 1.

⁸⁰ Jawaba, “Al-Musawwirun al-Wataniyyun.”

⁸¹ Registry for exhibition at Ecole des Arts et Métiers, 15–24 December 1933, Hani Farroukh Archives, Beirut, Lebanon.

⁸² Massad asserts that Arab intellectuals “culturalized” the causes of their political and economic oppression at the hand of imperialists and nationalists alike (Desiring Arabs, 27). My data supports his finding that intellectuals hoped to “accelerate the stage of development to one that is contemporaneous with Europe” and set Arab culture “adjacent to, rather than trailing behind, Europe.” However, I find that in the course of attributing backwardness and lack to cultural causes, they also produced the notion of a universal, and hence noncultural, aesthetic body and subjectivity, which was the site of modern authenticity for them.

⁸³ Bulus, Jean, Exposition du Peintre Farrouk, Exhibition Catalogue (Beirut: Ecole des Arts et Métiers, 15–24 December 1933)Google Scholar, Hani Farroukh Archives, Beirut, Lebanon.

⁸⁴ Kamal al-Nafi, “Maʿrad Farrukh fi al-Jamiʿa al-Amirikiyya,” Al-Ahwal, 1 June 1929, Hani Farroukh Archives, Beirut, Lebanon.

⁸⁵ Ibid.

⁸⁶ Ibid.

⁸⁷ Ibid.

⁸⁸ Not all Lebanese artists were enthusiastic about the proposed genealogies and justifications for local art making. The eminent calligrapher Nasib Makarim asserted that his work was disdained for being sharqī (Eastern). A journalist added, “This is the fate of any creation that does not come to us from overseas or from a French hand.” ʿIssa Mikhail Saba, “Saʿa fi Maktab al-Ustadh Makarim,” Al-Maʿrad 10, no. 996 (1931): 9.

⁸⁹ Musée Nicholas Sursock, Moustapha Farroukh, 127.

⁹⁰ This is the title given at the 1997 Omar Onsi 1901–1969 exhibition at Musée Sursock, Beirut. Omar Onsi, 212. The old name seems to have been lost as the picture changed hands.

⁹¹ Ibid., 43, 148; Omar Onsi, 212; Musée Nicholas Sursock, Moustapha Farroukh, 127.

⁹² Silvia Naef has also recently explored the usefulness of images in this regard. Naef, Silvia, “Continuity and Change in the Realms of Islam,” Studies in Honor of Professor Urbain Vermeulen, ed. D'Hustler, K. and Steenbergen, J. Van, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 171 (Leuven, 2008), 468–78Google Scholar.