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Producing the Local: The Visual Arts in Beirut

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Sarah Rogers
Sarah Rogers*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Extract

In a 2002 lecture at Home Works, Beirut’s contemporary art festival, writer and cultural critic Abbas Beydoun claimed that Lebanon’s internationalism had led to derivative cultural production. The well known critic’s comments evoked an angry outburst from members of his predominantly Lebanese audience of young artists and cultural workers. To varying degrees, however, this characterization of Beiruti culture repeats and prefigures descriptions of the city as a meeting point between East and West. Indeed, Beirut’s reputation as a multi-linguistic and cross-cultural Mediterranean port is traced to the latter half of the nineteenth century when the city became the capital of an Ottoman province and followed as a regional center for missionary, political, and cultural activities. Moreover, Beydoun’s characterization did not always carry such a negative connotation. This paper begins to trace the ways in which the visual arts is a field for producing, rather than reflecting, Beirut’s cosmopolitanism. To do so, I look at two historical moments pivotal in the institutionalization of the visual arts. The first is that of Daoud Corm (1852-1930), the city’s first professional easel painter whose career ran from the Ottoman period through the French Mandate (1920-1943). The second is the decades of the 1960s and 70s, the city’s heyday as a regional cultural capital when a number of artists and activists established a gallery system, further expanding the private sector’s consumption of painting and sculpture.

Type
Special Section: Art Without History?
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 1-2 , Summer/Winter 2008 , pp. 19 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2008

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References

End Notes

1 Beydoun, Abbas, “Culture and Arts; Re: The Actual,” Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices in the Region, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria (Beirut: Ashkal Alwan, 2003), pp. 22–31.Google Scholar

2 On the historical growth of Beirut from an “insignificant port town” into “a major seaport and the most important city of Greater Syria,” see Fawaz, Leila Tarazi, Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-Century Beirut (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See “David Corm: Aperçu biographie,” unpublished, 1930, n.p. (Archived Material, David and Hisham Corm Archives, Beirut, Lebanon); “David Corm, 1850–1930,” unpublished, no date, n.p. (Archived Material, David and Hisham Corm Archives, Beirut, Lebanon); Bishara S. Malouf, “The Birth of Painting in Lebanon,” The Eastern Times (December 25,1944): np; Xena Novikoff, “David Corm, Pioneer de la peinture libanaise contemporaine, Le Soir (October 25,1961); Lebanon: The Artist’s View, 200 Years of Lebanese Painting (London: Quartet, 1989), p. 101; Z. Z., “Daoud Corm n’a toujours pas un muse digne de son oeuvre,” L’Orient-Le Jour (August 17, 2002), p. 10; Maha Aziza Sultan, Rouad min nahdah al-fann al-tashkilifi Lubnan: Corm, Srour wa Saleeby (The Pioneers of the Fine Arts Renaissance in Lebanon: Corm, Srour, Saleeby) (Beirut: Kaslik University, 2006), p. 30. Biographies published previously to Malouf s begin by tracing the history of Corm’s family name with the exception of Novikoff’s 1961 article, which closely follows “David Corm: Aperçu biographie.”

4 Vasari, Giorgio, The Lives of the Artists, trans. Bondanella, Julia Conaway and Bondanella, Peter (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 16.Google Scholar

5 The year of Corm’s trip to Rome varies: 1865 for Richard Chahine; 1867 for Xena Novikoff, based on the anonymous, unpublished, French-language biography, “David Corm: Aperçu biographie,” in Corm’s private papers; 1869 for Bishara S. Malouf; 1870 for Edouard Lahoud. See Chahine, , One Hundred Years of Plastic Arts in Lebanon, 1880–1980, vols. I&II (Beirut: Chahine Gallery, 1980), p. 1Google Scholar; Novikoff, np; Malouf, np; Lahoud, Edouard, L’art contemporain au Liban/Contemporary Art in Lebanon (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1974), p. 1.Google Scholar

6 In a number of biographies, Pompiani’s name is spelled with a “B,” as the English transliteration of the Arabic letter “ba,” itself a transliteration of the English letter, “p.” See “David Corm: Aperçu biographie,” n.p. and Lebanon: The Artist’s View, 200 Years of Lebanese Painting (London: Quartet, 1989), p. 101. In the former text, “Bompiani,” is corrected to “Pompiani.”

7 The portrait is now held by the Vatican Library. David Corm, interview with author, December 2005.

8 Lahoud writes, “In 1870 young Daoud left for Rome. He was still malleable enough to be modeled quickly and vigorously…He later returned to Lebanon to practice these newly assimilated principles which opened the way to an original and dynamic approach. He then decorated convents, churches, and mansions with classical works that blend Western technique and Oriental spirit,” p. 1.

9 “Nous nous sentions chez nous,” Janine Rubeiz, “Fondatrice de Dar el Fann, 1967–1975,” unpublished memoirs, n.p. (Archived material, the Janine Rubeiz Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon).

10 Based on an article by André Bercoff, “Vingt ans de la peinture libanaise,” (Twenty Years of Lebanese Painting) in L’Orient littéraire, Silvia Naef notes one previous gallery that opened in 1939; I have been unable to find any other documented reference to this gallery. See Naef, A la recherché d’une modernité arabe: l’évolution des arts plastiques en Egypte, au Liban et en Irak (In Search of An Arab Modernity: The Evolution of the Plastic Arts in Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq) (Geneva: Slatkine, 1996), p. 142.

11 After Black September, a violent conflict in which King Hussein expelled the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) from Jordan, the PLO moved their operations to the South of Lebanon. In both Jordan and Lebanon, tensions arose due to a fear of both Israeli reprisals to resistance activities and the Palestinian community establishing a state within a state.

12 “Genocide et Renaissance vu par un groupe d’artistes libanais;” “L’Art au service de la vie et la justice.” I thank Farid Haddad for calling my attention to this exhibition.

13 al-Khal, “The Art Exhibition Frenzy: More for the Love than the Profit of It,” Monday Morning 1(6) (July 24–30,1970), pp. 26–27. In addition to hotels, cultural centers, and antique shops that held art exhibitions, I have documented the following galleries during this period: Gallery One, Manoug Gallery, Galerie d’Amateur, Centre d’Art I & II, Delta International Art Center, Contact Gallery, Gallerie Modulart, Studio 27, Le Point, Alecco-Saab, Camille Mounsef, Artists Assocation Gallery, Nabil Nahas Gallery, Alec Manokian Gallery, and Dar el-Fann.

14 al-Khal, , “The Collectors,” Monday Morning 2(72) (October 29-November 4,1973), pp. 56–57Google Scholar. The article featured collectors Joe and Ada Toole, an American banker and his wife who had been living in Beirut since 1969.

15 This was the title of al-Khal’s review of well known Iraqi artist Nuha al-Radi’s 1972 exhibit at Contact Gallery. See Monday Morning 1(27) (December 18–24, 1972), p. 41.

16 Fares, Wadeh, “Lebanese Painting, 1870–1970,” The 19th Festival International de Baalbeck XIX (Beirut, 1974), pp. 16–95.Google Scholar

17 Khater, Nazih, “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?” L’Orient-Le Jour (January 22, 1965), p. 13.Google Scholar

18 al-Khal, , “Here from Cairo for a Painting Holiday: Salah Taher,” Monday Morning 1(11) (August 28- September 3, 1971), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar