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L'Orient-Le Jour
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- L'Orient-Le Jour
When Iraqi art defied oblivion and oppression
It is a first in the United States and a revelation for the history of global modern art. The Hessel Museum of Art, on the Bard College campus in New York, is hosting 'All manner of experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group' until Oct. 19, 2025, an ambitious retrospective that resurrects a forgotten chapter in modern Arab art. Through more than 80 works and a vast body of archives, the exhibition traces the trajectory, ambition, fractures and legacy of a visionary collective that, from 1951 to the 1970s, sought to combine artistic modernity with Iraqi identity.'The artists of the Baghdad Modern Art Group saw themselves as citizens of the world, contributing to an inclusive modern history by forging unique artistic identities,' explained Nada Shabout, curator of the exhibition, professor at the University of North Texas and a...
Forbes
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Baghdad Group For Modern Art On View In America For First Time
Shakir Hassan Al Said, 'Letters,' 1961. Oil, gesso, cotton, linen canvas, 94.2 cm x 82 cm x 2.5 cm. Mathaf: Arab Museum of modern Ar At first glance, it would be difficult to discern this artwork as coming from Arab origins, and not Spain or France or America or Mexico. It's Modern art. Bold colors. Distorted figures. Abstraction. Experimentation. A close inspection reveals distinctions. Arabic script. Prominent crescents. This art is modern. It's Arab. It's Iraqi. 'All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art,' opening June 21, 2025, at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College's Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY presents the first in-depth examination of this essential chapter in Arab modern and contemporary art. The group was founded in 1951 after a dynamic period of accelerated change and growth in Iraq following the nation's liberation from British rule in 1932. During the 1930s and 40s, amid ongoing political turbulence, artists began a crucial negotiation between an emerging postcolonial national consciousness and a burgeoning modernism. It remained a creative force through the early 1970s. 'The artists of the Baghdad Group for Modern Art thought of themselves as international citizens carving contributions in an inclusive modern history through forging unique artistic identities,' Nada Shabout, a leading expert in modern Arab art and exhibition curator, said when announcing the show. The exhibition invites audiences to learn about modernism from the vantage point of Iraq–a vibrant site of exchange and influence across West Asia, North Africa, and Europe–reframing Iraqi art and global modernism. 'The timeline that (Americans) understand in art history, when modernism was in Europe and in the US, is not necessarily global,' Shabout, who graduated from high school in Baghdad, told 'That's not what was happening elsewhere in the world. This (exhibition) helps us correct that timeline. Our idea of what modernism and post-modernism are are not applicable everywhere because of the different dynamics of why things evolved and the way they evolved.' Consider this: mid-century modernism in Iraq was heavily interested in Impressionism, despite European artists largely having worked through and worked on from Impressionism decades earlier. Were Iraqi artists behind? Or, in fact, were Iraqi and Arab artists ahead? 'Europe in the late 19th century, early 20th century, with colonialism and Orientalism, (artists) were able to see examples of work that were completely different than what they were developing from the Renaissance on and made them completely abandoned naturalism and adopt abstraction,' Shabout said. 'For Iraqis, as well as many others in the so-called post-colonial world, abstraction was in their heritage, so that naturalism and Impressionism, those styles were the new things that they experimented with.' 'Modern' is in the eye of the beholder and the maker. Henri Matisse visited Morocco in the nineteen-teens. He was fascinated. The colors. The light. The textile patterns. He brought all of it into his artwork that was in every way considered Modern. It wouldn't look so modern to Arab audiences familiar with those colors, and that light, and those patterns for centuries. Get it? Was Matisse modern or was the Arab culture in Morocco that influenced him modern? Same goes for Picasso, the other north star of Modernism. Western modernism, anyway. Perhaps his most famous painting, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), the painting that shook the (Western) modern art world, borrowed heavily from African masks. Again, who was the modernist, Picasso, or the mask makers? The 'radical' modern art being made by Picasso and Matisse was not exclusively European, it doesn't look traditionally Celtic or Roman, they were drawing on other cultures. African cultures. Arab cultures. Asian cultures. Bringing it closer to home for American audiences, look at Navajo textiles, Pueblo pottery designs, or Plains parfleche bags from the 19th century and much earlier. The graphic design. The line. The color. The abstraction. They look like Wassily Kandinsky or Joseph Albers. Who was the modernist? Art history, not surprisingly, says it was the white man working in the European tradition. That's the way Shabout learned it. 'I came to the US to study architecture, but taking art history classes realized that what I grew up seeing was not included. That's how I decided to switch from architecture to art history,' she remembers. 'The absence of this work that's in this exhibition that I grew up seeing and appreciating and thinking highly of, it was a surprise. I knew Picasso and Matisse, but I wondered why the people here who know Picasso and Matisse do not know Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan.' Selim and Hassan were the Baghdad Group for Modern Art's founders. Both have work on view in the show along with other Iraqi artists from the era. Loans come from eminent collections including the Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), Dalloul Art Foundation (Beirut, Lebanon), Ibrahimi Collection (Amman, Jordan and Baghdad, Iraq), and Qatar Museums / Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar), as well as from artists and estates. Many artworks have not been seen since their initial exhibition. Colonialism's Impact On Modernism Shakir Hassan Al Said, 'The Café,' 1958. Ibrahimi Collection Baghdad, Iraq - Amman, Jordan Colonialism killed hundreds of millions of people worldwide. It stole land, wealth, and natural resources. It also stole cultural patrimony, depriving the colonized of their artistic heritage, their roots, the foundations on which to base their modern art. This also shapes mainstream, Western understandings of Modern art. 'Colonial ruling in the Arab world and in many of the other parts of the world prohibited (colonized) artists from seeing their heritage that (artists from colonizing countries) then were able to see in museums in Europe,' Shabout explained. 'In this exhibition there is reference to the Hariri assembly, the 13th century illustrated book (Iraqi artists) only saw images of in a French journal in 1940s. The whole book, which is at the National Library in Paris, was only accessible 20 years ago to most of us. Now, it's online, and you can see all the pages, but for the Iraqi artists of the 1950s, they were only able to see those four images that were published in a journal in France. But it's their own heritage. People forget that because of colonialism, artifacts were being transported out of countries and not accessible to the people.' Beyond that, the artists of the Baghdad Group–and the country at large–was dealing with abrupt and dramatic transitions from rule by the Ottomans, then the British, and then nationhood, with heavy British influence. 'They're told, 'Now you have a country with a flag and a constitution,' so it needs its own identity,' Shabout said. 'The 1950s leading to the 1958 revolution, it was a decade of turbulence, oppressive political moments, but also a lot of hope for the Iraqi generation thinking that they need to build their own visual identity. The group came together to allow for that to happen, moving beyond just gathering artists to actually formulate specific aesthetics.' Selim and Hassan landed on ' Istilham al turath ' as a unifying motif. That translates to seeking inspiration and motivation from artistic heritage through innovative methods. Amid the broader sociopolitical tensions and rising revolutionary fervor, the Group synthesized the concerns of a vast swathe of artists by interpreting the abstraction of Western modernism through aesthetics drawn from Islamic and Mesopotamian cultures into various styles. 'They distinguish themselves by rooting their modernism in their history and heritage… an aesthetic that was being developed specifically rooted in Iraqi history, culture, and visual memory,' Shabout explained. Modern. Iraqi. Two notions not in opposition, in unique harmony. 'Unlike today, (Baghdad Group artists) were not told in Europe that they were outsider, lesser, as the (art history) canon was not fully formed. They did feel that they had no specific presence that they could feel in Europe, and so it was important for them to not just show the presence, but prove internally that they didn't just go to Europe to learn and copy; that language was not yet dominating as it did later in the 70s in evaluating art that was (from) Iraq or the rest of the Arab world as lesser or imitative,' Shabout said. 'For them, it was important to participate in Modernism, and prove that their modernism is particular and specific to them.' Baghdad Then And Now Jewad Selim, 'Children's Games,' 1953. Oil, linen, wood, 90.5 cm x 71 cm x 1.5 cm. Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha War with Iran in the 1980s. Dictatorship. Saddam Hussein. Invading Kuwait. Bombing by America in retaliation. Global sanctions. Rogue status. More dictatorship. Phony claims of weapons of mass destruction. More bombing by America. Invasion. Occupation. Devastation. About a decade after the Baghdad Group for Modern Art dissolved, the city began a long, continuous, 40-plus-year slide from hopeful to horrendous. Along with artwork, 'All Manner of Experiments' shares remarkable ephemera–newsreel footage, photographs, exhibition posters, artist-designed brochures–revealing a Baghdad vastly different from the one known today. 'I'm hoping that people are immediately struck by the images that we have of Baghdad, that this is not the Baghdad that they've been seeing in the news for the last two decades,' Shabout said. 'It's not a country of destruction, but rather a country that lived its potential for so long and had artists who were thinking in terms that we can all understand. They were speaking to the international modernism of the time, but wanting to also resist and create their own specific examples of works of arts that are beautiful and should be appreciated and accepted within the canon of art history, within our understanding of Modernism, and on their own value without comparison.' The exhibition can be seen through October 19, 2025. More From Forbes Forbes Cincinnati's Taft Museum Shares First Generation Of Modern African Art To Reach America By Chadd Scott Forbes Enlightenment On Middle Eastern History And Culture Through Artwork By Chadd Scott Forbes Amir H. Fallah, Painting For An Audience Of One With Lessons For A Lifetime By Chadd Scott
CairoScene
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Art Dubai Returns With Over 100 Galleries & a Focus on Digital Art
The 18th edition of Art Dubai will run from April 18th to 20th at Madinat Jumeirah, exploring contemporary and digital art. Apr 15, 2025 Art Dubai, the UAE's flagship international art fair, is returning for its 18th edition from April 18th to 20th at the Madinat Jumeirah Conference & Events Centre. This year's edition brings together over 100 galleries from more than 40 countries from around the world for a broad selection of gallery presentations, daily talks, guided tours, book launches, and performances. Art Dubai Modern—curated this year by art historians Nada Shabout and Magalí Arriola—focuses on modernist pioneers from the Global South, while Bawwaba returns as a curated section dedicated to solo presentations exploring themes of identity, migration, and post-colonial narratives. One of the fair's most anticipated elements is the expanded Art Dubai Digital section, which explores the intersection of art, technology, and digital culture. Presented for the first time in collaboration with Dubai Culture, this year's edition includes immersive installations and AI-generated works. Highlights include 'Hybrid Xperience', a generative art project by Turkiye's Ouchhh Studio, and kinetic data-driven sculptures by US-based collective Breakfast. The section features contributions from over 20 digital platforms, with a strong presence from regional creators working across NFTs, virtual reality, and generative design.
Arab News
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Art Dubai to return for 18th edition with international lineup
DUBAI: Art Dubai — which is marking its 18th edition this year — is returning and brings together 120 galleries from across the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas in what is expected to be one of the event's most multicultural programs yet. Taking place from April 18-20, the event will host a calendar of daily talks, book launches, tours and other attractions. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Its diverse program includes Art Dubai Modern, curated this year by Magali Arriola and Nada Shabout, and Art Dubai Digital by Gonzalo Herrero Delicado and Bawwaba — which means 'Gateway' — presenting 10 solo presentations by artists from various countries curated by Mirjam Varadinis and focusing on themes of migration, identity and displacement. The event's digital section, the first of its kind in an art fair, organized in partnership with Dubai Culture, highlights the rising influence of artificial intelligence and immersive technology in artistic creation. Installations by Hybrid Xperience, Breakfast, and Ouchhh Studio are featured, as well as 22 digital platforms from Dubai and internationally. Entitled 'After the Technological Sublime,' Delicado told Arab News that the theme aimed to provide 'an opportunity to rethink what sublime is today: the concept that we have inherited since the 17th century when explorers were going out to explore the world. Now we can contrast that moment with what we are living today in the age of information and social media.' In light of 30 new participating galleries from around the world, Pablo del Val, the event's artistic director, said: 'The really exciting aspect of this fair is the quality of the artworks. 'I think that this year you can see the maturity of the participants and really understand the vocabularies and the formats and the media that sell well in the city. 'There's also a lot of color. The works we are showing this year show the state of the world we are living in, from technological change to a desire for escapism.'
