Part I _ Chapter One _ Appendix XVIII: Plates 22-152

The Lebanese wars of the past three decades affected Lebanon’s residents physically and psychologically: from the 100,000 plus who were killed; to the 200,000 plus who were wounded; to the one million plus who were displaced; to the even more who were psychologically traumatized. Needless to say, the wars also affected Lebanese cities,buildings and institutions.

It is clear to me today that these wars also affected colors, lines, shapes and forms. Some of these are affected in a material way and, like burned books or razed monuments, are physically destroyed and lost forever.

And others, it seems, are affected in a more subtle way: they are not destroyed. Yet, these colors, lines, shapes and forms are now treated by some artists, writers, thinkers and others as though they have been affected physically.

For example, a particular shade of red no longer appears in the artworks of an artist renowned for his life-long explorations of this color. Needless to say, the artist is dismayed and consults ophthalmologists, biologists, geneticists and neuroscientists. When told he is physiologically healthy, he visits psychologists and psychoanalysts. These visits prove equally futile, for his color block is neither physiological nor psychological. The damage is not in his eyes, nerves, nor mind. It is in the color itself. The color has been affected and is no longer available.

It also seems that some of these colors, lines, shapes and forms, sensing the forthcoming danger, deploy defensive measures. They hide in Roman and Arabic letters, numbers and words, in circles, rectangles and squares, in yellow, blue and green. They dissimulate as book covers, catalog titles and monograph indices. They camouflage themselves as official letters, university dissertations and exhibition catalogues. They take refuge in architectural diagrams and financial spreadsheets, in budgets and price lists.

These are the colors, lines, shapes and forms that compose the 16 plates presented the following pages.

Introduction:

In the past decade, I have been fascinated by the emergence of new art museums, galleries, schools, journals and cultural foundations in cities such as Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, Cairo, Sharjah, Ramallah and Doha, among others. It seems to me that the makers, sponsors, consumers, forms and histories of Arab and Middle Eastern art are becoming more and more visible. This visbility is fuelled in part by the fast-paced development of a new infrastructure for the visuals arts in the Arabian Gulf – an infrastruture that will include the largest-to-date Guggenheim museum by Frank Gehry, a Louvre museum by Jean Nouvel, a Performing Arts Centre by Zaha Hadid, a maritime museum by Tadao Ando, a Sheikh Zayed National Museum by Foster and Partners, and a New York University campus by Rafael Vi?oly, all on the Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. Qatar’s efforts with its own Museum of Islamic Arts by I. M. Pei, forthcoming museums and this exhibition are no less ambitious. These buildings and their programmes are part of strategic state initiatives to showcase Arab, Emirati, Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures and traditions in their full complexity, and to stimulate the creation of new concepts and forms by artists, writers, thinkers and others. There can be little doubt that the development of this new infrastructure is linked to a trend whereby cultural tourism figures more and more as an engine of economic growth.

In this issue of Kalamon, I present a work titled Appendix XVIII: Plates 22-152 from my ongoing project titled Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World. Appendix XVIII puts forward a story and some forms that engage the history of art in Lebanon. The protracted wars in Lebanon shape a thorny yet rich ground for creative work. They shed light on how art and culture in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world are affected materially and immaterially by various forms of violence. They also help me imagine the forms compatible with the new infrastructure for the arts in the Arab world.

This project is dedicated to Jalal Toufic