“Have you ever seen the Egyptian Museum? A lot of pharaonic artwork is surrealist,” wrote Kamel el Telmissany, an Egyptian surrealist artist carefully related to the Cairo-based Artwork and Liberty Group, in a 1939 journal entry.
As el Telmissany insightfully pointed out, surrealism — a creative motion that delves into the unconscious, whereas difficult typical perceptions of actuality — was not “particularly a French motion,” as many artwork critics typically declare. As an alternative, it goes past nationality and faith, embodying a common motion that has existed for millennia, even within the historic instances of the pharaohs.
Although surrealism has developed through the years, its essence — its major purpose — has remained constant: to discover the unconscious realms of human emotion, thought, and motion, and create artwork that illuminates slightly than obscures, and liberates slightly than confines.
‘Degenerate’ Egyptian Artwork and Sexual Freedom
The 12 months was 1938, a time marked by the rising unfold of totalitarianism, a political system that imposes management on all points of human life, and worry throughout the globe, with Hitler’s Germany at its epicenter.
On this local weather, artwork confronted intense repression, and was labeled as “degenerate artwork” by the federal government and artwork critics in society. Below these authoritarian regimes, artwork was stripped of its capacity to encourage and provoke. As an alternative, it grew to become a software to additional political and nationalist objectives, slightly than be cherished for its energy to problem, to evoke emotion, and, above all, to attach with individuals on a a lot deeper degree.
That 12 months, a collective of Egyptian surrealists united to take a stand towards these authoritarian regimes. They launched a manifesto in 1938 titled “Lengthy Dwell Degenerate Artwork,” a daring assertion in defiance of the artwork critics and the Nazis. The manifesto will be seen as a reinterpretation of the Egyptian phrase “hawareek” (which means “I’ll present you”), however with a creative twist.
As an alternative of rejecting the label “degenerate,” the artists adopted it with satisfaction, turning it into a logo of defiance. They used it as a badge of honor, channeling it into artwork that was boldly unconventional and most significantly, unapologetically degenerate. This marked the official founding of the Artwork and Liberty group, with the manifesto signed by 37 people, uniting all of the Egyptian surrealists, together with writers and photographers.
One would possibly ask: what precisely is degenerate artwork? Is artwork not purported to be lovely? That is the very query the surrealists sought to problem. They opposed the concept that artwork’s sole function was to uplift and entertain, to by no means confront or reveal life’s darker realities. As El Telmissany as soon as put it in certainly one of his articles, “artwork won’t be a software for the pleasure of individuals to deliver pleasure to their idle minds.”
For the reason that founding of Artwork and Liberty group, the surrealists organized quite a few exhibitions and launched Al Tatawwur in 1940, an Arabic-language literary and cultural journal. It was the primary avant-garde, surrealist, and Marxist-libertarian publication within the Arab world. Throughout its temporary existence, Al Tatawwur boldly tackled topics like intercourse work, intercourse, and ladies’s sexual freedom.
Some students have even argued that its exploration of sexuality was integral to the liberation of Egypt from colonization, subverting the dominant narratives of the regime and creating area for Egyptians to have interaction extra freely with taboo subjects. Analysis has additionally proven important connections between the persistence of colonial governance and the management of sexuality.
This regulation serves not solely as an important mechanism of social management, but in addition performs a key position in contributing to the building of the European identification by defining and differentiating what’s deemed normatively sexual in European phrases. To decolonize, then, means to critically study ourselves, which requires a deeper understanding of who we’re —not solely as residents of a nation, however as human beings.
This name for humanism, which el Telmissany persistently championed in his writings, lay on the core of Egyptian surrealism. His intention was to make clear and “liberate individuals from the false evening” of ignorance and tyranny that had overshadowed them.
The decision additionally sought to empower Egyptians to forge their very own distinct sexual identification, unbiased from European sexuality, and to confront their darker, typically missed, realities.
Via their work, many surrealist Egyptian artists positioned a powerful emphasis on the uncooked points of human nature, typically specializing in the physique in varied varieties, highlighting the physique as a key ingredient of identification whereas additionally exploring its potential for exploitation.
Ramses Younan, a number one determine in Egyptian artwork and a co-founder of the Artwork and Liberty group, exemplifies this theme in his portray Untitled (1940). The portray depicts a distorted girl sleeping towards a backdrop of wood panels, with exaggerated, disproportionate breasts and arms, underscoring the objectification and exploitation of the feminine type.
Fragmented our bodies additionally ceaselessly symbolized oppression. Inji Efflatoun’s Woman and Monster (1942) is one other highly effective instance, with its haunting depiction of contorted figures. The distorted, trapped our bodies reveal the anguish of ladies pushed into intercourse work by the cruel realities of warfare and poverty.
Whereas some might label these work as ‘degenerate,’ this was a deliberate alternative—to impress and problem societal norms. They intention to make viewers query their perceptions of their very own our bodies and people of ladies, in addition to to confront warfare and poverty.
Sorrow and Battle
Egyptian surrealists additionally didn’t stray removed from actuality.
Whereas the time period ‘surrealist’ might counsel a detachment from the actual world, a lot of their work is definitely deeply rooted in it. In different phrases, surrealism delves into the unconscious feelings and ideas that affect day by day life, exploring how sorrow and wrestle manifest in varied varieties.
Kamal Youssef, one of many members of the Artwork and Liberty group, targeted on the on a regular basis lifetime of Egyptians, which is usually paired with symbolic motives, similar to animals or non secular iconography. For instance, in his portray Reverie (1986), an Egyptian man gazes into the space, his expression nearly hypnotic or somber, whereas a white owl perches on his lap. The scene exudes a way of mysticism and exoticism, but it additionally invitations deeper contemplation, prompting the viewer to ponder the person’s inside ideas and feelings.
His work additionally typically highlighted the struggles of Egypt’s working class, notably those that labored on the land. He created a number of works depicting distorted, anguished figures seated earlier than empty bowls, symbolizing starvation, in addition to others exhibiting characters bent underneath the burden of their emotional burdens. Whereas a few of these work might really feel overwhelmingly bleak, their stark, sorrowful imagery is designed to evoke the unconscious, darker realities of individuals’s lives.
Many Egyptian surrealist work sought to focus on the darker points of Egyptian historical past, particularly its pharaonic previous, slightly than romanticizing or glorifying it. Pharaonic imagery had typically been co-opted as authorities propaganda, so when artists from the Artwork and Liberty group employed such symbols, they sometimes distorted them to point out their defiance towards the regime.
As an illustration, Ramses Younan’s Untitled (1939) portray depicts the physique of a goddess twisted into unnatural angles, presenting a fractured and extra weak picture of Egypt. This portray doesn’t essentially intention to vilify the nation, however slightly challenges the dominant narrative of the regime, which ceaselessly co-opted historic symbols for political functions, slightly than for inventive expression.
Within the years that adopted, the surrealist motion in Egypt underwent a serious transformation after the nation’s nationalization, notably as Egypt emerged as an unbiased state free from colonial rule. This shift gave rise to new artwork collectives, such because the Modern Artwork Group and the Fashionable Artwork Group, which aligned extra carefully with the beliefs of the newly unbiased nation. Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, an Egyptian painter and member of the Modern Artwork Group, created The Constitution (1962), a piece that honors Nasser’s Constitution, a socialist manifesto advocating for the revolutionary redistribution of land to Egypt’s peasants.
Whereas the surrealist motion initially had a powerful Egyptian affect, at this time it has developed right into a extremely individualistic type with a extra international attain.
In Egypt, a number of artwork facilities and museums, such because the Museum of Fashionable Egyptian Artwork, now present platforms for modern artists. What really set the Egyptian surrealists of the previous other than at this time’s artists was their shared ideological dedication and collective spirit of riot.
These Egyptian surrealists introduced forth a brand new strategy to artwork, one which went past private expression to undertake a collective voice—unapologetic, free, and defiant—taking part in a pivotal position in Egypt’s liberation from colonial rule.
