Blog by category
The Contemporary Art Scene in Syria
It seems that it is all happening “except in Syria”. Yet it is the Syrian art scene that is making all this possible. It was the ripples caused by Christies auction of “Modern Art of the Middle East” that first ruffled the surface of what, in international terms, until then had been a placid artistic backwater. In 2005, the auctioneering giants opened their first office in Dubai. Bonham’s and then Sotheby’s, who opened an office in Doha this year, followed their lead.
Iranian artist Farhad Moshiri, unknown till recently, now commands up to 600,000 dollars for his work. Egyptian Ahmed Moustafa has topped the 650,000 mark and the Syrian stars, “who would once have received around 3,000 dollars for one-and-a-half metres of canvas, now fetch 15,000 dollars,” laughs Sammaoui.
The art dealer and former Swiss banker has long expected a boom in Arab art; something he predicts will happen within the next five years. The confidence is not without foundation. In 2008, a painting by Fateh al-Moudarres sold for around 300,000 dollars at Christie’s.
Moudarres (1922–1999), the doyen of Syrian surrealism, the darkly visioned realist Louay Kayali (1934–1978) and the pioneer of abstraction Mahmoud Hammad (1923–1988), belong to the now deceased luminaries of the Syrian art scene. For living artists – even the most popular – prices are currently in the region of 10,000 to 40,000 dollars.
But just what is “Syrian art”?
At Meyssa Shehab’s brand new gallery, Tajallyat, where one arrives in a silver-grey, chauffeur-driven limousine with tinted windows, the gallery owner prefers to seek the answer elsewhere rather than provide one herself. But the answer from the art critic consulted doesn’t bring us much further. Sammaoui, too, fails to enlighten.
In order to come up with an answer, we have to look back to 1960, to the opening of the Damascene art academy. Back then a figurative surrealism-expressionism blossomed, one that sought to transcend the native visual heritage. Everything finds a place here: Arab shadow theatre, two-dimensional Islamic art with its absence of light and shade, the Canaanite demons, the Palmyrene winged creatures, and the all-pervasive Sufism that was and is so characteristic of Syria.
In contrast to other Muslim countries the secular Syria never banned this mystical dimension of Islam.
Photo: The Ayyam Gallery in Damascus: the Syrian art scene is growing, with more and more galleries opening; buyers come from Los Angeles, Basle, Hong Kong – everywhere but Syria
Source: http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-310/_nr-777/i.html
