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Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am grateful to the Arts Club of Washington, DC and to the Arts Platform of New York City for giving the Algerian Embassy in Washington the opportunity to participate in the organization of this exhibition on Portraits of Algeria.
There is something about the air and the sky in Algeria that has always inspired artists from prehistoric to contemporary times. Already 10 000 years ago it inspired the rock paintings of the Hoggar mountains in the far South. These were a blend of Berber and Black African art. The stylized representations of people and animals rendered by these paintings are reminiscent of modern art in a breathtaking time warp.
Again during the Antiquity some of the most beautiful artistic creations were expressed through Algerian mosaics when Berber art met Roman art.
It was also through the interaction of medieval Algeria and Andalusia that stunning colorful designs were eternalized in ceramics. This combination of art and craft led to the so-called Dutch blue and orange tiles. While these tiles are now famous, few relate them to Algerian creativeness.
So artistic creation knows no borders and prospers through cross-fertilization.
Orientalist paintings in Algeria provide another remarkable illustration of the universality of art. European techniques inspired by Algerian sceneries with our unique sun-light as a catalyser, have brought forth a form of art specific to our country. It was Matisse who said: “Revelation came to me from the Orient” by which he meant Algeria.
Orientalism corresponded of course to a particular phase in our History, that of colonial occupation which visited great sufferings upon the Algerian people. Today indeed is Algeria’s National Day when we commemorate the outbreak of the last phase of our liberation struggle on November 1, 1954 which ultimately led to a recovery of our independence on July 5, 1962.
Some of the initial expressions of orientalism were intended to make art subservient to colonial propaganda glorifying, as did the paintings of Horace Vernet, the savage invasion of our land by foreign troops and its subsequent occupation which lasted 132 years. In these paintings, our oppressed people are depicted in humiliating postures. Fortunately, contemporary Algerian artists like Hocine Ziani are doing a wonderful job at reconstructing the battles with their brush. In what one could call a neo-orientalist wave of paintings, Ziani depicts what really happened, restoring the dignity of our combatants as they opposed the invaders.
Other misguided forms of orientalism are found in the projection of Western fantasies instrumentalizing our women folk as odalisques in harems. Rather than art this is the hide-bound reproduction of
stereotypes.
But such aberrations should in no way detract from the value of the genuine orientalist art that developed in Algeria through inter-action between Western techniques and the multifaceted Islamic culture.
Characteristic of this art is a rendering of the effect of the enhanced interplay of light and shade. The addition of brightness and of a multiplicity of colors immersing people and objects revolutionized traditional approaches to painting. There was also a concern to express content beyond figures and shapes as a pathway to the Eternal, a kind of Sufism-on-canvass. Artists were seeking stylistic perfection and richness of emotional content, not just exotism.
Orientalism results in the highest form of art where there is communion between the artist and his environment.
Some expatriate orientalists visited Algeria only briefly like Delacroix or Renoir. But even their fleeting visits had a deep impact on them and triggered time-honored artistic creation.
Some others were so taken by the country that it became their land of adoption. Such was the case of Etienne Nasreddine Dinet, Eugène Fromentin or Juanita Guccione/Marbrouk. Their art was begotten by this espousal of our traditions and way of life.
In fact, so integrated were Nasreddine Dinet and Juanita into the society of Southern Algeria which so inspired orientalists, that they are included in the category of Algerian home-grown
orientalists.
Juanita was present in Bou Saada just after the death of her illustrious predecessor but her choice of themes and harmony of colors place her in the same school of painting. Both had an insider’s view and understanding of the faith and traditions of these rural societies bordering on the desert. This is why they so well reflected the Algerian soul in their work.
Juanita’s work is particularly meaningful to us as she impersonated this symbiosis between Western sensitivities and Algerian-ness. She is the symbol of true art which spans across cultures to become an international language. Her Algerian pictures call upon Americans to jettison stereotypes when looking at Algeria. For all this we admire and cherish her legacy. And we thank her. This is what prompted us to set up in Algeria a museum dedicated to her paintings as a symbol of Algerian-US friendship rooted in the Peace and Friendship Treaty signed 207 years ago between our two Nations.
Dinet and Juanita stand out among other Algerian orientalists like Azouaou Mammeri and Choukri Mesli whose artistic creations were more typically Berber or Abdelhalim Hemche who renewed the presentation of orientalist themes in a modernized form. Thanks to the support of Dinet, a new generation of Algerian miniaturists also made important contributions to orientalist art from Mohamed and Omar Racim, to Ranem, Temmam and Ali Khodja to quote but a few. There was art again at the crossroads of 3 continents: Europe, Africa and of course Asia, spanning Persia to India. It was from the merger of these three sources of inspiration that Algerian miniature paintings emerged.
Orientalism was a phase in the continuum of the development of Algerian art. It breathed new life into traditional painting by the introduction of a symphony of bright colors in its models and sceneries. In a second phase, Orientalism gradually evolved into impressionism where the interplay of colors gains a life of its own, merely propped up by models and objects. This was the case for Renoir’s “Le Ravin de la Femme Sauvage”, for Maxime Noiré’s “Bou Saada” and for the works of Djemai amongst others. Then in a third phase, color took the front stage until its figurative props receded or completely disappeared. Such was the case with the abstract impressionism of Bouzid and the abstract expressionism of Mohamed Khadda. Likewise for the lyric abstraction of Abdekader Guermaz and the Kandinskian abstract painting of Issiakhem. In a fourth phase, this evolution leads us to the colorful symbolism of Baya, praised by Andre Breton and Picasso, and who portrayed only women and symbols taken from music and nature, never men, in her watercolors.
The continuum is then broken by the likes of Rachid Koreichi. This artist produces art so solidly based on Arabic and oriental calligraphy and signs as to dispense with orientalism’s symphony of colors in favor of engravings either monochromatic or using at most two colors.
The opening of the exhibition of Juanita Guccione/Marbrouk in The Art Club Museum of Washington, DC is indeed a significant artistic event focusing on a phase in the evolution of Algerian plastic arts. It is here to remind us that while we have different cultures, we all share in the same civilization, human civilization of which art is the universal expression. This exhibition will be followed in January by another including some of the Algerian artists I have briefly mentioned only to whet your appetite today. They indeed deserve more time than I was able to devote to them on this occasion.
Let this exhibition on the Portraits of Algeria be a gate open on a festival of light and dreams and on a world in harmony with nature that we all crave for.
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