Full Description
In modern Syria, a contested territory at the intersection of differing regimes of political representation, artists ventured to develop strikingly new kinds of painting to link their images to life forces and agitated energies. Examining the works of artists Kahlil Gibran, Adham Ismail, and Fateh al-Moudarres, Beautiful Agitation explores how painters in Syria activated the mutability of form to rethink relationships of figure to ground, outward appearance to inner presence, and self to world. Drawing on archival materials in Syria and beyond, Anneka Lenssen reveals new trajectories of painterly practice in a twentieth century defined by shifting media technologies, moving populations, and the imposition of violently enforced nation-state borders. The result is a study of Arab modernism that foregrounds rather than occludes efforts to agitate against imposed identities and intersubjective relations.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Text
Introduction
1. Arab Romantics: Kahlil Gibran and the Awakening Storm
2. Colonial Syria: Finding Life within Culture
3. Popular Politics: Adham Ismail and the Aesthetics of Revival
4. National Excavation: Fateh al-Moudarres and the Unholy Image
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Illustrations
Index
