Shafic Abboud, Child's Play, 1964. OIl on canvas. Sursock Museum Collection, Beirut.
Middle Eastern Studies Program, Human Rights Project, Art History and Visual Culture Program, and Africana Studies Program Present
CANCELED Debating Abstraction in Cold War Beirut
Sarah Rogers, Middlebury College
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Olin Humanities, Room 102
6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
At the 1964 Salon d'Automne, held at Beirut's Sursock Museum, Paris-based Lebanese artist Shafic Abboud (1926-2004) received first prize for his abstract painting, Child's Play. The result was a fraught debate in the Lebanese press over the public's ability to understand modern abstract art and, in turn, abstraction's relevance towards defining a national Lebanese art. This talk considers 1964 as a key year in which several of Lebanon's leading artists expressed a dedication to abstraction as a truly modern language. Focusing on a series of exhibitions, manifestos, and critical press reviews, the talk examines the fiercely debated universalist assumptions of abstraction within the competing ideologies and political alliances of the Cold War and growing concerns over Lebanese nationalism.6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Sarah Rogers is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Dept of History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College and a founding board member and president-elect of AMCA: Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey. She is co-editor of Arab Art Histories: Art from the Khalid Shoman Collection (2013) and co-editor of Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018). Her current manuscript, Drawing Alliances: Modern Art in Cold War Beirut examines the entangled histories of modern art and international politics in Beirut during the decades of the 1950s and 60s.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].
Time: 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102
Save this Event: