What links man and beast? Rania Khallaf asked Georges Bahgory It was the title of the exhibition (at the Picasso Art Gallery, 14 March-20 April) that first intrigued me: "Birds and Animals, Bahgory's Friends". The fact that they should be identified as such aroused my curiosity, but it also misled my mind in the direction of fluffy small things, humorous and cheerful. Comprising 25 paintings, rather, the work actually portrays neither birds nor pets, nor domesticated animals of any kind. Bahgory presents wild horses, stubborn cows, stray cats and dogs, a menagerie of distress. They are portrayed largely as individuals, not in groups, always presented in a striking way. The one overriding common element is listlessness and lack of joy -- these animals have a hard time of it, so much is clear -- and they seem to hail from a world other than that of cafés, flea markets and daily life, for which Bahgory is perhaps best known. What could be the hidden link between sad animals and people on the streets? The idea behind the exhibition, as it turns out, hit Bahgory almost a year ago; and immediately he started studying and sketching the subjects he would be deploying. "I would look an animal straight in the eye to find out about the feeling inside it," he says. "I wanted to know what that cow was thinking. A cow could be happy, happier than any of us. Or it could be angry, or sad. The whole spectrum of emotions can be encountered." Yet what the paintings invite is a close, deliberate look at animals and their features; they stimulate a kind of dialogue with those unhappy, lonely creatures. A single goat, though deeply melancholy, commands so much attention you can't help registering a glint of pride in its beautifully painted eyes. The sight of it with a single leaf between its teeth, standing against a blue-green background, evokes compassion -- the object of which remains unidentifiable. The combination of light and colour is unforgettable. And so is the village donkey, bearing the villagers on its back: their faces look remarkably like his, and you begin to intuit a sense of the connection between man and beast in this newly invented world of Bahgory's. The painting of animals is as old as the history of art, and the great European repertoires always feature them -- something the 65-year-old artist finds "only natural", reflecting "a historical relationship" between the human and animal realms. More provocatively, Bahgory sees his work as among the most recent products of a tradition that stretches all the way back to ancient times, in which artists frequently combined elements of the human with the animal and held the latter in thrall. The notion of reincarnation fascinates him, and his sense is that it occurs across species. "Both animals and humans are created by the same God," he says, "after all." Picasso is another source: those human faces with hugely oversized nostrils, recalling the noses of cows; and paintings of mermaids and other hybrid creatures. Picasso's was a mission and Bahgory feels he is keeping it up, in this and other work. Yet the work evidences more than either of the two references, reflecting a keen sense of the grassroots and very profound emotions. The latter impulses are rather better explained by his childhood in the Upper Egyptian village from which he got his name, Bahgour -- he has stylised and drawn on it in many ways, and sometimes refers to it as Bahgora -- in which, he says, "animals were an important aspect of life, all kinds of birds and animals coexisted with people". The striking turn he has taken has not altered his palette, however, and the same browns, reds and blues play out a joyful drama in the paintings. He also incorporates elements of collage -- something he has done before -- with one stray dog, for example, rendered in part with the aid of a thin paper. One cow, shown against a backdrop of khiyamiya (tent) fabric, gets two paintings to itself, showing both profiles. In an Egyptian context this could be misunderstood, of course, but Bahgory identifies with his animals so much he even includes himself among them: along the entrance to the gallery hangs a huge self portrait of the artist carrying his sketch book and pencils and surrounded by people on an alleyway with a goose poised in the middle. "This," he explains, "is my everyday life. I love working in the backstreets of Cairo, in Upper Egypt, even in Paris. It is in this context that I'm encouraged -- because it makes me feel free." In his book Bahgar fil Mahjar (Bahgar, Expatriate), Bahgory recounts an anecdote in which Qays, his girlfriend's Cat, kicked him out of said girlfriend's flat after the latter went away: "I was there partly to look after it, but it was in such a state -- running around like mad, refusing to eat -- that I had to submit to it in the end. Where should I end up but back on the street..."
