In retrospect

Youssef Rakha makes the rounds of galleries
Winding up last week at the Plastic Arts Hall, Opera House, an exhibition of photographs and paintings by Mohamed Sabri offered the gallery-goer the rare opportunity to come in contact with the full range of this artist's achievement. Sabri is well-known as a photographer but little appreciated among "the pioneers" of modern painting (he started his career before 1948); yet, in the words of writer Alaa El-Dib, "beyond every work of the artist, there is a sincere desire to, and a well thought out lesson in how to elevate the sense of sight among people." His first one- man show did not take place until 1988. Among the critics and literati, at least, it proved an astounding success. His almost mathematical precision is intended to simplify and enhance rather than render meaningless or obscure the precepts of everyday reality; as critic Mukhtar El-Attar notes in his classic book The Pioneers of Art, there is always a significant "message" behind the otherwise purely visual fascination of Sabri's works.
A photograph entitled Sunflowers, for example, depicts an unidentified sphere of blazing orange surrounded by real-life foliage and a barely visible cityscape. Abstract it may be: the "flower" is positioned so that it appears to emerge out of the foliage beneath, partially obscuring the grey, concrete realm that lies beyond it. Yet not until reading the title does the viewer fully register its connection with Van Gogh's namesake. Far from being in-you-face or too easy, the "message" is part and parcel of the technical manipulation of the light: and as in Van Gogh, there is something peculiarly, almost metaphysically cheering in the sight of a sunflower, having to do with the affinity between the plant and the sun, a joyful, life- affirming quality that comes through even in the worst circumstances. However dark their surroundings, there are things worth perceiving and living for in this world.
Face, a water colour, is equally precise in approach: the principal role of Sabri's restricted palette is to enhance the expressive qualities of the female face it depicts. The painting demonstrates "the conflict between photography and painting" to which the artists alludes in the brochure accompanying the exhibition: "This conflict, in my estimation, will not stop unless painting and photography reach their own independent targets. Only ancient Egyptian art, in my opinion, enjoys characteristics that are beyond the camera... This exhibition incorporates individual experiments and numerous tendencies that together embody this conflict, which seems impossible to resolve."
Further into the island, and until 8 and 7 February, respectively, Gazbia Sirry and Zeinab El- Seggini exhibit opposite each other at the Safarkhan and Zamalek Galleries, on Hassan Sabri Street. Gazbia Sirry is among the most widely respected painters working in Egypt today; and her latest work, some 40, mostly large-scale oil paintings under the title "People and Time," underline her reputation as an accomplished explorer of the human psyche. Her figures look like a cross between vertically oriented animals and human beings. In remaining hazy and indistinct, their features seem to incorporate the human experience of time: each, the same person at various points in his or her life, is more than a single individual. What's more, they manage to be as varied as the average Cairo sidewalk on a busy day: young and old, joyful and distressed, rich and poor: in a unique -- and far from symbolic -- way, Sirry advances these and other dichotomies.
Time, and its passage, figures not only in the aspect of the figures but in their spatial arrangements against the variously coloured, solid backgrounds; depth is textured, a series of rectangles delineating the temporal as well as spatial. In one painting, for example, three vertical rectangles of various widths -- brick red, green and blue -- cover the space of the canvas entirely, separated by two white lines that seem to form an invisible, empty rectangle in their own right; the figures and their equally indistinct implements -- chairs, houses, containers -- are positioned on top of them across two thirds of the canvas. Some of them are chopped up in two, so as to be present simultaneously within two zones.
Zeinab El-Seggini, by contrast, relies on stylised figures of women and children, depicting them in a number of positions and situations; except for their being either fair or dark skinned, though, there is little variation. And despite their being almost geometrical in conception, El- Seggini's women manage to evoke not a little sensuality. They have large eyes and are not quite three-dimensional, allowing for a wider exploitation of the geometric concept, so that each picture, whether large or small, tends towards the architectural. Tellingly, the emotions El- Seggini's figures evoke tend towards the same: there is sisterly contentment, motherly warmth and, very occasionally, sadness, alertness, concern. On the playground, in the park, by the canal, on the beach, by river bank or at home, women and children go about their lives unaffected.
The small canvases -- mostly in red and brown, though sometimes shifting towards green and blue -- seem to draw on prehistoric paintings and serve to vary the rhythm somewhat. Here the figures, though of the same type, are less distinct and display a propensity for psychological torment. They undertake a different set of activities: one woman rides a bull or calf, another contemplates a flower; the texture is more involved, and the interest in geometric form less pronounced. An uncharacteristically bright, medium-sized painting, depicts a country scene that seems to have no connection with the Egyptian landscape. In another, similarly sized prospect of women and children on the beach, a vast cluster of yellow umbrellas forms a dome that encompasses the vacationers in what looks like a parody of a picture postcard or advertisement: Women and children enjoy themselves on the beach.
Until 7 December a large collection of nudes by George Bahgory occupies the Mashrabeya Gallery, downtown. Nudes of every size and colour, heavy-set nudes with bulky forms and almost invariably expressionless faces: the only common element in the products of this involved stylistic experiment is Bahgory's fascination with a particular kind of female body. The psyche, by contrast, hardly figures at all. Invariably, the abundant, curvaceous figures seem to command an incomprehensible weight. In one painting, a scrawny male exposes himself, holding the tip of the white garment that should have been covering him in his mouth and positioning a transparent sphere in front of him. In contrast to the assured weight of the females, this lone male seems particularly vulnerable. One surmises that the entire exhibition is an ironic comment on female sexual prowess.
Certainly the majority of the women depicted, their faces for the most part inert, seem comfortable enough with themselves. They recline, cross or spread their legs, sit around haughtily like society ladies, undress, expostulate, display their fleshy abundance. They are, moreover, seen from the viewpoint of an excited (and helpless?) voyeur: backsides and breasts figure most prominently, while the postures, some of which recall classic nudes, convey little. Exceptions notwithstanding -- in one small, pale painting, for example, the woman, vulnerable, seems to be deliberately exposing herself, with her arms over her head, in a gesture of submission -- dark, in-your-face reds and blues surround the figures, throwing the curves into relief. Bahgory celebrates the breasts above all else: the torso turns into a rectangular box divided into two squares, each of which houses an enormous, remarkably expressive breast; or else the face is enclosed in a piously iconic rectangle, while the nakedness spreads beneath it. For these and other paintings, Bahgory employs the vaguely Cubist techniques he has often utilised, though in sketches and studies depicting the same subject the cartoonist manages to come through.
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