Translation

Interview with the Bahraini artist Nasser Al-Yousif from the cultural magazine "Al-Bahrain Al-Thaqafiya" (Issue 2, October 1994).

An Experience that Embroiders the World: A Study and Interview with Visual Artist Nasser Al-Yousif

By Mohammed Ahmed Al-Banki - Writer and Journalist from Bahrain

Photography: Anwar Habeel

Translation

Introduction

"People without heritage have no value" [1]

This statement by Nasser Al-Yousif in a previous press interview defines the path his artistic experience would take and the visionary reservoir behind it. Indeed, Nasser Al-Yousif has remained throughout time a believer in the vitality of Islamic art and folk art, both of which surrounded his childhood world: growing up in Muharraq with its distinctive beautiful decorative architecture, his family's work in cutting and embroidering bishts (traditional cloaks) where the most skilled craftsmen from the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula gathered at the family home, and an early awakening passion for the heroics of Antar and the migrations of the Hilalians, where the young child absorbed heritage stories and repeated them in gatherings.

This possession that shaped the perceptions around Nasser remained strongly radiant and active in all his subsequent artistic life stages. Hardly any press interview with him lacks a celebratory reference to these phenomena that surrounded his early aesthetic experiences (and perhaps what carries special significance in this context is the repetition of the word "memories" in the names of Nasser Al-Yousif's paintings: "Diver's Memories (1)", "Diver's Memories (2)", "Diver's Memories (3)", "Childhood Memories", "Memories of the Diver").

All of this left its distant effects on Nasser Al-Yousif's artistic experience on more than one level. His techniques and colors went in directions compatible with the givens of this environment, and the importance of artistic construction through the surface of the image emerged in his sense, and his experience dealt with emptiness and space in the painting in a special and highly significant way. As for his subjects, they mostly relied on a rich childhood visual memory, and his visions built their semantic world through a generative model that harmonizes with a classical system of seeing the world through which forms emerge from a single first form that is the origin to which the laws of things return and the source from which meanings harmonize and align.

Throughout time, Nasser Al-Yousif was aware of the sources of his aesthetic research. The joyful childhood images were reinforced by what memories were captured from scenes of Islamic architecture when Nasser was among the traveling artists traversing villages and touring cities with his artistic companions: Al-Areedh, Al-Sunni, Al-Bosta, Sawar, and Al-Arifi. Such tours gave Al-Yousif rich observations and overwhelming love for the environment and its simple people, as well as a direct ability to express, remarkable fluency when executing the painting, and distinctive skill in giving immediate formations and colors their rare spontaneity. These qualities were the first lessons learned from the vitality of sketches and their quick drawings.

Translation

The Interview

Question 1: About the Human Figure and Space

Al-Banki: I see that the human occupies a central position in your artistic experience. While your early experiences present the human in an environment bustling with decorations, clustered masses, and repeated geometric motifs, your later experiences are more generous regarding the space given around your human figure.

It seems to me that the topography of emptiness in your experience deserves pause and contemplation. Can you tell us about your sense of the transformations your experience gives to emptiness and whether these transformations are made consciously or not?

Al-Yousif: The sixties and seventies represented stages of benefit and knowledge on the general level of my artistic experience. During those years, I had many trips to Cairo and Baghdad, where I visited museums and had opportunities to read and benefit from the living experiences of artists who preceded me in this field. How much I was struck by Egyptian artists' interest in their heritage... From here, I began to wonder and inquire, and it seemed to me then that these artists were starting from their heritage to confirm an artistic identity they wanted for their arts. I really liked this idea at the time.

These interactions, in addition to the childhood environment infused with diving life (where I was raised in the house of Ali bin Saeed - a great captain - and I have foster brothers from this captain's family, may God have mercy on him) and the human sympathy we lived mixed with heritage and plaster decorations on walls and wooden engravings on doors - all of this accumulated in memory and imposed its presence on the experiences I presented in the sixties and seventies. During them, I presented the human surrounded by his decorations and beautiful world, as if I wanted to express the intimacy of mixing and human sympathy.

As for after the seventies, the vision expanded and the experience opened up to issues of social injustice and issues of people's suffering, which made the human in my work during these stages embedded in a gelatinous void, indicating that he began to lose his existence as a human.

Translation

Question 2: About the Door Motif

Al-Banki: From surveying a good number of your paintings, I found that one traditional architectural detail appears frequently in your experience, and I mean here: the door.

The door repeats a lot in your paintings. In "Diver's Wedding", "Henna Dough", "Diver's Memories", "Bride of the Gulf"... etc. Sometimes there may be no door in the painting but it is replaced by formations that suggest the shape of a door, as in the painting "God Protects the Fruit" in the poetry collection "Thirst of Palms" by poet Ali Abdullah Khalifa, where the hand movements of the woman and man form what resembles a door in the center of the painting. Sometimes the door is emphasized despite its absence by evoking one of its accessories, like evoking the key in "Celebrations" and "Seven Eyes".

The insistence of the door on Nasser Al-Yousif's experience, I imagine, is hardly matched in the circle of local creative experiences in various fields of art, except for the door's insistence on Qasim Haddad's poetic experience, who often uses this word and has a poem titled "The Door".

What's striking here is that you and Qasim belong to one neighborhood in Muharraq, famous for its Islamic architecture and traditional carved doors. Does the employment of the door's significance relate to this surrounding environment... or do we seek the door's dominance in religious significance, as we all memorize the hadith attributed to the Prophet (PBUH): "I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its door," or do we explore other relationships? What is the secret of this strange interest of yours in the door in your artistic experiences?

Al-Yousif: The door is one of four elements that repeat in my experiences: the dove, the cat, the rooster, and the door... Since I was seven years old, my father - may God have mercy on him - noticed my interest in door carvings and my passion for following the curves and protrusions carved on doors through touch. One day, my father took me to some specialists in door making and carving, and there one of them explained to me with great joy how to make these doors and execute their carvings.

With my readings when I grew up, and I am a voracious reader by the way, I understood that everything in this life has a door.

Al-Banki: Is it a philosophy lurking behind your paintings?

Al-Yousif: Yes... and I believe that interest in the door means interest in what's inside. The door represents to me the beginning of things. The door is the key to all knowledge. I believe that the door in my paintings, consciously or unconsciously, represents these meanings, so it often repeats with me. I can also say that the door is the human in a sense - you don't know the human unless you knock on his door.

As for the dove, it is for me the gentle, friendly bird (and raising pigeons is a hobby I've practiced since childhood until now). The dove is a childhood friend and a symbol of tranquility, peace, and reassurance. I often feel that the dove represents the original goodness of humans before civilization polluted it. When cats would sneak into pigeon locations to eat the chicks when I was young, I was in constant war with cats and often fell from heights trying to prevent the cat from reaching the pigeon's nest!

The cat for me represents evil, but its significance sometimes transforms to a good one, so you see the cat in one painting as gentle, while in others it's a blatant-fanged beast. Perhaps I say the same thing about the rooster, as it's an old friend of mine - in our old house, I had a rooster that accompanied me with familiarity and love, but his temperament would change whenever anyone else approached him, as if he felt isolated and searched earnestly for another place. The rooster for me represents the man - he always has exaggeration in feelings of self-esteem, and perhaps with colorful feathers, thus he believes he is the beginning and end of the universe, even though he is a simple creature among creatures.

These elements combined are often my tools for approaching any idea. My paintings depend on ideas - the idea is the basic component I seek, and I believe this puts me into a challenge to test abilities... a challenge to the ability to express, and a challenge to the ability to highlight feeling.

Translation

Question 3: About the Eyes

Al-Banki: I'm often struck by these eyes that are wide to an exaggerated degree sometimes, and narrow to an exaggerated degree at other times, which you always broadcast in your paintings. Nasser Al-Yousif's experience has a degree of specificity in dealing with the eye. I may have my own interpretation of this aspect, but in this context, I aspire to hear your opinion.

Al-Yousif: I consider the eye another door to discovering the human. The gaze in some of my paintings means injustice, and in other paintings means sorrow or hope. It's also sometimes an objective equivalent to the ability to express the soul's being. The eye is one of the doors I resort to for expressing what's inside me.

In any case, I feel the distinction of the eye in my paintings, and I know that. As I told you, I present an idea and don't chase after drawing empty scenes. Conversing with the idea is very difficult - in this case, there must be deliberation, study, and awareness of the artistic process. When an idea occupies me that needs crystallization, it takes me a long time, sometimes reaching months, and this idea may trouble me. My wife knows this trait about me and has gotten used to me getting up in the middle of the night sometimes and going to the studio, not necessarily to paint but to take a period of contemplation, then return to sleep! This state may repeat until a moment comes when I feel that a ray of an idea has emerged. Then I began working seriously and continuously, paying no attention to the passing time. Thus, I enter the studio at ten in the evening sometimes and don't leave until seven the next morning after the idea has crystallized and become clear.

Translation

Question 4: About Materials

Al-Banki: Your artistic experience is rich and varied regarding the use of materials. I almost say you've practiced most types of materials - you started with colored pencils and felt-tip pens, then practiced oil and watercolors, gouache and collage, then moved to graphics... etc.

I assume that the material is never neutral, meaning that choosing the material is part of the essence of the experience and not just an external means that can be replaced with another... The material intervenes in shaping the artist's vision and is not an innocent use of things. Thus, the density of a certain material in a certain phase for one artist differs in significance from the density of another material for another artist. From this perspective, what does all this diversity in materials mean in Nasser Al-Yousif's experience?

Al-Yousif: I imagine that the diversity of materials for me is linked to the cultural yield in each phase. When I was a teacher (and I worked in teaching for about thirteen years), I always urged my students not to commit to a specific material. I encouraged them to experiment. I aimed for them to test their abilities themselves, as the material for me is a field for knowledge and a field for culture.

For example, I distinguish myself by using a certain material, but it happens that this material doesn't help me properly express my ideas in some cases, so what do I do? Watercolors don't help me highlight a mass or texture - here I resort to acrylic or to household materials I use in my paintings: I may resort to fabric or burlap, for example. The material is distinguished by providing me with the most suitable conditions to express my idea.

The relationship with a certain material may be an artistic specificity. I remember, for example, that one of the bookstores brought acrylic material as a sample 25 years ago and distributed free samples to some artists. The fact is that this material, when used in executing the painting, needs intuition and ability for speed in execution because it's prone to drying quickly. What happened is that some colleagues didn't like it because they couldn't control it, but I liked this material and still work with it today. I see it has advantages that give me the same effects as oil paint, watercolor effects, and charcoal and pencil effects.

Translation

Question 5: About Experimentation

Al-Banki: Nasser Al-Yousif's experience, like any artistic experience, achieves a proportion of resorting to experimentation and a proportion of maintaining original elements that form the experience's identity. What's noticeable is that resorting to experimentation emerged from an early stage with you. I'm thinking here of a painting like "Hamad Mosque 1966," where you used a simplified expressive style. But despite that, I find myself inclined to say that the constant in your experience was always greater than the variable. Experimentation with you has always been bridled by reason, examining and preserving its footholds. Do you agree with such a description?

Al-Yousif: This is correct. I'm keen on benefiting from experience. Experimentation for me is adding new culture to my culture, and not experimentation for the sake of experimentation.

I presented experimental paintings since the beginning of the sixties. In 1961, specifically, I painted "The Potter." This painting was done in a pure cubist manner after I reviewed some experiences of the French artist Léger. I remember that this painting was met with disapproval at the time from artists who mocked these squares and rectangles that they decided couldn't achieve drawing the potter!

Experience is a cultural step, and what's important is benefiting from each experience to its fullest, because experiences for the artist are what lead him to expand perceptions.

Translation

Question 6: Open Space for Final Thoughts

Al-Banki: I'd like at the end of this meeting to leave a free space for you to say what you wish, or answer questions I haven't asked at all. It's a space where I leave you the freedom of what you want to convey to readers and those connected with your experience through it.

Al-Yousif: I'd like to address what has become of the local art movement that we gave so much of our lives and time to, and find that, unfortunately, today it's on the path of decline. Algae with teeth have grown in our local arena that have been able to gnaw at everything, and this is what grieves the soul.

Even in the existing art associations, there are elements whose concern is material profit and not artistic culture. Although I know that time has its historical cycle and that what's correct in the end is only what's correct, I hope these artists wake up from what they've become and direct their artistic works to future generations, as we have responsibilities toward educating and raising awareness among the youth.

Art is a message from the artist to the following generations, and I hope everyone realizes the honor of this message.

Translation

Analytical Section: Islamic Aesthetics and Artistic Influences

Islamic Aesthetics

Regarding the referential backgrounds upon which Nasser Al-Yousif's experience is built, we can state with some confidence that a large portion of this referential space is dominated by the aesthetics of Islamic art, known for its liberation from the academic drawing rules imposed by European artistic development in terms of perspective, shadow and light, proportions, and anatomy. It breaks free from the constraints of creating illusions of realistic space to embrace the absolute and spatiotemporal abstraction, and focuses on the deep spirituality underlying existence rather than the immediate form of elements in this existence. This opens up an intensification of the experience's symbolism and enriches its world with codes and significations that reduce things to what is essentially structural only.

A considerable portion of the reference also points to the role of folk influence in Nasser Al-Yousif's aesthetic background. In truth, it would be excessive to overemphasize the separation between manifestations of folk art and Islamic art. The most we can describe the first art with is that it's a variation that benefits from the specificity of local culture in presenting subsidiary patterns of the more comprehensive Islamic art. Thus, a local character of decoration will intervene in the nature of components that Nasser Al-Yousif selects from Islamic art, as will some folk beliefs related to the evil eye and the harm of eyes and the symbolism of certain animals, in addition to suggestions of some intervention from the aesthetics of certain literary and artistic genres like the mawwal and sea arts in supplying Al-Yousif's paintings with their tributary referential culture.

In all cases, we will find the effects of these influences, in addition to some features of primitive art and child art - and the common ground between them and Islamic art and folk art is relatively large despite the differences - essential in Nasser Al-Yousif's painting (this doesn't mean, of course, negating the openings that Nasser Al-Yousif creates to various European art schools, especially Cubism in the sixties, Expressionism throughout the experience, and Abstractionism since the mid-eighties).

Translation

The Artist's Compositions

Composition in Nasser's work (especially in paintings before the Israeli invasion of Lebanon - 1982) is based on distributing masses in a way that contains the void in the painting. We might find roots for this in the Islamic epistemological structure that makes what is spiritual (the ethereal - the undefined - the void) contained within what is material (the universe - the body - the mass). This compositional characteristic in Nasser's work will appear clearer to us if we compare it with Dia Al-Azzawi's compositions on the Arab level, for example [2], or locally with Sheikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa's compositions and the role that void plays in highlighting them within the painting's frame.

The role of void is subject to constant diminishment in Nasser Al-Yousif's paintings of the seventies. If we contemplate paintings like "Diver's Wedding" (108x76 cm - oil - 1969), or "Diver's Memories-2" (10x14 cm - watercolor - 1969), or "Diver's Memories-3" (18x12 cm - watercolor - 1969), or "The Woman" (20x14 cm - watercolor - 1974), or "The Green Land" (112x76 cm - oil - 1977), or "Childhood Memories" (56x41 cm - acrylic - 1974), or "Ya Muairis" (61x51 cm - acrylic - 1979), we will find that void is combated throughout the painting, and the architectural formulas are close to Islamic and Eastern formulas that deliberately fill space through achieving certain symmetries and geometric repetitions of decorative elements working on a compositional basis that relies on retrieving the motif and repeating the visual theme drawn from traditional life vocabulary: basket, chest, decorative circles, traditional doors... etc., and executing this technically through the dominance of vertical lines (with their reference to mythological dimensions revolving around the celestial, power, and eternal life in Islamic conception [3]), dropping the third dimension to serve spatiotemporal abstraction and flattening the scene presented by the painting, and deliberately absenting the laws of anatomy in drawings of people and animals while placing the human at a point of visual polarization that controls the distribution of other compositional elements.

Transformation and the Allegory Template

Beginning in the early eighties, perhaps with Al-Yousif's joint exhibition with Ibrahim Bousaad about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon - 1982, the experience would transcend some of its previous premises. Void would begin invading some of the painting's spaces, and artist Al-Yousif would practice noticeable economy and reduction in embroidering the world around the human, who would remain central in this phase's paintings as well, but with a degree of alienation and desolation, and with a degree of transformation of the beings inhabiting the painting - men, women, and familiar animals - into gelatinous, deformed creatures of strange composition, as in "Lebanon Burns" (60x122 cm - acrylic - 1982), or in "The Fall" (74x58 cm - acrylic and other materials - 1982), or "The Family and the Cat" (18x14 cm - colored inks - 1983), for example. They may transform into fragments or shards that resemble fingers or eyes and other human embodiments, as in "Sabra and Shatila" (29x40 cm - colored inks - 1981) or "Napalm" (22x29 cm - watercolor - 1989) in a way that may recall (while being aware of the area of difference) Picasso's creatures tormented by wars and the horrors of destruction [4].

This phase would also witness the flourishing of the allegory template on the level of vision, shaping the painting. The focus on animals would represent an extension of previous phases where Nasser Al-Yousif gave special artistic attention to cats, birds, roosters, and doves. But the experience would now know broader metaphor on the symbolic level, where the cat would be dedicated to signifying the evil impulses that sometimes possess men (note the significance of diverting attention from highlighting the cat's masculinity in "Waiting" - acrylic and other materials - 1979, and focusing, by contrast, on features of the cat's masculinity in "The Fall" - acrylic and other materials - 1982, even though the two paintings represent a sequential succession on a narrative level despite the temporal difference in execution years). The rooster would be dedicated to signifying the normal state of man, where impulses of good, pride, and susceptibility to taming intermingle even with apparent arrogance (and the woman usually holds the reins of taming in Al-Yousif's artistic world). We can note here the references made in paintings like "The Pampered Rooster" (20x15 cm - watercolor - 1985), "The Revolutionary Rooster" (28x20 cm - watercolor - 1985), and "The Game" (37x27 cm - watercolor - 1985).

Translation

The Structure of Significance

Nasser Al-Yousif's worlds don't leave us long to spell out entering them. There's something that emerges, suddenly, soft and ritualistic but highly instructive. What it marks is something related to us - we see ourselves in it, a parallel space of memory spaces usually, or perhaps a childhood nostalgia that Al-Yousif knows how to grant its eruption whenever we distance ourselves from ruins and homelands.

You may review the examples if you wish: "Diver's Memories", "Childhood Memories", "Mother of Khanaq", "From the Nights of a Thousand and One Nights", "Henna Dough", "Ya Muairis", "Diver's Wedding". Nasser Al-Yousif's names for his paintings are an exit from the night of meaning, an exit from what becomes faint in resonance (yet made to vibrate nonetheless).

There's no unidimensionality here. Everything that pulses in the extension of the canvas is an interrelation of calls, each addressing us with what doesn't address the other. There's no call except that it's a nation of nations, a reproduction of significance lineages to infinity. Thus Nasser Al-Yousif's mental scene confronts us crowded, overflowing, and enticing to those who don't prepare for visual reading with its conditional equipment.

The Human as Central Figure

The human appears as a common denominator in most of Nasser's paintings. If we tried just to review the names of paintings that record human presence, it would take too long. From the first documentary sketches in the early experience, through the phase of focusing on the diver and farmer, reaching the phase of fragments and reductions indicating the creature's ordeal, extending to the allegory or symbolic story phase, and ending with the last phase (after losing sight) where his human clings to a mysterious tendency toward kingdoms of memory and intimacy with fleeting time - the human remains the pole of Nasser Al-Yousif's world and the mover of the experience and its highest aspirations.

The insistence on evoking the human form in Al-Yousif's experience is always coupled with establishing a transformative relationship with this being's features, dimensions, physiology, and perspective properties [9]. However, this transformation doesn't touch what's essential in humanity. This aspect remains beyond manipulation of its significances and references. Rather, we can say that Nasser Al-Yousif adds a reverential dimension to this essence, defending it against every skirmish or attempt at belittlement.

The human is a supreme value that accepts no bargaining or bidding on positions for this artist.

Translation

Conclusion

Nasser Al-Yousif's painting begins from heritage and ends by linking the humans' highest value to their abundant ability to generate from this heritage. Can we say that in this exceptional authenticity lies the source of distinction from which this artist proceeds?

Nasser Al-Yousif is a distinguished artistic experience that circumstances willed to be mortgaged between two struggles: a first struggle represented in establishing modern visual art in this country, with a group of pioneers who suffered from conditions of hardship and lack of resources until, over time, the traditions of the artistic movement were established and institutions rose to their role in care and attention; and another struggle represented in the circumstances resulting from loss of sight in recent years - the most important sense for the visual artist. Despite this, Nasser Al-Yousif's talent remained burning, its fire never extinguished, and his relationship with the painting and brush remained connected, setting the most wonderful examples even in the darkest times.

We didn't want our meeting with him to be a meeting of consolation or elicitation of feelings. Nasser Al-Yousif, owner of the slogan "Disability doesn't prevent achievement," transcends all this, and his recent artistic achievements far exceed restricting them to such unfair conditions.

Footnotes

[1] Nasser Al-Yousif, press interview conducted by Ali Abdullah Khalifa in Akhbar Al-Khaleej newspaper, January 16, 1984.

[2] Shaker Laibi writes in Mawaqif magazine - Beirut - Issue 67 - Spring 1992, which we agree with: "The eye can, at this moment, easily recognize the works of Dia Al-Azzawi (born in Baghdad 1939) and attribute them to him... They are subject to a type of composition that deviates little, centered on establishing one or two main elements, a mass or two masses that don't occupy the entire painting and leave a functional space for the void that escalates the dramatic effect of the mass floating in color, that is, on a background that is mostly one color."

[3] On the philosophy of lines in Islamic art, see: Sakhr Farzat; Introduction to Aesthetics in Islamic Architecture, Arab Arts Magazine, United Kingdom - Issue 5 - 1982 - pp. 80-89.

[4] Nasser's designs in this phase will begin indicating a more worldly environment, and architecture with open doors takes on a new meaning filled with playful and nostalgic tendencies. In truth, we chose to illuminate the treatment of doors in Al-Yousif's experience through a question we directed to the artist in the attached interview with this study. However, we glimpse in Nasser's fascination with treating houses as an artistic subject something that deserves an independent study in the future. Folk houses have been found in paintings representing different stages of Al-Yousif's artistic experience, and the artist settled on one feeling in a phase of returning from treatment in Germany, limiting his subjects during it to drawing houses representing local architecture in the sixties. He participated in these paintings in a joint triple exhibition (with Abdullah Youssef and Abdul Karim Al-Bosta) as part of Al-Arouba Club's golden jubilee celebration. Comparison in this context has its merit if it seeks to illuminate this objective phase of the artist's life with a similar phase of another artist, like the Egyptian Gazbia Sirry, who continued drawing only houses in all her paintings throughout the period from 1968 to 1973.

[5] Allegory: A method of presentation where a person, event, or abstract idea symbolizes both itself and something else. We find it in stories where characters and their actions are understood on a basis different from their surface appearance - there are expanded meanings possessing moral or spiritual conceptions more significant than the story itself, making the characters symbols of other things. (Definition adapted from: Ibrahim Fathi: Dictionary of Literary Terms. Arab United Publishers Institution - Tunisia - 1st Edition - 1986 - pp. 310-311).

[6] Translation: Najib Al-Mani. Arab Arts Magazine, United Kingdom, Issue 5 - 1982 - pp. 46-53.

[7] Although we tend to have reservations about the mechanical sorting and classification of Arab artists based on European artistic trends, due to the overlap of influences and the difficulty of talking about complete and clearly defined schools in current Arab visual arts experiences.

[8] "Debt of meaning" is a modern concept crystallized by French researcher Marcel Gauchet and invested in Arabic by Mohammed Arkoun. It revolves around expressing states of voluntary human submission to what satisfies the desire to reach a full meaning. Obedience here stems from an internal, subjective necessity, not from the standpoint of being crushed under external coercion. Hence, the legitimacy acquired by what offers a debt of meaning doesn't need to resort to force for people to accept it.

[9] Note a manifestation of this transformation in Al-Yousif's way of drawing human faces, which appear to benefit greatly from African mask models and their exaggerations in highlighting certain features, especially the overwhelming presence of wide, gaping eyes and sometimes deeply attractive sunken eyes.

[10] We can link Al-Yousif's fascination with binary compositions in painting names and the use of correlatives, coordinating one word with another, and using dual terms with this dualistic conceptual view of the world. Note, for example, the names of the following paintings: The Rooster and the Sun (1970), The Woman and the Palm Tree (1981), The Family and the Cat (1983), The Cat and the Bird (1985), Two Women (1985), The Two Sisters (1988).