Translation

Al-Wasat Newspaper Article: Perspectives on the Late Nasser Al-Yousif's Experience at Kanoo Cultural Center

Al-Wasat Newspaper

Issue 3738, Saturday, December 1, 2012

Spaces Section

By Al-Musalla - Spaces Editor

Evening Discussion on Bahrain's Late Artist

The Abdulrahman Kanoo Cultural Forum organized an evening event titled "Perspectives on the Experience of Bahrain's Late Artist Nasser Al-Yousif" with the participation of several artists at the Forum's hall in Al-Musalla. Speaking during the evening were visual artist Abdul Karim Al-Orayed and artist Abdullah Youssef, while artist Mahmoud Al-Mulla moderated the discussion. The conversation began with visual artist Abdul Karim Al-Orayed, the late artist Nasser Al-Yousif's teacher, who noted that he was the first to discover Al-Yousif's genius while he was still at the beginning of his journey.

Al-Areedh: Al-Yousif is a Son of Humanity... and I Discovered His Genius

Artist Al-Orayed described Al-Yousif as one of those "whom we call sons of humanity, as what they presented in their specific societies transcended those societies to the broad global community."

He added, "This evening, we are talking about a person who lived among us for a period of time and departed after giving what he could in the field of visual arts. His giving had a special characteristic. He strived to highlight his personal experience while working within the scope of his peers among the pioneers of the visual arts movement in Bahrain, who were in turn striving to create distinguished artistic ideas to create a special model for visual art characterized by locality and stemming from the environment and folk heritage."

Al-Orayed then read something from Al-Yousif's biography that had been written at Al-Areedh's request: "In 1976, some suggested I compile a book about the pioneers of the visual arts movement in Bahrain. This was in Rabat during the third conference of the Arab Visual Artists Union. I asked the artists present on the artistic scene in Bahrain for each one to write their own life story so the book would be comprehensive. I asked Nasser to write his life story in his handwriting."

Abdullah Youssef: The Victor Over Sight Through the Light of Art

Under the title "Circumstances," Youssef began his talk about the late artist's experience, noting that speaking about the late visual artist Nasser Al-Yousif's experience "is both difficult and easy at the same time. Difficult because, may God have mercy on him, he accomplished a rich artistic experience, broad in scope and variety, making it difficult to contain it all when we intend to speak about it. And the talk is easy at the same time because Nasser Al-Yousif's experience celebrated all the simple daily life vocabulary in the neighborhoods, alleys, and quarters of Bahrain's cities and villages, where his experience artistically documented humans - women, men, and children - prevailing fashions, domestic animals, birds, palm trees, household utensils, traditional percussion instruments, authentic traditional architecture, and other things prevalent in Bahraini society. This was like pioneering in documenting that on the visual and artistic level, forming a rich memory for the artist himself and the people of Bahrain."

He added that Al-Yousif "accomplished between 1968 and 1969 a group of drawings using black ink in their execution technique. They were characterized by extreme spontaneity and simplicity, and stunning expressive eloquence. 'Thirst of Palms' published in 1970 for poet Ali Abdullah Khalifa - what's striking about that experience," as Youssef adds, "is that Nasser Al-Yousif accomplished it in the vigor and vitality of his artistic experience, managing it as a reservoir for upcoming artistic projects in his artistic project that was then becoming established, excelling, and consciously seeking to surpass the achievements of the visual arts movement not only in Bahrain but throughout the Gulf region."

He noted, "Al-Yousif later accomplished a large distinguished group of paintings using various materials, colors, and execution methods, developing in them solid, high-level readings, significations, and condensed symbolisms, which he based on the reservoir of his expressive achievement and the significations of mawwals and what they suggested in terms of content."

But what's most striking, worthy, and surprising, as Youssef points out, "is that the reservoir of those sketches and their execution technique in black ink are the same ones he later drew upon and subjected with stunning mastery and capability to execute striking new works when his sight failed him, while he remained loyal and faithful to his artistic and technical savings in the drawings that secured the mawwals in 'Thirst of Palms.' He was aware to the furthest extent and completely that mawwals don't betray and palm trees don't retreat."

He then said, "Thanks to insight with solid will and high determination, he formed an exceptional pivotal station in the geography of his fertile artistic project, and in the context of all artistic movements in general, wherever they were, because drawing with insight is a talent that many artists truly lack."

Al-Mulla: He Challenged Darkness with the Light of Art

Moderator artist Mahmoud Al-Mulla read excerpts from articles published by Al-Wasat newspaper during the late artist's death in 2006, when Al-Wasat had dedicated space celebrating the late artist. Al-Mulla read part of an article that artist Abdullah Youssef himself had written for the newspaper then, in which he said about Al-Yousif that he was "the visual artist who, when his sight was blocked, challenged darkness with more light of art, in a challenge whose occurrence is a brilliant indication of a creative faculty that challenged the betrayal of the most important sense that helps it at all to see life's things in order to transform them into visual paintings pulsing with expression, momentum, beauty, and strength. Here he identifies with another unique case represented in the genius musician Beethoven, who created his most wonderful music when the sense of hearing left him forever."

Excerpts from Artist Nasser Al-Yousif's Biography... As He Wrote It

"In Muharraq, I was born in 1940, and when I mention Muharraq, pulses of memories come to my mind. I remember the Al-Baqshi house where I was born with its wide courtyard, long corridor, and the big door (Abu Khokha), and a room on the left from inside where there was a large chest with gleaming gilded nails placed on four wooden cylinders grooved in the middle. I remember those cylinders were colored with wide stripes - yellow and green in the middle, then yellow and red again... Next to that chest was a large basket of woven bamboo where colored straw repeated in red and green... These are distant memories... All that remains of them in my memory are colors and decorations...

I remember when we moved to Manama... I was eight years old... I remember the house we lived in in Manama... I remember its corridor, the well, and the palm frond room (a room where palm fronds were collected for use in lighting fires for cooking)... I remember the pigeons... that bird I loved and still love... I had been given a pair that multiplied... I remember I was in constant war with cats that would attack them and eat their young... I have drawn pigeons a lot... I would draw them in textbooks, in drawing notebooks, on the classroom blackboard, and on the walls of neighborhood houses with charcoal.

Those memories have become distant now after the years have passed, but some still resist forgetting... Among them are memories of being dazzled by the paintings hanging in the inner hall of the elementary school, where the hall was headed by a theater painting by Mr. Salman Al-Sabbagh and the Mona Lisa by Mr. Karim Al-Orayed, and other paintings I don't remember... I would stand dazzled before them and wish to draw like them.

Mr. Karim Al-Orayed had a favor I can never forget - he selected me for the school's drawing society when I was in fourth grade elementary, and he would always urge us to work and produce, hanging what we produced in the classroom and school hall, which had a great effect in igniting our desire and developing our drawing hobbies.

In secondary school, there was another teacher who had great favor upon us - Mr. Ahmed Al-Sunni, for whom we hold the highest appreciation for the help he provided us that enabled us to feel our way in artistic performance.

I participated in all school exhibitions in elementary and secondary school. But the first non-school exhibition I participated in was in 1957, in the agricultural exhibition held in Andalus Garden, and my participation was with a painting, "Winter Evening," representing a family around a brazier glowing with embers, surrounded by a tea kettle and coffee pot.

After graduating from the teachers' section, I was appointed as a teacher at Salmaniya Elementary School, where the distinguished artist Aziz Zubari also taught, and I benefited greatly from him as he never withheld any artistic information from me... Then I joined the family of art enthusiasts. And the real journey in my artistic life began... Our meetings were almost daily in the family... Karim Al-Areedh... Karim Al-Bosta... Rashid Sawar... Rashid Al-Arifi... Aziz Zubari. Those meetings had a great impact on our artistic formation... through the discussions that took place among us... and the artistic articles we read in magazines and newspapers published in those days like Contemporary Thought, Al-Majalla, Arts, Syrian Knowledge, and others...

Alongside those meetings, we would go out to cities and villages on many Fridays and official holidays to draw from nature, and we drew a lot... in cafes, popular neighborhoods, orchards, the sea, and ships... We held several exhibitions at the British Cultural Institute, Bapco Club, and local clubs, from the drawings and sketches we made during our wanderings.

In 1967, Carreras Craven "A" company held a competition to select works from Arab countries, Bahrain being one of them, and I was happy that one of my paintings was among the group selected from Bahrain. The exhibition toured seven Arab countries and three European countries.

I remember that during our wanderings, the popular plaster decorations on the facades of houses in Diraz village and in some houses in Muharraq and Manama caught my attention, so I would record every type of those decorations in my notebook... I was interested in divers' stories, so the idea fermented in me to draw some of those stories. I began preparing sketches and preliminary drawings for them and collecting stories told about diving by the elderly...

The collection of Kuwaiti poet Mohammed Al-Fayez, "Light from Within," was published, and when I read it, I felt it embodied the meanings I was searching for. I began painting my seven paintings about diving - they were large-sized and painted in oil. When I finished them, I exhibited them at the Bahrain Artists Family exhibition in Kuwait in 1969. My joy was great as I found a positive response to those paintings. Kuwait's Al-Arabi magazine selected one of my paintings, "Diver's Wedding," and published it in color on its inside cover in issue 111, December 1969."