Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary

By Alex Dika Seggerman

Analyzing the modernist art movement that arose in Cairo and Alexandria from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, Alex Dika Seggerman reveals how the visual arts were part of a multifaceted transnational modernism. While the work of diverse, major Egyptian artists during this era may have appeared to be secular, she argues, it reflected the subtle but essential inflection of Islam, as a faith, history, and lived experience, in the overarching development of Middle Eastern modernity.

Challenging typical views of modernism in art history as solely Euro-American, and expanding the conventional periodization of Islamic art history, Seggerman theorizes a "constellational modernism" for the emerging field of global modernism. Rather than seeing modernism in a generalized, hyperconnected network, she finds that art and artists circulated in distinct constellations that encompassed finite local and transnational relations. Such constellations, which could engage visual systems both along and beyond the Nile, from Los Angeles to Delhi, were materialized in visual culture that ranged from oil paintings and sculpture to photography and prints. Based on extensive research in Egypt, Europe, and the United States, this richly illustrated book poses a compelling argument for the importance of Muslim networks to global modernism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Aug 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781469653051

Alex Dika Seggerman

Alex Dika Seggerman is assistant professor of Islamic art history at Rutgers University–Newark.

Book preview

MODERNISM ON THE NILE

ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION AND MUSLIM NETWORKS

Carl W. Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, editors

Highlighting themes with historical as well as contemporary significance, Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks features works that explore Islamic societies and Muslim peoples from a fresh perspective, drawing on new interpretive frameworks or theoretical strategies in a variety of disciplines. Special emphasis is given to systems of exchange that have promoted the creation and development of Islamic identities—cultural, religious, or geopolitical. The series spans all periods and regions of Islamic civilization.

A complete list of titles published in this series appears at the end of the book.

MODERNISM ON THE NILE

ART IN EGYPT BETWEEN THE ISLAMIC AND THE CONTEMPORARY

ALEX DIKA SEGGERMAN

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill

Publication of this book was supported in part by funds from The Sams Fund, Smith College; and The Barakat Trust

© 2019 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Set in Quadraat and Gill Sans by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover illustration: Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Peace (Salam), 1965, oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, Cairo, Egypt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Seggerman, Alex Dika, author.

Title: Modernism on the Nile : art in Egypt between the Islamic and the contemporary / Alex Dika Seggerman.

Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2019] |

Series: Islamic civilization and Muslim networks | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019008133| ISBN 9781469653044 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469653051 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Modernism (Art)—Egypt—History—20th century. | Art, Egyptian—20th century. | Art, Modern—Islamic influences. | Islamic modernism—Middle East—History—20th century. | Arts and transnationalism—Egypt.

Classification: LCC N7381.7 .S44 2019 | DDC 709.62—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008133

The poem Morning Sea (1916) is from C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems by C. P. Cavafy, translated with an introduction, notes, and commentary by Daniel Mendelsohn (© 2009 by Daniel Mendelsohn), and is used here by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. and Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

For Steve, Lucy, and my parents

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration and Translations

Introduction: The Constellation of Egyptian Modernism

1 Future Publics: The Transnational Origins of Egyptian Modernism

2 Mahmoud Mukhtar’s Pharaonic Classicism and Pedagogical Nationalism

3 Lawyerly Luxury of Easel Painting: Mahmoud Said

4 The Beauty of Uncertainty: Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar and the Return of Religion in Art

5 Potent Flows: The Fellaha and Water Jug

Conclusion: At the Intersection of Islam and the Modern

Notes

Bibliography

Index

To see Alex Dika Seggerman’s expanded collection of more than one hundred images related to this book, visit the MAVCOR Journal of the Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion, hosted by Yale University, at mavcor.yale.edu/mavcor-journal/collections/modernism-on-the-nile.

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1.1   Unknown photographer, portrait of Aleya Sadek Yehya Hanem in costume as peasant girl, mid- to late 1920s

1.2   Princess Nazli, double-portrait photograph, in situ, c. 1880

1.3   Femme du peuple, in Description de l’Égypte: ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française, 1809–28, engraving

1.4   Hippolyte Arnoux, Woman in Exotic Costume, c. 1880s, albumen photographic print

1.5   Unknown photographer, portrait of Princess Shewikar, c. 1900–1910

1.6   Venus Photo Studio, portrait of Weslat Aboulfetouh i-Morali Hanem, late 1920s

1.7   Yaʿqub (James) Sanua, Culbute de l’acrobate de Blignières, May 17, 1882, lithograph

1.8   James Gillray, frontispiece, Egyptian Sketches, 1799, etching

1.9   James Gillray, Praetor-Urbanus, in Egyptian Sketches, 1799, etching

1.10 James Gillray, L’insurrection de l’Institut Amphibie, in Egyptian Sketches, 1799, etching

1.11 The Two Memnons—Jointly Noting, in Punch Magazine, January 28, 1882

1.12 Yaʿqub (James) Sanua, Tewfik entrainé par Malet, 1883, lithograph

1.13 Yaʿqub (James) Sanua, Abou Naddara Watching Egypt from Montmartre, Paris, 1883, lithograph

1.14 Yaʿqub (James) Sanua, Sheikh al-Harra (Ismaʿil): Vous m’entassez de murailles! Vous oubliez que mes ailles m’aideront à voler, May 16, 1879, lithograph

1.15 Yaʿqub (James) Sanua, L’assassinat d’une nation, March 8, 1884, lithograph

1.16 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Bride of the Nile, 1930, cast stone, detail

2.1   Photograph of Mahmoud Mukhtar in his studio, Paris, c. 1912

2.2   Prince Youssef Kamal’s palace in Matariya, Cairo, built 1906–26, today the headquarters of the Desert Research Center

2.3   Opera Square, downtown Cairo, built 1870s; photograph taken c. 1934–39

2.4   Alfred Jacquemart, Qasr el-Nil Lions, 1874, bronze, Cairo

2.5   Mahmoud Mukhtar, Saʿd Zaghloul, installed 1938, bronze, Cairo

2.6   Mahmoud Mukhtar, Khawla bint al-Azwar, c. 1912

2.7   Photograph of first exhibit of student artwork from the Egyptian School of Fine Arts, Cairo Automobile Club, 1910

2.8   Photograph of the Festival of the Four Arts at the École des beaux-arts, Paris, c. 1912

2.9   Photograph of Egyptian women protesting during the 1919 revolution, Cairo

2.10 First model of Nahḍat Miṣr (Egypt’s reawakening), subscription card, c. 1920

2.11 Photograph of Mahmoud Mukhtar exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune gallery, Paris, 1930

2.12 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Isis, 1929, marble, detail

2.13 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Khamasin, 1929, cast stone

2.14 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Khamasin, 1929, cast stone

2.15 Mahmoud Mukhtar, Return from the Market, c. 1930, marble

2.16 Mahmoud Mukhtar, The Last Faun, 1926, bronze

3.1   Mahmoud Said, Samiha and Saad, c. 1960, oil on canvas

3.2   Mahmoud Said, Portrait of Ahmed Rassim, 1918, oil on canvas

3.3   Amelia da Forno Casonato, untitled, n.d., oil on canvas

3.4   Mahmoud Said, Portrait of the Architect Jean Nicolaides, 1940, oil on canvas

3.5   Mahmoud Said, Madame Riad, 1938, oil on canvas

3.6   Mahmoud Said, Madame Youssef Zulficar, 1934, oil on canvas

3.7   Mahmoud Said, Half Nude on a Pillow, n.d., oil on canvas

3.8   Mahmoud Said, untitled sketch, early 1920s, ink on paper

3.9   Mahmoud Said, untitled sketch, early 1920s, ink on paper

3.10 Mahmoud Said, Alexandria Mermaid, 1937, oil on canvas

3.11 Mahmoud Said, Negress, 1936, oil on canvas

3.12 Mahmoud Said, Maternity, n.d., oil on canvas

3.13 Mahmoud Said, untitled sketch, n.d., ink on paper

3.14 Map: Mediterranean Egypt, Port of Alexandria, 1908

3.15 Mahmoud Said, Dhour el-Shoueir Mountain, Lebanon, 1951, oil on canvas

3.16 Matson Photo Service, Chouer Valley from D’hour-es-Chouer, 1945

3.17 Art and Liberty Group and Georges Henein, exhibition announcement, Première exposition de l’art indépendant (interior), 1940

4.1   Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Woman from the Primal Stage, late 1940s, ink on paper

4.2   Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar with his wife, Laila, and daughters Tayseer and Yasmeen in Florence, c. 1958

4.3   Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar in London, c. 1956

4.4   Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Abstraction, c. 1960, oil on canvas

4.5   Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar at Gauguin exhibit at Haus der Kunst, Munich, 1960

4.6   Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar visiting the High Dam with students, 1964

4.7   Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Electricity Station at High Dam, 1964, ink on paper

4.8   Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Space Man, 1964, ink on paper

4.9   Excerpt from article Moon 1967 … Ready to Receive Humans, December 30, 1966

4.10 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, preparatory sketch for Peace, 1963, ink on paper

4.11 Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, preparatory sketch for Peace, 1965, ink on paper

4.12 Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar and members of the Contemporary Art Group at Hussein Yusuf Amin’s home, Cairo, 1948

4.13 Photograph of Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar at age eleven with his father and siblings, 1936

5.1   Richard Pococke, Dresses Particular to Egypt, 1743, engraving, detail

5.2   Richard Dalton, Women of Different Distinctions as They Appear on the Streets of Cairo, 1749, engraving

5.3   J. Clark after Thomas Legh, An Egyptian Woman Carrying Water from the Nile, 1817, aquatint

5.4   Edward Lane, Women and Children of the Lower Classes, 1833

5.5   Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Ayoucha Whole Fig[ure], 1843, daguerreotype

5.6   William Brockedon after David Roberts, Entrance at the Temple of Amun, in Egypt and Nubia, 1846–49, chromolithograph

5.7   Hippolyte Arnoux, Femmes fellahs puisant de l’eau aux bords du Nil, 1880, albumen photographic print

5.8   William Holman Hunt, The Prosperity of Egypt, 1860s, etching

5.9   Léon Bonnat, An Egyptian Peasant Woman and Her Child, 1869–70, oil on canvas

5.10 Hippolyte Arnoux, Untitled (1167 from Photographs of Egypt), c. 1880s, albumen print mounted on paperboard

5.11 Mahmoud Mukhtar, On the Canal Banks, c. 1930, marble

5.12 Mahmoud Said, The City (La ville/al-Madīna), 1937, oil on canvas, detail

PLATES (Following page 140)

1      Princess Nazli double-portrait photograph, c. 1880

2      Mahmoud Mukhtar, Bride of the Nile, 1930, cast stone, detail

3      Mahmoud Mukhtar, Nahḍat Miṣr (Egypt’s reawakening), 1920–28, pink granite, Giza, Egypt

4      Mahmoud Mukhtar, Nahḍat Miṣr (Egypt’s reawakening), 1920–28, pink granite, Giza, Egypt, detail

5      Mahmoud Mukhtar, Isis, 1929, marble

6      Mahmoud Mukhtar, Princess, 1927, marble

7      Mahmoud Said, My Wife in a Green Shawl, n.d., oil on canvas

8      Mahmoud Said, The City (La ville/al-Madīna), 1937, oil on canvas

9      Mahmoud Said, Portrait of Édouard Van der Moeren, 1923, oil on canvas

10    Mahmoud Said, Bather, 1937, oil on canvas

11    Mahmoud Said, Marsa Matrouh—Towards Cleopatra’s Bath, 1924, oil on canvas

12    Mahmoud Said, Aswan, n.d., oil on canvas

13    Mahmoud Said, The Girl with the Golden Braids, 1933, oil on canvas

14    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Popular Chorus, 1948–51, oil on panel

15    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Green Man, 1955, oil on canvas

16    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Charter (al-Mīthāq), 1962, oil on canvas

17    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Work, 1964, ink on paper

18    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Peace, 1965, oil on canvas

19    Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, The Story of Zulaikha, 1948, oil on canvas

20    Jean-Léon Gérôme, Fellah Women Drawing Water, c. 1873–75, oil on canvas

21    Mahmoud Mukhtar, On the Canal Banks, c. 1930, marble

22    Inji Efflatoun, A Fellaha in Moment of Reflection, 1958, oil on canvas

23    Inji Efflatoun, Tree of Freedom, 1963, oil on canvas

24    Gazbia Sirry, Abbas Bridge, 1955, oil on canvas

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Modernism on the Nile would not have been possible without the guidance, support, generosity, kindness, and friendship of countless individuals on four continents. Much like the art and artists featured in these pages, my research and writing traversed much space, from Los Angeles to Amman, Stafford to Dubai, and the incredible people I met along the way made this book possible.

Academia is often an isolated experience of endless hours of solitary writing. I am grateful to the robust and warm community of colleagues with whom I shared both productive academic conversations and camaraderie over the years of research and writing: Mitra Abbaspour, Esther Chadwick, Kirtsy Dootson, Julie Elsky, Meredith Gamer, Sylvia Houghteling, Jennifer Josten, Anna Arabindan Kesson, Kevin Lotery, Kavior Moon, Joanne Nucho, Jenni Sorkin, Allie Stileau, Shirley Wong, Amelia Worsley, Ruthie Yow, and Tatsiana Zhurauliova. Special thanks to Suzy Newbury for years of friendship, peer pressure (Cerberus!), and laughs, and especially for convincing her kind parents, Priscilla and Bill, to rent us their garden apartment in Brooklyn Heights. With her specialty in Turkish modern art, Sarah-Neel Smith has been my best interlocutor over the years, and she generously read parts of this manuscript. To Holly Shaffer, from Küçük Ayasofya to the Tate Modern, our conversations and travels have been deeply influential on my scholarship, and your friendship gladdens my soul. And, Anna Lee, thank you for your brilliant friendship that has kept me grounded in reality.

My universities provided the necessary training to do the research and writing included in this book. At Columbia, Zainab Bahrani, Christina Kiaer, and Rosalyn Deustche introduced me to the postcolonialism, totalitarianism, and feminism of modernism. Yale’s History of Art Department laid the groundwork for my career, and I am immensely grateful to Tim Barringer, Nicole Chardiet, Ned Cooke, Milette Gaifman, Jackie Jung, Rob Nelson, and Sally Promey. Many thanks to Alan Mikhail, whose enthusiasm for and expertise on Egypt continue to be an invaluable resource. David Joselit’s steady, poignant questioning since 2007 has formed the major interrogations around which this book is formulated. I drew much from the collections and centers at Yale, including the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Council on Middle East Studies, the Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the Beinecke Rare Book Library, and especially the generous intellectual hospitality of Cindy Roman and Sue Walker at the Lewis Walpole Library.

Doha, Dubai, and Sharjah have become important art centers in the Middle East, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Sharjah Art Foundation. I am thankful to the kind and generous group of supporters whom I met there: Laura Barlow, Valerie Didier Hess, Abdellah Karroum, Joanne Lisinski, Charlie Pococke, Holiday Powers, Hoor Al-Qasimi, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, and Samia Touati.

From 2008 through today, I have encountered innumerable warm and generous people in Egypt who shared their time, their art, their archives, and their stories with me. This book is indebted to the people of the Egyptian art world. The American Research Center in Egypt provided me with a fellowship and helped build scholarly and research connections, thanks to Djodi Deutsch, Jane Smythe, and Madame Amira. My Egyptian mentor, Yasser Mongy, and his wife, Eman Ali, provided the essential art world connections that form the basis of this book. I am truly grateful for their kindness and the many, many cappuccinos at Simonds on 26th of July Street. I am grateful to Hussam Rashwan and Sherwet Shafei for their expansive generosity with their knowledge and art collections. Many thanks to Khaled Sourour, Ahmed Abdelfattah, and Mai Eldib for their generous assistance in securing the cover image for this book. Many thanks also to Lina Osama and Radwa Fouda for their years of friendship, and to Khaled Hafez for welcoming me into his studio with a cardamom coffee. My research in Cairo also intersected with Lara Ayad, Clare Davies, Libby Miller, Dina Ramadan, Nagla Rizk, and Jessica Winegar, and I am grateful to them for sharing resources over the years.

The families of the artists I analyze in this book were essential to the project’s fruition. The entire Gazzar family has been a wonderful support, both in opening their art-filled homes to me and in feeding me delicious molokheya and maashi. Alf shukr to Laila, Fairouz, Tayseer, Yasemin, Adel, and all the kids and grandkids. Gazbia Sirry and her husband, Adel, graciously sat with me for a few hours in 2012, and the interview was one of the highlights of my research. Mahmoud Said’s grandchildren, Samiha and Saad, welcomed me into their homes in Cairo and in Maryland, and I am very grateful for their time and stories. Dr. Emad Abu Ghazi, upon our first meeting, handed me a flash drive containing the entire Mukhtar archive. His commitment to preserving the memory of his granduncle, and the archives of Egypt more broadly, continues to inspire me.

This book crystalized during my three years in western Massachusetts, when I was surrounded by a warm community of scholars and friends at the Five Colleges: Brigitte Buettner, Gülru Çamak, Eglal Doss-Quinby, Taiga Ermansons, Steven Heydemann, Laura Kalba, Barbara Kellum, Karen Koehler, Sura Levine, Michelle Maydanchik, Erica Morawski, Jessica Nicoll, and Greg White. The generosity of Betty Sams and the Smith College Sams Fund supported my research, a major conference, and image subventions for this book. I am particularly grateful to Dana Liebsohn for her professional mentorship during my time at Smith. In Spring 2015, the stars aligned and Sahar Amer moved in next door to me on Paradise Road. I am so very grateful for her friendship and support, and especially her early enthusiasm for this book and bringing it to UNC Press. She also introduced me to her sister, Ghada Amer, and Reza Farkhondeh, whose art has inspired me since 2006. Last but not least, many thanks to Yael Rice and her steady mentorship, friendship, and humor since Renata deposited me in her Philadelphia apartment for the first HIAA in 2008.

I am grateful to the HIAA and AMCA groups, who come together from around the world to support art history of North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In particular, conversations with the following people have enriched my scholarship and my soul: Sussan Babaie, Shelia Canby, Chanchal Dadlani, Ashley Dimmig, Maryam Ekhtiar, Jessica Gerschultz, Christiane Gruber, Anneka Lenssen, Emily Neumeier, Jennifer Pruitt, Elizabeth Rauh, Mary Roberts, Sarah Rogers, Ünver Rüstem, Nada Shabout, and Shreve Simpson. I am especially grateful for Margaret Graves’s kind, years-long collaborative spirit. I am also extremely thankful to Sadia Abbas, Paul Sternberger, and my colleagues at Rutgers University–Newark for welcoming me into their community.

The preparation of this book for publication is much indebted to the careful and expert guidance of Elaine Maisner. I am very thankful to her, Bruce Lawrence, Carl Ernst, the UNC Press team, and the three anonymous readers whose support and precise criticisms made this a better book.

Kishwar Rizvi defied convention in the early 2000s, encouraging me to pursue the study of the modern Middle East. Her steadfast guidance, support, and good humor over the last decade have made not only this book but also my career possible. Thank you, Kishwar, for believing in me and also believing in our discipline’s ability to think differently, even if at a glacial pace.

All of the people, travels, education, and research listed above would not have been possible without the love of my family and close friends. To Becca, Bridget, and Lindsey, thank you for your two decades of friendship. Your fierce commitment to your families and your careers inspires me daily. To Margaret and Tom, thank you for always taking care of the three of us, and especially for helping us get settled in our new home in New Jersey. To my grandparents, Lucia and Islam Dika, who were World War II refugees from Italy and Albania, much of my scholarship is due to discovering the histories from which you came. Your love and stubbornness live on in me and this work. To my parents, Vera and Henry: thank you for introducing me to travel, to different languages and cultures, to art and film (so much film!), to how to walk in high heels, how to get to the airport on time, and how to drive at sixteen. Thank you for giving me a superlative education from preschool to graduate school. Your unending love and support of me and my brain brought this book into being. And, Lucy, your smile makes everything worth it. I look forward to smiling through my next adventure with you.

Steve: your love, support, cooking, jokes, intelligence, criticism, conversation, and parenting made this book possible. You took so many photographs, ate heaping plates of Egyptian food, got a fellowship to work in Cairo, took off endless evenings and weekends to stay home with Lucy while I wrote and traveled for this book. Your precise mind and dedication to helping others through IRAP inspire me to be a better person and write better scholarship. I love you to the ends of the earth.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSLATIONS

This book uses the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system to convert Arabic into English. The citations, however, employ the Library of Congress transliteration (a slightly different system) so that readers may find these sources easily in library collections. For artists’ names, I generally adhere to the spelling that the artist used in his or her own lifetime, even if that spelling if different from the IJMES method, such as Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar, Inji Efflatoun, and James Sanua. The one exception is Mahmoud Mukhtar, who transliterated his own name as Mouktar, dropping the scratchy kha (خ) sound for a European audience in the 1920s. I have decided to spell his name instead as Mukhtar because it is more accurate and will allow easier cross-referencing with transliterated Arabic sources. For Arabic terms and names commonly discussed in academic scholarship or in dialect—such as Nahda, ulema, Muhammad, misr, naddara, and so on—I have dropped the IJMES diacritical marks that denote long vowels and differentiate consonant variations. For Arabic terms used more than five times, I use the official IJMES for the first instance in each chapter, but then I drop the marks in favor of simplification.

To facilitate identification and streamline captions, artwork titles have been translated into English. Occasionally, I note the original Arabic or French titles when the source language connotes an extra layer of meaning. The one major exception to this rule is Mukhtar’s Nahdat Misr (Egypt’s reawakening), for which I retain the original Arabic since the potent word nahḍa reverberates on many levels and cannot be fully captured through an English translation.

While there is no perfect way to express Arabic in English, I hope that these adjustments make the text smoother to read and the terms easy to transliterate back into the original Arabic.

MODERNISM ON THE NILE

INTRODUCTION

THE CONSTELLATION OF EGYPTIAN MODERNISM

The Alexandrian coastline curves gently around the Mediterranean. Tall apartment buildings, packed like sardines, face the sea—their white paint peeling back from the constant onslaught of the saltwater spray. The water gleams electric blue as cars on the corniche whiz by at a suicidal clip. Down a side street in the middle of the city, behind utilitarian steel gates, is a villa filled with paintings. If you walk up the white steps and through the towering beaux arts door into the cool rooms, you may come across a life-size painting of a nude peasant woman in the water, leaning against a boat and gazing gently downward (plate 10). The water around her ankles ripples, mimicking the rolls in her expansive torso. Behind her, women gather water in large jugs, echoing the heavy breasts of the peasant woman. Her hair is tied back in a scarf, its triangular points echoing the sails of the felucca boats bobbing in the water. The composition, though depicting a clearly identifiable Egyptian scene, is constructed by round curves and points that equate the female peasant body with the land and water of Egypt. Though the peasant’s large, olive-skinned body takes up most of the painting, a small white mosque peeks through in the background.

Painted by Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said in 1937, this work presents a cascade of paradoxes for Euro-American art history. The appearance of a voluptuous nude woman next to a mosque in 1937 throws common understandings of Islamic art, modern art, and Orientalist art into a tailspin. Islamic art’s traditional characteristics of aniconism, calligraphy, and floral and geometric motifs are clearly negated in this image, despite the inclusion of a small mosque. Furthermore, while Said focuses on form in the ripples and triangular fabrics, his monumental figurative style is wholly out of step with trends in 1930s Euro-American modernist painting. Lastly, if Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme had painted this image in the 1860s, its exoticism and eroticism of a nude female Egyptian body would conform to his Orientalist worldview that represented European hegemony over an imagined Orient. Instead, an Egyptian artist executed the work in the 1930s, reversing and co-opting the Orientalist formulation. None of these three fields truly help us understand the work. This painting requires, and deserves, a new narrative. This book endeavors to provide just that.

Said clearly addresses these contradictions in the artwork. Like his peers, Said was very aware of the competing histories and art histories at stake when assuming the role of a modern Egyptian artist. He visualizes these tensions in the painting. First, this nude woman defies reality in a number of ways. Neither in Europe nor in Egypt would an actual woman lounge naked in public like this in 1937. Her body does not respect gravity, floating in front of the boat rather than resting on it. Said stylizes and exaggerates the woman’s eyes, lips, breasts, and hips for aesthetic impact. She is an unreal woman. Second, Said presents clear contrasts in accepted versions of art historical styles. Instead of borrowing French avant-garde painterly techniques, Said abstracts the body and landscape only slightly to revel in the sensuality of the female form and her land. Moreover, the little mosque signals that he knowingly flouts common distinctions between Western and Islamic. The irreality of the scene implies Said’s conscious construction of it—the inclusion of the mosque alongside the river and the working bodies was purposeful. While the boat, land, and water surround the woman’s body, her head faces the mosque. She looks away from it, but without shame or concern. It is in this acknowledgment of Islam, and the refusal to be either defined or confined by it, that Egyptian modernism exists.

For Said and other modern Egyptian artists, these contradictions were not problems, rather, they were the characteristics of an Egyptian modernism. This book will explore this expression of the conditions of modernity that arose from the rapidly industrializing urban centers of Alexandria and the capital, Cairo, to the south. As I explore further later in this introduction, modernity was also colored by multiple colonial and cross-cultural exchanges, from Ottoman governance and British occupation to Italian architects and Armenian refugee photographers. This modernism did not and does not fit comfortably into existing divisions within art history. Nevertheless, these Egyptian artists were engaged with those very same art histories, traveling to Paris, Venice, and Munich and collecting art and art history books along the way. When they returned to their studios, they responded by visualizing the cross-cultural, transnational connections of their modernity and the art history of that modernity. They mobilized multiple image traditions, from ancient sculpture to contemporary caricature, not only to express the transnational connections but also to demand that their publics comprehend them. In this way, they interpellated publics into being, creating new networks of cultural and political communication through this visuality.

Before I address the artists and artworks directly, I will explain the overarching operative terminology that will guide this understanding of Egyptian modernism. Simply explaining a chronological narrative of Egyptian modernism would add to an increasing number of histories of twentieth-century art made outside the traditional centers of modernism in Western Europe and the United States.¹ By developing a coherent methodological structure in addition to an archive-based narrative, I argue that Egyptian modernism is fundamentally constellational, pushing back on current models of modernism and presenting a new model for interpreting modern art.

A CONSTELLATIONAL MODERNISM

In the following four sections of this introduction, I lay out the book’s guiding framework. Before addressing how the larger phenomena of Islam, modernism, and the Nahda movement intersect with Egyptian modernism, I will first establish how I use the term constellational in this book. Centrally important to this project was not only to enact a careful, rigorous art historical study of modernism in Egypt but also to provide a methodological framework and conceptual model for other modernisms. Inspired by the work of Sonal Khullar and Leon Wainwright, in this section I develop a new term—constellational—to describe the type of interconnectedness and the aesthetics of Egyptian modernism. Other commonly used terms such as global and transnational lack the specificity necessary to fully explain the history and character of modern painting and sculpture in Egypt. Constellational better describes this movement because it refers to the precise and finite nature of the artists’ connections and also characterizes how these artists visualized these connections in their artworks.

Less than Global

The field of art history, along with the humanities more broadly, is currently experiencing a global turn. From introductory courses to PhD theses, there is a clear and palpable shift away from the Eurocentric art historical narratives of the late twentieth century toward a new, more inclusive art history. As Aruna D’Souza has written, much of this shift has taken an additive approach—new courses, new textbooks, new hires—without a new methodological framework to fully incorporate these new histories.²