Fertile Crescent

Some observers see signs of improvement — the death toll from violent attacks is certainly down in comparison to previous years, and there is some semblance of normality — but Baghdad does not look likely to figure as a ‘capital of culture’ in the near future.

Yet this is what Baghdad was. The foremost city of the Arab world, Baghdad in the early fifties was a cosmopolitan hub with a vibrant artistic and cultural life. There were regular exhibitions, sponsorship, scholarships and commissions from a government keen to gain a cultural capital, as well as an appreciative audience for fine art, poetry and music.

One of the most admired artists at that time was Jewad Selim, whose work was rare in that it had found recognition abroad and was shown and sold in Britain and the US. After his early death in 1961, Selim came to epitomise the modern artist of Iraq. Iraq was then a relatively new nation state. It had been carved from the dying Ottoman Empire by the British, who were granted a League of Nations mandate for Iraq in 1920.

The Hashemite dynasty, however, was overthrown in 1958 and after various upheavals, Saddam Hussein took control in 1979. The effect of Ba’ath rule on Iraq’s cultural life was stifling, as artists were increasingly expected to glorify the regime while dissent was punished.

In 2004, the interim government instigated the restoration of Selim’s most famous work, the ‘Monument for Liberty’. Public works minister Nisrin Mustafa al-Barwari used the occasion to connect the new post-Saddam era with Baghdad’s best known artists, saying: “Only by culture can we help people return back to their humanist roots which were destroyed by Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship.” She stressed that Selim himself “reminds us of the good part of Iraqi history, the potential for Iraqis, and the wealth of art and culture that exists in Iraq”.

Jewad Selim owed his rise to fame as an international artist to a number of factors. He came from a highly creative family — both his siblings also became notable artists. Born in 1919, Selim grew up in the British Mandate period and as a young man, was able to visit Europe and study in Rome, Berlin, Paris and London. His diaries, with entries in four European languages, demonstrate a keen interest in the life and culture of these cities. When World War II broke out, he returned to Baghdad and began to teach in the newly created art school headed by Faiq Hassan.

Some of the foreign soldiers stationed in Baghdad happened to be artists; they were passionate about modern painting, and argued for a freer more spontaneous mode of expression. It was during these discussions that a new interest in modernism was instilled in Selim, which deepened during his second prolonged stay in Europe.

Back in Baghdad in the early fifties, he threw himself into the vibrant art scene. In 1951, he helped set up the Baghdad Modern Art Group and focused on painting during this period, which saw him preoccupied with what form contemporary Iraqi art should take. He saw it springing from ancient wells, such as those of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians, as well as from Islamic sources, but he also responded to the lives of modern 20^th century Iraqi men and women and the whole apparatus of thought and practice of the international art scene.

Returning from a tour of the US in 1954, the social backwardness and creeping political oppression were felt more keenly, although Selim would channel his anger into his work, now primarily sculpture than painting. He used stone and wood, since there were no facilities for large works and casting. The 1954 wooden sculpture, ‘Mother and Child’, an abstract, to be offered at the Bonhams Dubai sale on October 11, reflects this period. A photo for Iraq Petroleum shows Selim with the sculpture in a garden in Waziriya, a north Baghdad suburb — the last time it was exhibited.

The revolution of July 1958 promised a new beginning, an Iraq free from foreign domination, and Selim responded with enthusiasm to the government’s wish to mark the occasion through the commissioning of a public sculpture. The ‘Monument for Liberty’ in Tahrir Square is often seen as the pinnacle of his achievement as an artist. It also cost him his life, since the short deadline given overtaxed his strength and he suffered a heart attack before the work was completely installed. The large bronze relief sculptures, unfortunately mounted awkwardly high above the square and make reference to the dynamism of Assyrian reliefs, as well the reality of ordinary Iraqi people. However, all his work shows a special talent and a very personal language, rooted in the understanding of the longue durée of Mesopotamian culture and committed to modernism’s insistence on truth and integrity, devoid of sentimentality and empty formalism.