Dada/Surrealism, 2013

H-AMCA book review of Sam Bardaouil's 'Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group'

Continued neglect for the heritage of the Egyptian Surrealist movement, despite a resurgence in interest abroad, raises questions about the politics of culture in Egypt. This article was originally published in Akhbar Al-Adab and was translated to English for the Cairo Review of Global Affairs.

South Atlantic Quarterly, 2010

The question of modernity in the radical sense of the word, in its wish for the rejection of the past, creation of a clear distinction between nature and science, and focus on individual freedom, seems to be of major interest to the Egyptian intellectual milieu in the late 1930s and the 1940s. One of the important artists of the time and a founding member of the newly created Egyptian surrealist group Art et Liberté, Ramsis Younan, set up with transparent language the whole staging platform, so to speak, for the modern debate in the postcolonial Egyptian context. In a 1956 article, he argues:

Routledge Companion to Surrealism, 2022

"Wonderful Things":Surrealism and Egypt

If we consider André Breton's long-lasting interest in the renewing powers of the human mind, as released by magic and in particular by magic art, Georges Henein, who introduced surrealism to Egypt, represents the ideal mediator with the Orient, and with ancient Egypt in particular. Several other Egyptian authors and artists could be said to share this mediating role, such as Ramsès Younane, but also Angelo de Riz, whom Henein rated highly in his 1937 "Bilan du mouvement surréaliste" ("Appraisal of the surrealist movement"): "Les récits de rêves tiennent une place considérable dans le poème et surtout dans la peinture surréalistes. Parmi les tableaux exposés ici même par Angelo de Riz, plusieurs ne sont que des instantanés de rêves […] De nombreuses toiles de Salvador Dalí ou d'Yves Tanguy paraissent autant de rêves pris sur le fait" (Henein OEuvres 371). ("Dream narratives are very important in surrealist poetry and especially painting. Among the pictures shown here by Angelo de Riz, several are just sketches from dreams [...]. Many paintings by Dalí or Yves Tanguy appear as so many dreams caught on the spot.") It is easy to associate Parisian surrealism with that of Cairo, in its most open, cosmopolitan dimension. Indeed, Cairo is often called "le Petit Paris". Among the writers, one should also mention first Edmond Jabès, Marie Cavadia and the now famous Joyce Mansour, who published her first poems while she was still living in Cairo with the help of Georges Henein, Gérald Messadié, and André Pieyre de Mandiargues, who visited Egypt in the 1950s. Despite these examples, the connection between the Parisian and Egyptian surrealist worlds was not very strong, and it depended on a few artists or writers, like Georges Henein and Ramsès Younane, or Fouad Kamel (Fall 101-105). The modern painting movement born in Egypt, however, is surrealist in its most accomplished part and has strong affinities with European surrealism, as reflected in the Egyptian sensitivity to daily magic, such as that found in the works of Abdel Hadi Al Gazzar. However, despite these evident relations, a question arises as to what exactly Breton's attitude toward Egypt was. When Henein presented the

Art et Liberté: Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris is the culmination of six years of research, initiated by guest curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. On display is a comprehensive exhibition about the Egyptian Art and Liberty group (A&L) – an eclectic group of artists, writers and intellectuals prominent in the 1930s and 1940s. Amina Diab reviews this exhibition, which brings together almost 300 artefacts relating to the group's work.

MAVCOR Journal, 2020

Tweet Tweet 4 0 Share Art and cultural production in Egypt during much of the last hundred years has operated against a backdrop of political crisis and confrontation. In this book Patrick Kane focuses on the turbulent changes of the 1920s to 1960s, when polemical discourse and artistic practice developed against the entrenched and co-opted conservatism of elite and state culture. This entry was posted in Africa and the Middle East, Arts and Literature, IB Tauris, Politics, Susheel Gokarakonda and tagged Arab Spring, art, Egypt, history, literature, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, politics, revolutions. Bookmark the permalink.

Short Film Studies, 2024

Cairo has been described as a city of dualities, in the sense of its conflict between the traditions of the past and the modern values of the present. The city has witnessed rapid transformations in terms of its sociocultural aspects due to political, economic and religious changes. In his work, the acclaimed and legendary Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine portrayed such changes in his 1991 short semi-documentary Al-Qahira Munawwara bi Ahlaha (Cairo as Told by Youssef Chahine) in surrealistic and flâneurie ways. This article breaks down Chahine's visual interpretation of Cairo to reveal his sense of in-betweenness as a form of urban surrealism. The film offers fragmented episodes of Cairo that are assembled to reflect Chahine's imagination and collective memory. In filming Cairo, Chahine transformed his portrait of the city into a self-reflexive illustration of a filmmaker who expresses deep admiration for Cairo and its inhabitants.