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s " Eternal Light ’: from Ancient Egyptian Art to Modern and Contemporary EgyPtian Art

What Art D’Égypte is presenting today in the curated exhibition ‘Eternal Light: Something Old, Something New’ at the internationally acclaimed Museum of Egyptian Art in Tahrir, Cairo, is the essence or ‘eternal light’ that has permeated through centuries from Ancient Egyptian Art until today’s Contemporary Egyptian Art. When we, foreigners, think of Egypt, the first cliché images that spring to mind are its pyramids, its Pharaohs, Cleopatra, the tombs of Luxor and Karnak or the feluccas on the Nile River. In other words, we identify Egypt with its Ancient cultural heritage dating from centuries ago yet modern history states that Egypt’s national identity only took shape during the 20th century, following the blood-drenched 1919 coup led by Saad Zaghloul, pathing the way towards independence from British protectorate in 1922 and ultimately expelling the last British troops in 1956 after the Suez Canal crisis. In reality, it could be argued that this Egyptian identity existed before and has in fact always existed. Consequently, it would seem that the ‘eternal light’ has somehow resisted centuries of foreign invasion and occupation.

It therefore comes with no surprise that the core of Modern and Contemporary Egyptian is deeply rooted in this unparalleled rich cultural heritage. Yet the modern or contemporary artist’s challenge lies in the way he/she transcribed social, political and cultural issues of present times or simply portrayed contemporary daily life by combining up-to-date universal aesthetic means with visual motifs inspired by Ancient Egypt. Dr. Nada Shabout, author of the ground-breaking book on Modern Arab Art (2007), mentions another challenge for the modern Arab artist, as she refers to the ‘artistic vacuum’ that existed in Egypt and the Arab diaspora 1 There was Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Sumerian Art, followed by early Christian and Coptic Art, and later Islamic art, but then there was a massive gap void of any new type of art until the end of the 19th century or early 20th century, when art institutions and schools were founded, very much under the influence of foreign artists. And still, despite that ‘artistic vacuum’, the ‘eternal light’ descending from Ancient Egyptian Art continued to exist in essence but also through the vestige of the past, as pyramids, temples and tombs survived the passing of time.

That ‘eternal light’ was fully re-ignited with what Liliane Karnouk refers to the “Egyptian Awakening” that comes hand in hand with ‘Al-Nahda’ , in her seminal book on Modern Egyptian Art 1910-2003 2. She describes this cultural phenomenon as starting with the Romantics, who travelled to Egypt to seek the original beauty of antiquity; the Orientalists who sought a new visual vocabulary through their travels in these exotic lands of the Middle East; Vivant Denon’s (1747–1825) publication of Description de L’Egypte in 21 volumes pursuant to the Napoleonic 1798 expedition to Egypt; Jean-François Champollion’s (1790–1832) deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822; the increasing number of acquisitions of Egyptian artefacts by leading European museums and the excavation of many archaeological sites in Egypt, which climaxed in Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. At the same time, according to Karnouk, all these events partly led to a renewed interest in ancient Egyptian art and to the cultural phenomenon of Neo-Pharaonism.

All of the above thus confirms the omnipresence of the ‘eternal light’, that Modern Egyptian artists picked on, considering this was what they were familiar with, and they created a pictorial vocabulary that merged

‘something old’ with ‘something new’ resulting in a modern and universal interpretation of their unique past. The three most famous Modern Egyptian artists who instigated a breath of fresh air to the ‘eternal light’ were the Cairene sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891-1934) and the two Alexandrian painters Mahmoud Saïd (1897-1964) and Mohamed Nagi (1888-1956). Mokhtar’s landmark sculpture, Nahdat Misr (‘Egypt’s Awakening’) conceived in 1920, used to dominate Bab el-Hadid Square (today’s Ramses Square) in front of Cairo railway station from 1928 to 1955 after which it was moved outside Cairo University towering the roundabout at the entrance. That monumental pink granite sculpture incarnates and radiates the ‘eternal light’, as does Mokhtar’s many sculptures of fellahas . In a similar way, Nagi made clear references to his Ancient Egyptian heritage, often transposing classical European themes into Pharaonic contexts, epitomised by his monumental and almost hieroglyphic masterpiece La Renaissance de l’Égypte or Le Cortège d’Isis executed in 1922, now housed inside the Chamber of the Majlis alShuyukh in the Egyptian Parliament, Cairo. Mahmoud Saïd’s references to his Ancient Egyptian roots were perhaps more subtle yet they permeate through his entire oeuvre, whether through a felucca on the Nile River, a graceful fellaha carrying an amphora, or even more so in his pyramidal compositions, resonating the grandeur of Ancient Egyptian vestige. The pivotal role of these three pioneers of Modern Egyptian Art is further highlighted by the fact that all three were commissioned works to be presented at the Egyptian Pavilion of the 1937 Paris Exposition Universelle (officially the Exposition internationale des Arts et des Techniques appliqués à la Vie moderne ) by the pavilion’s general commissioner, Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil (1877–1953).

There, the works of these great Modern Egyptian masters were exhibited side by side with Ancient Egyptian artefacts, just as today, Art D’Égypte in some ways emulates for the first time the 1937 exhibition by juxtaposing a selection of Modern and Contemporary Egyptian artworks with the extraordinary collection of the Museum of Egyptian Art. ‘Eternal Light: Something Old, Something New’ further underlines how Egypt’s ‘reawakened’ artists – Mokhtar, Nagi and Saïd - also played the role of ‘awakeners’ for all the younger artists, some of which are featured in this exhibition, who continued to develop the concept of Modern Egyptian art using the ‘eternal light’ as guideline. Nagi’s and Saïd’s paintings as well as Mokhtar’s iconic sculptures taught the future generation of Egyptian artists to search inspiration in their own nation’s past in order to celebrate their intensifying feeling of belonging to that very nation, leading them towards the creation of Modern and Contemporary Egyptian art.