FAYEZ BARAKAT Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe Vol. 1
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F AY E Z BA R A K AT Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe Vol. 1
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CURATED BY: LYDIA L. CAWLEY TEXTS EDITED BY: GIAN PIERO C. MILANI ________ COPYRIGHT © FAYEZ BARAKAT TEXTS © THE AUTHORS
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PUBLISHED BY HANNA BELLA PUBLISHING PUBLICATION DATE: 06.12.2021 WWW.BARAKATGALLERY.EU _____ All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form of electronic or mechanical means including storage by information or retrieval systems without written permission of the authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. In the Virtual Space the dimensions of certain artworks are edited for curatorial purposes. True dimensions are given in the catalogue.
CONTENTS ARTIST STATEMENT
ABOUT FAYEZ BARAKAT
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CATALOGUE
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ARTIST STATEMENT
This series of small paintings, ‘Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe,’ is part of a wider series of my paintings which are homages to great masters. Creating these homages is particularly important for me because all of us artists are interconnected on a spiritual level. We all grow by taking inspiration from the craftmanship of other artists. I am but a cell in the body of the universe. Art allows me to break free from the fundamental loneliness of human nature; it leads each of us from being a single cell dispersed in the infinity of the universe to being part of a network of spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and emotional connections which bind all of us on the quantum field level. Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the artists whose work I was very fond of. These homages to her however are not in any way copies or imitations; rather they bring her artistic mastery to a new plane. Every artist sees the universe in a different way, looking at it with their physical or spiritual eyes. While Georgia O’Keeffe did most of her work painting patterns and flowers from real life, these paintings are from my own imagination. I am using my sense of creation to paint and take the school of art that she started in another dimension. There are, for example, certain techniques used in the creation of these works that aren’t “standard” for artists—they’re totally different. Through the use of these techniques, the original artistic inspiration of Georgia O’Keeffe comes alive again in a novel way, a way that is uniquely connected to my own artistic understanding.
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ABOUT FAYEZ BARAKAT
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Fayez Barakat is best known as one of the world’s most important dealers and collectors of ancient art. His gallery in London is a treasure trove, filled to the brim with every age and culture ranging from Maya crystal skulls to Mogul statuary and Egyptian jewellery. However, whilst Barakat’s extensive knowledge has helped shape key private and public collections, another side to him that is fast becoming apparent:he is a prolific and highly accomplished painter who has managed over the last few years to establish an eclectic and allusive body of work. Employing an astonishingly wide range of techniques, Fayez Barakat paints like other artists sketch; that is, he paints
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restlessly, loosely, energetically and gives over free rein to the flow of ideas going through him. The paintings, partly triggered by visions and ideas the arts has (he calls them“concerts of ideas, colours and themes”), are mostly executed at night between 2am and 5am or in any other free time he has from running and managing his galleries across three separate time zones. Other ideas come from the environment in which he paints, ranging as they do from his studios in Jordan, Los Angeles, Seoul, Marrekech, Hong Kong and London. The themes of his paintings are likewise varied and allusive, encompassing ideas such as fantasy, meditation, ecstasy and nirvana. These works not only embody his visions and feelings though, they often engage him in a process of what can be only called transcendence. In one recent interview he has spoken about the inner energies driving him and the sense that he becomes a “medium” of sorts channelling ideas and techniques in a manner that even surprises him. As the artist has noted, with a look of slight bewilderment, it is for him “beyond belief” that he should be so obsessed (if not possessed) by the need to paint every day. So what, we may ask, is going on here: an expert in the field of ancient art and a respected collector in his own right emerges as an artist whose seemingly insatiable appetite for making paintings shows no sign of abating. Is this unusual or are we seeing a natural progression from collector to producer, the end effect of many years spent nit acting upon a desire to make work whilst at the same time being surrounded by some of the highest quality art and artefacts in the world? Is this the story of a man destined to focus on collecting and the dayto-day running of his galleries at the expense of that which gave him most pleasure: painting? And if this is the visual manifestation of all that pent up creative energy, what then are we witnessing here? Before those questions can be more fully answered, it is interesting that Barakat has not just arrived at painting but was
an accomplished painter as a young man, garnering plaudits for his works and numerous invitations to show them. Trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, he mastered an array of formal skills but nevertheless felt somehow constrained by their rigid discipline. Something else was needed. We should also note here the fact that as a young man Barakat worked alongside the world-famous British archaeologist Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, a leading archaeologist of Neolithic culture who is best known for her Jericho excavations between 1952 and 1958. It was with Kenyon that Barakat sorted and identified shards from her work in Jerusalem and it was at this time that he became an expert in both pottery classification and the principles of field archaeology. However, due to his career as a collector and dealer in antiquities and personal reasons, this youthful creative promise was put aside until relatively recently. The archaeological inclination, however, when viewed alongside his pursuit of formal painting skills, can be still seen in Barakat’s work in the manner in which ideas on the canvas seem to be constantly in the process of coming to the fore but, somewhat paradoxically, are being unearthed through a process of accretion and addition of paint. Taking up a paintbrush again after so many years of not painting was therefore a transcendental if not ecstatic in its force for the artist, returning him to a time when it seemed he would take a different path in life and yet reconnecting a number of passions for archaeology, ideas, art history, and the sheer force of being creative. Working like a sleepwalker through the night, he paints as if is completely absorbed in the creative process and legacy of the art and artefacts he has lived with for so long. Mediation and transformation in the world of Fayez Barakat By Professor Anthony Downey
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CATALOGUE
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ES.0347 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.9317 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.9318 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.9320 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000 £6,000
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ES.0357 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0358 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0361 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0366 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.7641 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8453 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.7621 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0352 | 2021| Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0372 | 2021| Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0377 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.0348 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.0365 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.0369 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.0350 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.0356 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.0367 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0346 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0129 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.0131 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.0344 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.0349 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.9314 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.9315 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.1315 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.1322 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000
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ES.8872 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1316 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8876 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8879 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8880 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8877 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8874 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1314 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8868 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.8863 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.8865 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000 £6,000
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ES.8866 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8871 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8870 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0374 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1321 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1319 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1317 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1318 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.1323 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.8457 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.7611 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.7566 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.9311 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0375 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0376 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0368 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.0370 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” £6,000
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ES.7604 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.7605 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.7616 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12” ES.7617 | 2021 | Acrylic on canvas | 12” x 12”
£6,000 £6,000 £6,000 £6,000
F AY E Z BA R A K AT Homage to Georgia O’Keeffe Vol. 1
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ENQUIRIES info@barakatgallery.eu
COPYRIGHT © FAYEZ BARAKAT TEXTS © THE AUTHORS
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form of electronic or mechanical means including storage by information or retrieval systems without written permission of the authors except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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