MATTHEW CORBIN BISHOP: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD

Matthew corbin bishop THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD Preface by Philip Mansel ∙ Edited by Rose Issa

© Matthew Corbin Bishop and Beyond Art Production, 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9559515-4-1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Editor & Curator: Rose Issa Deputy Editor: Francesca Ricci Design: Normal Industries Copy Editor: Katia Hadidian Printing: Crossgate Press

Acknowledgements The artist would like to thank all the great stamp designers, Graham Day, Alex Landrum, Katia Hadidian, Mike Singleton, Omar al-Qattan and Duncan Hook. Very special thanks are owed to Elaine and Ray, Sarah al Hamad, Lawrence Magnus and Brown’s Fine Art (Lock’s Heath) for their generosity.

Published by

All works are gesso, oil, acrylic, ink transfer and beeswax on canvas unless otherwise mentioned.

Matthew corbin bishop THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD Preface by Philip Mansel ∙ Edited by Rose Issa

Past Borders / Present Orders (1941/2009), lead pencil, pen and ink on layered paper 95 x 165 cm

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Past Borders / Present Orders (1876/1941/2009), lead pencil, pen and ink on layered paper 95 x 165 cm

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Foreword It was the British artist Graham Day who first introduced me to his student, Matthew Corbin Bishop, in 2008. Day was very excited about Bishop’s final-year project at Bath Spa University – some eighty paintings of stamps from countries under British colonial rule, from the height of Empire in the 1900s to its disbandment in the 1960s. Unsurprisingly, Bishop graduated with a First.

Bishop was born in Taplow, England in 1984 and now lives and works in Southampton.

From a very early age he showed a profound and wide-ranging interest in history, geography and fine art, and as a boy started collecting stamps, maps, and antique and modern globes.

His knowledge of his subject is impressive, but what struck me the most when I first saw his work was his exquisite craftsmanship. He explained how he made his paintings with layers of gesso, oil, acrylic, ink transfer and beeswax on stretched canvas. The process is time-consuming and demands dexterity, skill, craftsmanship and patience. I am still in awe of his technique.

Confident in his knowledge and skill, Bishop has devoted more than two years of his life to painting these series of stamps. They represent not only the history of the British Empire (his graduation project), but also other colonies in “the Greater Middle East” – a region I am particularly interested in. His latest works are of maps that complement the stamp paintings: they are made of layers of transparent paper to depict shifting frontiers and place names, indicating the different stages of history in which the stamps originated.

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Tripolitania (Libya), 17 x 28 cm

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Zanzibar, 17 x 14 cm

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Bishop’s current practice references the geopolitics of a recent past, highlighting changes in Middle Eastern political affairs. The title of the exhibition is adapted from Niall Ferguson’s book, “Empire: How Britain Made The Modern World”, which comments on the positive and negative effects of British colonial rule around the world. Like one of his favourite artists, Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994), Bishop is passionate about non-Western cultures, and his work reflects his historical interests and extensive research. “The Making of the Modern World” highlights the shifting nature of world politics: reading the subtitle of each painting reveals the current identity of these former colonies, and whether they were part of the British, Spanish, French or Italian empires.

This is Bishop’s first solo exhibition, and he has also participated in several group shows, including “The Sun Never Set” at Bath Guildhall, Bath (2009); “Forget Me” at Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth (2008); “Ctrl/Art/Delete” at The Old Truman Brewery, London (2008); and “Occupied Space: Art for Palestine” at the Qattan Foundation, London (2008). His work can be found in several public collections, including the Bath Spa University Collection and The Government Art Collection, London and he is gaining a well-deserved following among private collectors worldwide.

Rose Issa London, 2009

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Stamps of Empire Empires come and go. Their physical remains usually outlast their political control. Much has been written about imperial pictures or architecture, but Matthew Corbin Bishop has chosen to paint imperial stamps.

In the age of imperialism, as he shows, stamps were assertions of sovereignty as well as a means of communication. In 1863 the Ottoman Empire founded the “Postes Ottomanes” – bilingual in Ottoman and French, like much else in the late Empire. The purpose was to compete with the foreign post offices operating on its territory, as well as to speed up mail.

Newly independent Greece, and Britain, France, Austria, and Russia operated their own post offices in, and issued stamps for, the ports of the Levant.

These wonderful images, selected from Matthew Corbin Bishop’s collection of more than 8,000 stamps, take us on a voyage in time and space. As he says, they contain franked and dated representations of empire – the British crown; of history – ancient and contemporary monuments; and of trade – palm trees or oil wells. In their matter-of-fact way they destroy many clichés. Images of the mosques and monuments of Constantinople, “the seat of the Caliphate” as it was then often called, sometimes contain human figures – disproving the legend of Islamic prohibition of human images. Modern postage stamps from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain are dominated by the ruler’s portrait.

Matthew Corbin Bishop’s stamp paintings are reminders of the power of the British Empire.

In the Middle East alone, it took many shapes: colony (Aden); mandate (Iraq, Palestine, Transjordan); protectorate (Egypt); and independent state in treaty relations with the British government (the emirates of the Gulf). Rather than creating the modern world, as modern

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imperialists claim, Britain often thwarted it (and in China, through the Opium Wars, drugged it). Britain tried to defeat independence movements in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Palestine and imposed compliant governments in Iran in 1925, 1941 and 1953. Its educational record was dismal, compared to that of France or the United States.

Yet these marvellous stamps also remind us that Britain was not the only imperialist power in the area. For many in the Arab vilayets, the Ottoman Empire also represented a form of foreign domination. Egypt had an empire in Africa. So did Spain, Italy and France. Many imperial divisions were no more unjust than those imposed by liberated national states. Many in former Spanish Sahara and former British-protected Hadramaut now yearn for independence from Morocco and Yemen respectively. Divisions between Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iraqis have strengthened since the end of the French and British Empires that created those countries. Former British Somaliland survives as a shadow state with its own armed forces, pushing for independence from Somalia. Djibouti, former French Somaliland, is more prosperous than either.

In the post-post-imperial age there are forms of domination more insidious than empires, as conflicts in the Niger Delta, the West Bank or Afghanistan demonstrate today. Luckily, global companies and occupying armies do not, yet, feel the need to issue their own stamps.

Philip Mansel London, 2009

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The greater middle east 13

14 The Greater Middle East, 2008-09

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Morocco I, 17 x 28 cm

Tunisia, 17 x 14 cm

Morocco III, 16 x 28 cm

16 Morocco II, 17 x 27 cm

Morocco IV, 26 x 20 cm

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Mauritania, 18 x 28 cm

Pakistan, 24 x 20 cm

Libya, 18 x 28 cm

18 Eritrea, 20 x 16 cm

Kuwait, 17 x 28 cm

Sudan, 16 x 19 cm

19 Western Sahara, 28 x 17 cm

Somalia II, 24 x 19 cm

Yemen III, 26 x 18 cm

Yemen IV, 17 x 14 cm

Yemen I, 19 x 25 cm

20 Yemen II, 26 x 20 cm

United Arab Emirates II, 24 x 18 cm

United Arab Emirates III, 16 x 22 cm

Tanzania, 17 x 14 cm

21 Qatar, 25 x 21 cm

United Arab Emirates I, 17 x 29 cm

United Arab Emirates IV, 17 x 14 cm

Turkey (Alexandrette), 20 x 17 cm

22 United Arab Emirates VI, 28 x 19 cm

Iraq, 18 x 27 cm

Lebanon, 16 x 20 cm

Somalia I, 22 x 18 cm

United Arab Emirates VII, 17 x 14 cm

Bahrain, 19 x 15 cm

23 Afghanistan, 21 x 16 cm

United Arab Emirates V, 20 x 25 cm

Iran, 23 x 17 cm

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Syria, 20 x 18 cm

Oman, 23 x 21 cm

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Israel and Palestine (West Bank and Gaza), 17 x 14 cm

Djibouti, 28 x 18 cm

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Egypt, 17 x 14 cm

Algeria, 28 x 18 cm

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STAMPING THE EMPIRE

Redrawing history, 1863 to today One of the first things I ever bought was a globe. I was seven. My childhood was spent surrounded by symbols of nations: atlases, books of flags and maps of the world, which I would sketch. I learned every world capital and collected currencies.

For the past three years I have been researching and creating “The Making of the Modern World”, a project that culminated in three groups of printed and painted recreations of postage stamps – of the British Empire, the Greater Middle East and the Ottoman Arab Vilayets. The first group, “The British Empire”, was exhibited at the Truman Brewery in July 2008. I produced eighty stamps representing countries that became colonies, dominions or protectorates of the British Empire at its peak, from the end of World War I to the 1960s and 1970s, when most of these countries began to claim independence. The work is a comment on Britain’s colonial past and the breadth and influence of Empire, something that is of great interest to me in trying to understand how this period has shaped Britain’s global relations today.

In the past few years I have watched Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the hostility towards us as a nation, without fully understanding it. Particularly disturbing was a picture in “The Independent” newspaper earlier this year of Iranian supporters of President Ahmadinejad outside the British Embassy in Tehran, burning Western flags and shouting “Down with the British”. However, it was a television programme denouncing Britain for its involvement in the creation of Israel that motivated me to better understand our colonial past. I wanted to understand our relationship to these countries and what compels Britain to return to the Middle East time and again. How has our past influenced the way other nations perceive us?

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I wondered how the huge number of countries affected by the British Empire could be represented visually. I found the solution in postage stamps – visual, historical artifacts. This is how the postage stamp became the central element of “The Making of the Modern World”. It contains everything I want to convey: a glimpse of the colony’s history; perhaps a franking and date stamp; the country’s landmarks, rulers; the symbols of Empire – the King and Queen, the crown, or coats of arms; the “other” and the exotic, inevitably represented by the palm tree.

Stamps are also a monetary transaction, which I feel is important because of Britain’s involvement in the spread of free trade. Many stamps portray the trade products that benefited the Empire, such as copra from the Cocos Islands, oranges from the Pitcairn Islands and, above all, oil from the Gulf states (see pages 20-25).

As I started my research, a great inspiration was Niall Ferguson’s “Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World”, and his thesis that the British Empire achieved good things for its colonies. His ideas on British commerce, free trade and the extent to which the United States is an empire today are of great interest and led me to similar works, including David Fromkin’s “A Peace to End All Peace” – a study of the fall of the Ottomans in the Middle East and the European colonisation of their territories; Hardt and Negri’s “Empire”; Albert Hourani’s “A History of the Arab Peoples”; and Martin Meredith’s “The State of Africa”. Informed by these sources, I decided to portray a grander picture of the colonial history of the Middle East – the area that informed this project from the very start. I called the series “The Greater Middle East”, a phrase coined by the Bush administration, which I felt was particularly flawed in its arbitrary grouping of nations encompassing the region from Mauritania to Pakistan.

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I learned the history behind the tensions between Britain and the Arab world, and between Israel and these same nations, in particular Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. I learned about the involvement of France, Italy and Spain, as well as the histories of the empires that preceded this period, in particular the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the Arab world for almost 400 years prior to World War I and the dawn of European colonialism.

This exhibition starts with 16 stamp paintings that represent the Ottoman Arab Vilayets (provinces) established after the Tanzimat (1839 to 1876). This was a period of sweeping reform and modernisation of the Ottoman Empire, which led to the establishment of the Imperial Ottoman Bank in 1863 – the year that the Ottoman Post Office began printing stamps.

For me, the transition between this period and the rise of European dominance in the Ottoman territories is an integral element of the work; it shows the extensive shifting of borders that continues to cause so many problems. The Ottoman vilayets and other areas of the Arab world were arbitrarily divided into new states that grouped together different peoples within new boundaries, irrespective of culture or ethnicity, creating divisions and forced national identities. David Fromkin states that the world remains haunted by the “ghost” of the Ottoman Empire. In 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he proclaimed that Kuwait was in fact Iraqi, as it had been part of the Ottoman province of Basra. Osama Bin Laden, in a televised message, claimed that the 9/11 attacks were in retaliation for the West’s division of the Ottoman Empire eighty years earlier.

With the declaration of war against the Ottomans in 1914, the Allies had grand designs for Ottoman-Arab vilayets. The secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 mapped out the division

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Kuwait, 24 x 20 cm

Cirenaica, 24 x 20 cm

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it� George Santayana

Sudan 3 Piastres, 20 x 24 cm

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of the Levant and Mesopotamia. “The Making of the Modern World” represents this in two sets of paintings: the one-time Ottoman vilayets of Lubnan, Sham, Jerusalem, Beirut, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra became the nation states of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq; the territory of Alexandretta, Syria, seceded to the new Turkish state and Kuwait was removed, once and for all, from Basra Province. Prior to this, the semi-autonomous North African provinces had been taken: Algiers became French in 1830; the French Protectorate of Tunisia was formed in 1881 and in 1882 the British occupied Egypt. The Italian occupation of Libya followed in 1911, effectively spelling the end of Ottoman rule in North Africa. The new nation states of “The Greater Middle East” had been created.

My second group of paintings, “The Greater Middle East”, represents the 40 nation states that existed within this area in 1921, arranged loosely in geographical placement. It encompasses much of the Ottoman territory that preceded these nation states, with the exception, due to a lack of stamps, of Italian North Africa being represented by its later territorial title of Libya. I have also included Zanzibar as, at the time, the territory was independent and had extensive links to the Middle East.

I am fascinated by how much these states have changed from the Ottoman period to the Colonial period to the present. Why was Morocco divided into French Morocco, Spanish Morocco, Cape Juby and Ifni? How was Yemen split into smaller states under the umbrella name of “South Arabia” and why did the area that now contains Somalia and Djibouti once encompass three separate Somali states? These divisions were a direct result of the scramble that besieged the Middle East after the fall of the Ottomans.

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Brunei, 24 x 20 cm

Aden, 23 x 18 cm

Libya, 17 x 15 cm

34 Iraq, 19 x 16 cm

Syria, 21 x 17 cm

Jordan, 22 x 19 cm

Bahrain, 17 x 14 cm

35 Egypt, 21 x 17 cm

Today we see the effects of this re-imagining of borders, Palestine being a tragic case in point. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was quoted by nearly every Palestinian spokesman during a press conference at the White House in 2004. The piece, “Israel and Palestine – The West Bank and Gaza” (page 26) shows the Dome of the Rock, which sits in a disputed area of the nation currently occupied by Israel: East Jerusalem. Many an article appears in the papers denouncing the Israeli demolition of Palestinian settlements in this area. The stamp, from the early period of the British Mandate of Palestine, shows both Hebrew and Arabic translations of the state, a hopeful union of both these peoples. The failure of this union to date, or indeed the obscurity of its conception, is the most apparent and tragic consequence of poor colonial management in the region. The lines drawn out in 1917 and redrawn after the 1967 Six Day War remain a constant problem, igniting countless wars, including one last year.

Somalia, which I’ve represented as the two states of British Somaliland (page 23) and Italian Somalia (page 19), is in a state of chaos. As a result, Somaliland – the only part of the country with a working government, police force and coastal guard – is pushing for independence and the division of the country, re-establishing its colonial two-state borders.

In order to produce “The Making of the Modern World”, I amassed a collection of almost 8,000 stamps from each country’s colonial period. I wanted to avoid an arbitrary collection that, in the words of literary critic Walter Benjamin, would “lose its meaning as it loses its personal owner”. My paintings of these stamps have become images that now represent something completely different from their original purpose, transformed by new political landscapes and a change in perceptions of Imperialism.

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These paintings add another layer of history to the collaboration between the stamp’s designer, its printer, the Ottoman postal official that franked the letter, and finally myself. The stamp’s rendering as an altogether more valuable object brings the image into the present.

The production process is also multi-layered. The stretcher is made exactly seven times (or in the case of the Ottoman vilayets, nine times) the size of the original stamp. This is to retain the miniature quality of the stamp while revealing the intricacies and flaws of its design. The inking process then transfers the historical element of the stamp to the canvas, where it is sealed, painted with oils and beeswax and, at times, slightly altered to give the image a modern touch and bring it into the present. For the Ottoman vilayets series, I sourced the frankings from a book and added them to the stamps as a clearer representation of the areas I wished to represent.

I did worry that bringing these countries back together for “The Making of the Modern World” would evoke nostalgia for Empire, something believed by many to be a thing of the past. However, though Imperialism is no more, Empire is still a reality. An example is Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq – in a similar manner to its incursion into the same country 80 years ago.

Ferguson, Hardt and Negri all speak of the necessity for the United States, after decolonisation, to assume a primary role, whether it be waging war against terrorism and “rogue states”, or spreading the benefits of capitalism and democracy overseas. Hardt and Negri even describe the US as the “ambiguous heirs of the old colonisers”. This US superiority is mirrored in the United States-influenced imagery on the postage stamps of some of the Arabian Peninsula states around the 1960s. Often imagery completely unrelated to the nations is portrayed, such as JF Kennedy in a stamp for Mahra State, now part of Yemen (page 20).

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The nation state is “a machine that produces others, creates racial differences and raises boundaries that delimit the modern subject of sovereignty” Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Empire”

“The Making of the Modern World” shows the shifting nature of world politics. For instance, the stamp for French Somalia (Côte Francaise de Somalis) represents the country we know today as Djibouti (page 39), while Spanish Sahara (Sahara Espanòl) has become the Western Sahara (page 19) – names that depict the current national identities of these once-colonial areas.

“The Making of the Modern World” is concerned with shifting political boundaries. Although its roots are in the past, I know it has a poignant message about the present. It speaks to me about many things, internationally, and at home: culture, relationships, unions, imagined unions, political stances, grievances and nationalism. It is a document not only of world history, but my history – all my feelings about this subject, all the questions I’ve had about Britain’s past, and why this past evokes such strong feelings in many parts of the world. As we realise that nation states and boundaries are constantly evolving, we realise that nationalism is temporary and at times imagined.

Stamps have taught me more about the political history of the world than any history book.

They relate to a world that no longer exists but, to me, “The Making of the Modern World” speaks volumes about the turbulence that this period has caused in the world we know today. It brings this past to the surface, to help us understand the present and ultimately navigate a way forward in the future.

Matthew Corbin Bishop Southampton, 2009

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Djibouti, 21 x 34 cm

Qatar, 25 x 20 cm

Obock, 19 x 27 cm

39 Muscat and Oman, 17 x 14 cm

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The OTTOMAN Arab VILAYETS 41

42 The Ottoman Arab Vilayets, 2008-09

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Damas, 22 x 30 cm

Tunis, 23 x 19 cm

Cebel & Lubnan (Baabda), 23 x 34 cm

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Dier ez–Zor, 21 x 32 cm

Jerusalem, 22 x 33 cm

Yemen (Sanaa), 25 x 22 cm

Baghdad, 34 x 19 cm

Mosul, 33 x 19 cm

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Mecca, 24 x 38 cm

Aleppo, 21 x 18 cm

Basra, 23 x 35 cm

46 Hejaz (Medina), 21 x 31 cm

Misir (Cairo), 21 x 32 cm

Tripolitania, 32 x 24 cm

Beirut, 25 x 38 cm

47 Benghazi, 21 x 34 cm

“No proper understanding of the nature and characteristics of the contemporary Middle Eastern state can be obtained without reference to the colonial legacy in the region� Nazih N. Ayubi

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© Matthew Corbin Bishop and Beyond Art Production, 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9559515-4-1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Editor & Curator: Rose Issa Deputy Editor: Francesca Ricci Design: Normal Industries Copy Editor: Katia Hadidian Printing: Crossgate Press

Acknowledgements The artist would like to thank all the great stamp designers, Graham Day, Alex Landrum, Katia Hadidian, Mike Singleton, Omar al-Qattan and Duncan Hook. Very special thanks are owed to Elaine and Ray, Sarah al Hamad, Lawrence Magnus and Brown’s Fine Art (Lock’s Heath) for their generosity.

Published by

All works are gesso, oil, acrylic, ink transfer and beeswax on canvas unless otherwise mentioned.

Matthew corbin bishop THE MAKING OF THE MODERN WORLD Preface by Philip Mansel ∙ Edited by Rose Issa