Jill Rees: Welcome Press

The old European nations are like old ladies sitting in their dilapidated old mansions sifting through their family jewellery with their memories. Sometimes, like Austria, they’re looking back at past glories. More typically, like Britain and France, they still think they’re players, and are again looking to play their part in the world. Nations with a past they would like to forget, such as Germany, are players but keep themselves to themselves. Some of the nations are struggling back to the surface after the devastation of World War II. There are new democracies, new nations, new economic systems. Many have already joined the European Union, others are trying to qualify. Turkey, bridging the Bosphoros between Europe and Asia, has chosen to be considered European, its mainly, but not only, Moslem population. And finally the nations who are still dreaming, like Bulgaria, not yet realising what it means to be European, the most privileged of the world regions.

Although there have been shifts in the peoples of Europe from time to time, the basic thought systems come from the ancient Greeks, whose thoughts and ideas permeate the European nations since the 5^th century BC, being largely adopted by the nascent Christian civilisations. During the last century, some of the cultures suppressed by this neo-classical culture, such as the ‘Celtic’ peoples of Spain, Brittany, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, have had a revival in recent years, helped not least by the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart! Is there an identity to being European? Yes, I think it would be a nod of the head to the classical civilisations of Rome and Greece, still regarded with the greatest respect in Europe, taken with the inventiveness of the indigenous peoples.

The former Eastern bloc countries, closed to the rest of the world as insular Soviet satellite countries for much of the late 20^th century, have found it surprisingly easy to return to their pre-war roles. The great romantic cities of Budapest, Prague and Sofia are once again at the heart of culture, drawing other European travellers as if by a magnet, the magnet of myth. Their old glory is still within living memory, and is so deeply embedded in their culture that it remains untouched by Soviet oppression. The melting pot of Celts, Slavs, Latins, Moors, Saxons, Scandinavians, all forming a delightfully varied but primarily united civilisations we can call European.

Of course there is a crossover with Africa. The distance between the continents on the Spanish/Moroccan crossing is only nine miles. The Celts are related to the Berber people who once formed a great Empire until finally defeated by the Arabs, and are now undergoing a cultural revival in the same vein as the European Celts. The Kabyle people of Algeria often have light skin and blue eyes, coming as they do originally from the Aryan peoples of ancient Greece. The Arab or Moorish empire stretched into southern Europe as far north as the Loire, and is the origin of the saying that the south starts at this East/West river, below which people tend to be darker in skin and hair colour, and the lifestyle more relaxed.

Africa is home to great empires too, the Berbers, the Arabs, the Malian Empire which was so wealthy from trading that the streets of Timbuktu were said to be paved with gold, the great Ethiopian Empire,Ghana, Bambara, Garamantes, Egypt. What does it mean to an African to remember these great peoples? The colourful Berber in Algiers, reclaiming his heritage; the purple-scarved Touareg, mapping the peoples of the immeasurable Sahara; the Malian farmer, surveying the quality of his cotton crop, the displaced farm worker of catastrophic Zimbabwe; the children sheltering from the bombardment in Iraq; the Nigerian tradesman counting his money and planning to smuggle it to the UK!. The Muslim villager, struggling to live with honour; the miners of South Africa; the gallant Ethiopian, whose borders remain uninvaded for the longest of all nations on earth, home of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Austria of course used to be a great Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who fought the Ottomans more or less continuously and derived a lot of their reputations and pride from these great battles. How unfortunate that troubles in the Balkan states led to wars they could not win, and in which they were minor players, and how misguided to side with Hitler and be faced now with the memory of grandeur, and also the mantle of shame. To remember or to forget - which is least painful?

Great peoples and great histories are in all our memories, as well as stories of shame. The result of the end of the Malian empire, defeated at the hands of the Arabs, marked the beginning of slave-trading within Africa, and eased the way for the white slave traders later. Involvement in the slave trade brought a sense of shame on the European empires long before they began to fade. These common histories join us as much as they divide us.

Africa, is divided by the false borders of the former colonies, divided by borders and by languages, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Afrikaans Dutch; divided by tribes, some of which stretch over the old borders, some which create bloodshed to rival twentieth century Europe, like the murderous genocide in Rwanda; divided by religion, especially by Islam and Christianity, a story going back centuries, yet these two religions so close as to be siblings in the same family. Africa, who sometimes wants to progress by emulating the northern industrialised nations, and sometimes wants to find its own culture, buried in half-forgotten traditions. Ruined cities, archaeological treasures beyond the imagination of Europeans, newly uncovered in the desert winds, fossils from the beginning of time, the memory of man. The heritage of Africa lies also in the sculpture, textiles and music which form the basis of white culture in the guitar-blues of Mali, the dancers of Senegal, the colours of Kenya.

Most importantly, modern Africa, more modern than anybody, has taught us how to end division by forgiveness and by moving forward, when Bishop Tutu devised the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Africa gave birth to the greatest humanitarian statesman of them all in Nelson Mandela. Africa has its own future, taking its place again at the heart of the world’s great civilisations, this time founded on culture and dialogue instead of destruction and war. Africa and Europe, we have so much more that joins us, than divides us.

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نعيم حيماد Naim Heimad
naim1883@hotmail.com Naim1883@hotmail.com
الحوار المتمدن - العدد: 2179 - 2008 / 2 / 2 Civilized dialogue - Issue: 2179 - 2008 / 2 / 2

After a bit of a chat, I tramped down to the Museum of Historic Art, only a couple of hundred metres down the Mariahilferstrasse. There are so many museums, all in the magnificent buildings of Imperial Vienna, that I had to check which one was the Art museum, as I didn’t want to end up surrounded by dinosaurs in the Naturhistorischemuseum. Before making my way to the Breughels, I went to look at the Titians, where I spent some time in front of a portrait of Benedetto Varchi, a celebrated humanist of his time, who Titian clearly liked. He has a wide open face with an exaggeratedly high forehead, a clear gaze and, most importantly, light before him in the direction he is looking. Contrast this with his portrait of the Pope, who is surrounded by blackness and dark, except for the light shining on himself. Just looking at this painting made me feel that I want to stand up proudly as a humanist. He has the nobility usually reserved for royalty in his features, the nobility of objective, scientific and humanistic dynamism.

Downstairs has a collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman artefacts and sculptures, with, quite casually placed really ancient Greek figures at the entrance. They are Trojan, and pre-war, and are of the Greek gods. The only thing is, there is a clearly apparent resemblance to the gods of Hindu. This makes sense, as Stephanie was talking about the Trojans of the Iliad being still eastern, with the feminine gods and values still prevalent. Later the Greeks took over, and the Odyssey shows us that Western dualism was beginning to mix in, eventually, especially with later Judeo-Christian thought, overwhelming our philosophy forever. This is incredibly clear as you go inside, and see a relief wall sculpture from only 2 years after the Trojan war, still Hinduistic but taking on more familiar western forms, and a little later the same kind of relief, but in full perspective relief and clearly completely western.

Round to the Egyptians, a power-statue of Horus with one of the pharaohs began the decline to the ridiculous, a mummified alligator, its snout peeping out from the swathes of grimy cloth, among the various animals surrounding one of the Egyptian dead dudes. They really were weird.

Talking with the school contact teacher for tomorrow, we got to talking about our kids and her husband was interested to hear about Ev as he is a professional anthropologist, specialising in Nepal and the Far East. He works for the anthro

pology Museum in Vienna, which has been closed down for two years for complete refurbishment and is due to re-open in the Autumn. He has offered to show Ev round if she comes to see the exhibits sometime. He was delighted to hear of someone who likes anthropology, as I think people tend to take the piss out of him normally (Ross syndrome!)

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The Hotel Terminus is near the centre of the city, in the Museumsquartier, and has a dozen English in Action teachers staying here, although they seem to have all gone out for Saturday night partying. My room is small but perfectly formed, and over-heated in the Austrian way against the frost-ridden nights. It is quite warm during the day, and everyone comments on how unusual the weather is here in the east of Austria this year. Only three days ago I sat with Catherine and Jenny in the Schlusspark in Eisenstadt, basking in the sunshine overlooking the lake and gardens of the great palace. I was teaching for the week in Neusidl am See, the world’s most boring town with its one long high street running down to the See and the nature reserve. This morning the other teachers and I awoke with glee to be leaving that dead place and coming to Vienna for a week.Martin, my senior teacher, was pleased to help me buy the train ticket from the machine in the station. It’s straightforward but we have to do it in German even though there’s an English translation, I think for showing off purposes. Just over half an hour later, we were back in the Sudbahnhof and taking the tram to the hotel.

Across the street looking out of my window, a girl in her apartment seems to be a student; she has been writing an essay for hours, here papers strewn around her. I have just eaten a huge repast of hummus, dolma, artichokes in chilli and dried papaya bought from the nearby Nachsmarkt, a delirium of Turks and Africans selling real food, finally, fruit and vegetables which the Austrians are strangely suspicious of, preferring pastries and potatoes with their ubiquitous Schweinfleisch (pig meat). The window ledge serves as a fridge. It is two windows with a cold space in between, a kind of artisanal double glazing, which I imagine they are obliged to have so as not to ruin the traditional facades of the buildings.

After a couple of hours sampling normal life here, chatting in Starbucks while everyone checked out their emails - you get 30 minutes free airtime with a cup of coffee, then round the corner to Kafka Cafe, the tiny vegetarian cafe and restaurant where Kafka used to go to write - I tramped out to walk around the glorious if imperialist streets of this old centre of European culture.

Apart from Kafka, luminaries like Mahler, Mozart, Freud, Klimt, Schonberg, Wittgenstein, Haydn - the list in endless - are honoured in street names even if they were not so in life. I walked down the Mariahilferstrasse, looking longingly in all the shop windows (shops!! After Neusidl!), past the Kunsthistorischemuseum through the Burggarten, the gardens of the Hofburg Palace and to Albertina Square, frowned on by the museum of modern art with it great modernistic iron wing arching over the steps to the side. I was proud of myself for having managed to come here first, largely by accident as I couldn’t find where I was on my map at all and felt embarrassed to get the Rough Guide out every two minutes. My intention back in Neusidl was to first come to the Monument against war and fascism here, to say Buddhist prayers for peace as my first action in Vienna. I thought this would be a good cause, as I seem to be walking over the bodies of the many dead from the Anschluss throughout this delicately balanced land. There are two statues with writhing bodies showing the various horrors of the twentieth century in Europe (and now Iraq), torture, dying children, bony concentration camp naked men; a heavy crunched down iron lump covered in barbed wire and chains, on which people have left bunches of roses, and a stele made of volcanic black stone on which is written Austria’s vow for peace in the future. Three giggling American girls came by arm in arm, fooling around, when one of them suddenly saw the statue and cried, laughing,

‘Oh look, there’s a woman giving birth to a baby!’ They began to be a little embarrassed as they looked more closely and realised the baby was crying with terror on its little face and the woman was being tortured. They didn’t know at all what the monument was for, and were quiet for a moment, looking at the various people in a kind of mourning pose in front of it, before recovering and heading on to the shops, giggling afresh. I wonder if, in the future, perhaps sometime one lonely night, the memory of the meaningless figure will come back to them, and they will have had enough sorrows to understand its significance. I don’t know whether to hope they remember it or hope they never have to think about death or terror. I don’t know if peace is bought with the awareness of the horror of war, or with the innocence of youth which has known only peace. They say we must never forget.

Beside the monument were two men in bowler hats standing beside their carriages pulled by white Austrian horses, glowering at the tourists round the monuments as if to say:

‘And why aren’t you asking for a ride?’ I took a photo of one of the guys and he glowered even more, even as he helped a family into the back. Mind you it must be a cold job; the horses were stamping their hooves and snorting misty breath.

Mapless, I made my way along the side of the Opera House to a wide shopping street which was pedestrianised. I was trying to follow the route W E Sebald describes in Vertigo, but I couldn’t remember it. Even more difficult, he hadn’t been able to remember it in the book, as he had wondered aimlessly and only retraced his footsteps later on his map in the hotel room. I let myself be comforted by this, thinking if he could find his way back I might be able to, despite not being able to remember where the hotel was, the name of the street, and not actually knowing what the buildings I had passed were called. An icy wind blew down the side of the Opera House, and I tried to keep track of its direction, so I could walk towards it home. Kärntner Strasse, I later found out this street was called. It had even more shops, designer stores, McDonalds of course, and a Starbucks which tempted me but no! Enough coffee!

Just before Stephansplatz I was stopped by a young man intriguingly dressed in 18^th century garb with Mozart wig and mask, asking if I had any intention of listening to classical music while I was here. He tried to sell me tickets from 39 Euros for a Strauss and other stuff gig at the local park where the Strauss family used to play regularly. I told him I would try to go during the week, but can’t buy a ticket right now, money being the other thing I’d left at the hotel, whose whereabouts I didn’t know. He hadn’t heard of the name either and looked worried when I said I couldn’t remember where it was and didn’t know the address, but I reassured him I’d manage somehow. Instead of going straight to the Cathedral, I slipped down a dark side street at the end of which was a green copper dome. It turned out to be St Peters Kirche, a beautiful church where people were coming in to Mass, and which had free organ concerts every day, so that is a must. Today they’re playing ……Strauss, but I’m hoping there might be some Messian or something more modern if I go in the afternoon in the week.

The Cathedral is being cleaned, and I was looking up somewhat critically at some samples of the cleaned parts next to the blackened ones when I caught the eye of a dark-haired young woman. We smiled at each other and I wondered if she was an EIA teacher who I should remember, or just a stranger who had grasped my thoughts on the brickwork and had similar reactions. I had to veer onto the road round the north side because the pavement was lined with more carriages with horses and steamed with the smell of horse shit where they had made themselves at home. I nipped into one of many shopping precincts, with coffee houses and lounge areas in reception rooms for people to rest from the cold streets. By now I’d had to fish round in my bag for my hat as well as wearing gloves. What put me on the right track home was the Opera House, and I did get the Rough Guide out on the way back so I would know which building was the Art museum for tomorrow.

Saturday 2 February 2008

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Shopping is one thing, and let’s face it, shopping in Abuja is not all that varied, so I was relieved when the cool breeze of Hammatan drove me out of the midday sun into a craft shop to buy some souvenirs of Nigeria. The electricity had gone off, leaving an air of Africa-exotic in the dark dusty warehouse, and I had to feel the wooden sculptures to get an idea of them, before carrying them to the window to get a better look. In a second room at the back of the store, alongside those little drum-rattles and rather frightening masks that I was too scared to buy in case they carried some kind of ancient voodoo spell, I discovered a pile of old paintings which had been chopped away from their scaffolds.

Paintings are sad objects when they’re cut away from the wood, covered in dust, and left piled up in the corner like dirty washing, the dulled surfaces of the canvas cracked and flaking. Two eager shop assistants helped me view them by quickly flicking them over, stacking them nonchalantly beside the original pile, in reverse order. I managed to catch a dusky glance at each one for a brief second before it once again disappeared under the anonymous heap. It was impossible to compare them, and as I appeared indecisive, the assistants became impatient with me and starting taking them all out again and putting them one by one back into the original pile.

It is impossible to overstate the global importance of African art. Sculptures and paintings from West Africa were the lynchpin of the shift from forms of realism like the impressionists and expressionists, into the cubist and abstract art which defines the 20^th century. Innovative young men like Picasso and Matisse were deeply impressed by the works of art recently brought out of the French colonies to Paris. Called ‘naive art’ because of the strong definition in the lines of paintings and the forms of sculptures, they began to discard the conservative style based on the gradual shaping of objects, using subtle shades of colour blending to give objects perspective. Instead, they began to paint sweeping outlines of portraits, trying to find the same clarity of delineation as African artists.

They felt that they had begun to understand the true way to achieve abstract figuration, instead of the realism which artists had developed in Europe when they had diverted into recording events and performing flattering portraiture for their wealthy patrons. With the advent of photography, the role of artists changed utterly. Picasso and Matisse opened the world’s eyes to art other than the post-classical forms known hitherto, and altered the somewhat colonialist attitude to African culture. Among culture-lovers at least, the new exposure to the mysterious and misunderstood Continent’s art opened a deep respect and admiration, which continues in Europe to this day.

Patronage of the arts nowadays rests largely on the shoulders of the state, and there is good reason for this. A nation is defined by its art, as civilisation is defined by the citizen’s leisure time. One of the first things Europeans look up when they are deciding where to go for their holidays, is the art galleries. When a nation is going through a difficult economic patch and ‘tightens its belt’, funding of the arts is usually the first thing to go. So that you can measure the state of a nation by its support for the arts.

Economically, art is a money-maker. Tourists visit art galleries and choose destinations on the basis of its galleries, especially for shorter breaks. Visitors go to Paris to view the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, to Amsterdam for the Van Gogh museum and so on. Paris now has a new Musée des Arts d’Afrique et Océanie which has bought up fine collections of ancient and modern art mainly from former colonies. Individuals invest in paintings, which, if well chosen, can inflate dramatically and become worth millions. Fortunes may stand to be made in internationally uncovered African painters such as Ashiru Olawole Rufus and Victor Ekpuk. In the USA in particular, a modern art collection is seen as the prime cool for the nouveau rich, and no self-respecting movie star or business icon would be seen without one. It is often seen as a tax-benefit, since taxes in the north favour art collecting. Some countries, such as France, are always mentioned when anyone says a word about art. It has almost made its name as a world player based on its artists!

Abuja is almost shamefully poor at exhibiting its artists. I tramped round Abuja until I found the National Gallery of Modern Art in Garki. Even then, it is not always open for a permanent display. You have to travel out of the capital to Lagos to see Ben Enwonwu’s beautiful ocre tones. The Spanish Embassy in Abuja recently held a competition for young artists, which was very successful, and shows that there is a demand, at least among the visitors to Abuja, to see some local work. African art is very much sought after at the present time in Europe and the USA, and tourists are beginning to develop the confidence to visit areas of Africa other than the beach sites. It seems an ideal time to push Nigerian modern art into the foreground, especially with regard to funding, to develop Nigeria’s reputation abroad and attract visitors who wish to spend money on local attractions.

As with so many things, one feels that Nigeria could be a leader in African art. Joe Musa, director general of National Gallery of Modern Art Abuja, says:

“I have read the New York Times, I have read some of the major news prints in the world, and you find that the artist is a big newsmaker there. Be it the sale of a Picasso or a major art event hits the front page. But that does not happen here. I have a desire to see that such a thing happens here.”

It’s not just Picasso, African art is big news abroad. In Abuja and Nigeria as a whole, many artists are working in education or in local trades and firms. Nothing wrong with that to start, but there does need to be a chain of development for the artist to begin to exhibit and gradually to earn enough to paint or sculpt full time. With sound backing in the capital, politicians travelling abroad would be able to promote Abuja as a centre for arts and culture. The poor reputation and lack of proof of the ability to promote national events was one of the major doubts about Abuja’s Olympic bid. The promotion of the visual arts might be the beginning of establishing Abuja not only as the political but also the artistic and cultural capital of Nigeria and of Africa.

© Jill Rees

20 January 2008

1155 words