< Previous150 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/Culture Winter 2020 From top: Lan Stanley. Couple; Various artworks by Lan spread accross her home. Facing page: Lan stands by her grand piano with Harmony in the background traditions. In the work aptly titled Harmony (2006), the artist depicts how music, love and relationships all need harmony. The deep red colour represents passion, love and spirit, while the bright orange and yellow “spring sunlight,” as she describes, shows a child admiring a fl ower in a young woman’s hair. In one of her largest pieces (approximately two by three metres), The Call of Spring (1998 - 2000), shades of orange, red and purple mingle in full sunshine, symbolising a new season. When asked what she feels most proud of, she blushes and I can tell she has never really thought about it, demonstrating great modesty for someone so talented. After a short pause, she replies, “One day, I won’t be here. I want to leave a footprint, something that will make people remember me for what I have been able to achieve.” Like many artists, the pandemic has had a marked effect on the way she works. “Covid has made us stop and reconsider what we actually want to do in life,” she notes. So what lies ahead for the artist in future? “As an artist, I feel very fascinated about art because with it, you can refl ect your different emotions, the good times, the bad ones and your journey through life,” she expresses. “Sometimes people don’t see art as such and it’s your responsibility as an artist to show them how to see it and why you are so passionate about it.” That, she has certainly achieved. Lan’s dream project is to exhibit all her artwork, as well as her fi ne art and antique collection, all under one roof to showcase her rich roots and what Southeast Asian, more specifi cally Vietnamese, art can offer. She dreams of creating a very large painting portraying her culture and the similarities to the Middle East. “It’s very similar to the one here in the Middle East, in a way that men go in groups and so do women, but they don’t mix and show their emotions.” The best piece of advice she has been given? “To believe in yourself, no matter what happens. If you believe who you are, you can do it and achieve it.” And in this uncertain year, we all need to remind ourselves just that. lan-art.com PHO T OGRAPHY B Y A A SIY A J A GADEESH Studio VISIT HBI_048_148-151_Studio Visit_Lan Stanley_11423959.indd 15029/11/2020 12:30:23 PMCREDIT HERE 151 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/Culture Winter 2020 Views of Lebanese artist Tagreed Darghouth in her studio in Beirut’s Mar Mikhael neighbourhood HBI_048_148-151_Studio Visit_Lan Stanley_11423959.indd 15129/11/2020 12:31:26 PM152 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/Culture Winter 2020 SALVADOR DALÍ: THE IMPOSSIBLE COLLECTION A lighter read for the more visually inclined, slowly fl ick through 100 individual works of the surrealist superstar Salvador Dalí in this gorgeously handcrafted monograph that features a luxury clamshell case made in Italy. Offering the chance to familiarise yourself with the foremost member of the collective, who was anagrammatically nicknamed “Avida Dollars” for his ability to hone vast commercial success and capture the public’s imagination, Salvador Dalí: The Impossible Collection encompasses Dalí’s paintings, drawings, sculpture, fi lms, sensationalist public appearances, alongside his furniture and jewellery designs, selected by curator and art historian Paul Moorhouse. Written by Paul Moorhouse. Published by Assouline, assouline.com LEONORA CARRINGTON: SURREALISM, ALCHEMY AND ART The fi rst survey of the life and work of surrealist Leonora Carrington, Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art offers a remarkable insight into the world of the fantastical, dark and satirical artists and writers that came to be at the centre of Mexican cultural life, following her emigration from a post-war Europe. Most importantly, a rare collection of brilliant reproductions of her paintings are included, alongside photographs and a biography detailing her various infl uences and uncompromising independence. A contemporary of Breton and other well-known Parisian surrealists, Leonora’s highly symbolic paintings are characterised by a plethora of cryptic, often anthropomorphic fi gures that rival the fantasies of Bosch. In Mexico, her oeuvre eventually expanded to include plays, sculptures, textiles created alongside Mexican master weavers and seminal murals in the country’s institutions. Written by Susan L. Aberth. Published by Lund Humphries, lundhumphries.com The most radical avant-garde movement, surrealism’s persistence in visual culture may be attributed to its ability to go beyond experimentation in artistic principles, developing a number of distinct practises, aesthetics and cross-disciplinary understandings of psychoanalysis that gave way to a wave of international adaptations. IMAN VAKIL highlights key reads to understand the movement in all its diversity ART Ta lk ing HBI_048_152-153_Books_11422077.indd 15229/11/2020 12:35:26 PM153 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/Culture Winter 2020 The BOOKS SURREALISM IN EGYPT Delving into the Cairo-based collective Art et Liberty’s artworks, exhibitions and critical writings, Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group (AL) outlines the collective’s extensive activity to reform surrealism into a more actively anti-fascist and socially empowering movement, fi nding the original Parisian movement too self-involved. Sam Bardaouil draws on previously unpublished primary documents and more than 200 fi eld interviews to lay out the distinct work of the collective that responded to the polarising social and political concerns of Egyptians at the time. AL artists and activists such as Anwar and Fouad Kamel, Kamel El-Telmissany, the provocative poet and radical publisher Georges Henein, Ramsès Younan and feminist painter Inji Effl atoun utilised crude bodies, dream sequences and abstractions to draw on issues of the oppression of women and the working class, and economic and racial injustice. While currently recognised as one of the most infl uential yet short-lived chapter of Egyptian art history, many of their members at the time were exiled or imprisoned, leaving little behind. Written by Sam Bardaouil. Published Bloomsbury Publishing, bloomsbury.com COMPULSIVE BEAUTY An exhaustive deconstruction of surrealism, leading art historian and theorist Hal Foster takes a more defi nitive look at the movement in Compulsive Beauty. Establishing the Freudian notions of convulsive beauty, the marvellous and objective chance as seminal concepts through which surrealist work can be understood, Hal proposes that surrealism is ultimately predicated on the repression of the uncanny, often looking to marginalised works such as the dolls of Hans Bellmer, Giacometti’s sculptures and the group’s various photomontages. Unveiling the underlying anxieties of mechanisation and commodifi cation and the angst of the early 20th century, Hal demonstrates just how intertwined supposedly playful surrealism and fascism can be. Written by Hal Foster. Published by MIT Press, mitpress.mit.edu SURREALISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN 1930S JAPAN In this pioneering study, Jelena Stojkovic sheds light on the practise of a number of Japanese surrealist photographers and the extensive network of practitioners that stretched across Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Largely working in secret, Jelena draws on primary sources and extensive archival research, including over 100 photographs to chart the rich photographic output, most of which was previously unseen outside of its country of origin, and played a critical yet overlooked role in visualising new strands of thought and action. Written by Jelena Stojvokiv. Published by Routledge, routledge.com HBI_048_152-153_Books_11422077.indd 15329/11/2020 12:36:06 PM154 HarpersBazaarArabia.com/Culture Winter 2020 Last LOOK London-based independent curator Rose Lejeune explores the inevitable future of the art world, performance art in the modern age and the fundamentals of storytelling shared space. How does live art fi t into this new world? Can the digital ever provide an alternative to ‘being there’? Not to replace it, but to provide some new mode of distribution that doesn’t completely erase its physicality. To test this, we are experimenting with 360-fi lming with artists in locations around the UAE and Europe, which will be shown as large-scale immersive projections in a London gallery and a parallel space in the UAE, as well as sending out VR headsets for viewing at home. In contrast to the normal cycle of the fair where you have lots of galleries to visit and people to see, and where live art can almost disappear into the visual noise, this is almost the fl ip experience, something intimate and concentrated; an immersion of live work within a digital plane. ■ Rose Lejeune is an independent curator based in London and the curator of In the Round for Abu Dhabi Art 2020 The invitation to curate a performance programme for Abu Dhabi Art fair in 2020 posed an obvious dilemma. In a moment of social distancing, is it possible to commission and exhibit performance without compromising the integrity of the ideas behind it or an audience’s experience of it? Performance - art made with bodies, experienced in space, in real time, has become an increasingly important part of contemporary art today. Rather than working within one medium, artists work across many - from painting and drawing, to ceramics, fi lm, photography and live art, each is a tool to be drawn upon to express ideas and create specifi c effects. This kind of contemporary art performance’s roots lie in the underground and anti-commercial art scenes of the 1950s and 60s, but today it happens just as much in national museums, art fairs and major global biennials and through it, artists explore not only physicality, identity and movement, but also the fundamentals of storytelling, communication and community. How we gather together is, of course, a question with new and vexed complications. 2020 stopped us all in our tracks, quite literally grounding us, and forcing us to rethink all our interactions. Actions as simple as walking down the street, having a meeting, or being in a café with friends, let alone in a theatre or performance space, in a crowd of people have to be navigated in radically new ways. The digital tools that we have today certainly help us stay connected with those near and far. However, it’s also very clear that there is something we all really miss in the absence of materiality or the physical. We are all grappling with that push and pull between the desire to connect and be together, but also understanding that there is a kind of trepidation now about New Way THE HBI_048_154_Last look_Rose_11422010.indd 15429/11/2020 10:04:41 AM#STAYHOME #STAYSAFE @HARPERSBAZAARARABIA HBA_152_Ad2.indd 25930/11/2020 10:10:16 AMInteriorsfurniture.comInteriorsFurnitureUAEInteriorsUAENext >