Necessary Nudes

Ḥadātha and Muʿāṣira in the Lives of Modern Lebanese

Bibliographic Data

ID8969952
AuthorsKirsten Scheid (0000-0002-8346-4454, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume42
Issue2
Pages203-230
Publication date2010-04-13
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743810000024
OpenAlexW2152587327
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited17

In Beirut between 1920 and 1940, the fine-art nude was a necessary genre. Exhibitions of these pictures put audiences on display as much as nudes. Thus, these events enable probing the role of art at intercultural junctures and understanding the experience of self-modernizing subjects outside metropolitan locales. Al-ḥadātha and al-muʿāṣira are analyzed as complementary but noninterchangeable aspects of the modernizing project, to argue that viewing art and appreciating nudes were necessary components of an urban, modern identity for Mandate-era Beirutis. The concept of dislocation is introduced to explore why artists such as Moustapha Farroukh employed academic art formulae to intervene in representational conventions and, in doing so, dislocated common ways of seeing and relating to “Easterners.” Nude paintings evince the importance of intellectuals’ physical and aesthetic experiences in the production of modernity. Moreover, they complicate the common idea that “authenticity” opposed “modernity” in Arab and colonial settings

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Epistemology · Eroticism · Exhibition · Human sexuality · Identity (music · Mandate · Modernism (music · Modernity · Painting · Political science · Scrutiny · Sociology · Studio · Visual arts · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · Philosophy

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