AL-BAHNASI ʿAfīf Lot n° 1

al-fann al-hadith fi al-bilad al-'arabiya / Pioneers of Modern Art in the Arab Countries Beirut, dar al-ra'id al-'arabi, 1985 Book in Arabic, 208 pp. AFIF BAHNASSI (1928-2017) Syrian archaeologist and art historian. Studied art history at the Ecole du Louvre and obtained a PhD in Islamic art in 1964 and a PhD in modern art from the Sorbonne in 1978. First Director of Fine Arts at the Syrian Ministry of Guidance and Education (1962-1971), Director General of Antiquities and Museums from 1971 to 1988. A leading figure in the arts in Syria, particularly in modern painting, he was the instigator of the first painting exhibition of the Fine Arts Association of Damascus. In his book Al-fann wa al-qawmiyya (Art and Nationalism), he theorizes about modern Arab art and already exposes his conception of art: "The first task of Arab socialist art is the manufacture of the Arab identity. ... The role of Arab art today is to be national in content and form" (Bahnassi, 1965: 125-126). Advocating socialist realism as an aesthetic model, the author considers that the ideological content of the pictorial work is as important as its plastic content, if not more so." Modern art in Arab countries is in fact the thesis he defended at the Sorbonne in 1978 and published in Tunis in 1980.