Contemporary Middle East Art Show

Ramin Haerizadeh

What an attention grabbing, interesting collection of contemporary art emanating from the art inspired people of the Middle East and old world Persia. That's nothing new as art has held an ancient pride of place from the birthplace of Three Faiths. The Saatchi Gallery compiled a wide range of artists using an assortment of mediums involving the head, heart and hands of artiste and audience. The political or the profane are not held in abeyance as the freedom of expressions include a beautiful rendering of a deplorable West Bank checkpoint that illustrates what both sides endure and see differently. Charles Saatchi pulled artists with ancestral roots from Arabia and Persia, but domiciled all over the globe, for "Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East", the almost five month showing in Britain. (Qalandia by Wafa Hourani)

British collector Charles Saatchi has filled his new gallery with over 80 paintings, sculptures and installations from the Middle Ea st representing a vibrant art scene that he hopes will challenge people's assumptions about the region.

The works, gathered over the last four years by the Baghdad-born impresario, touch on sensitive topics. They depict the horror of conflicts past and present, explore suppressed sexuality and examine awoman's place in the Muslim world.

"Our sense of the Middle East is so dominated by reports of war, the tensions and the troubles," said Rebecca Wilson, the gallery's head of development. (Untitled Art from Shadi Ghadirian)

From prostitutes to praying women in ethereal white tinfoil, aptly named ghosts, which is a three dimensional echo from another culture. On a much smaller exhibition scale it is somewhat reminiscent of the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang in Shaanxi Province, China with neatly aligned rows and a rhythmic repetitive use of material. The show opens Friday 30 January with a scheduled close on 6 May, 2009. There is a illustration book - 208 pages, available through the Saatchi Gallery that captures the art and include biographical sketches of some of the artists. Kader Attia's contribution is the Ghost display. (Pictured WshhWshh from Nadia Ayari)

Beirut Cautchouc is a Beirut floor mat map by Marwan Rechmaoui

(Photo Courtesy Reuters: Toby Melville)

Tala Madani

Since it is art, criticism to follow should be a hotbed of controversy. First, because many of the artists are Iranian while others live in a more westernized flamboyant habitat like Dubai. The art scene is seeing a number of means for Middle Eastern artworks to arrive on the stage. Qatar opened a spectacular edifice, Museum of Islamic Art, with the building itself as the first piece of art from the Chinese American architect, IM Pei.



The ever artful and always interesting author on Arabic art and architecture, daab, brings the beauty of interiors to life in the book, Arabian Design. Forms and function and the influences from the past show up in very modern building or contemporary pieces of artwork throughout the Middle East.

Middle East Theme Parks - An ACME Idea?

As a region, the Middle East comprises architectural and cultural history of humankind since inception while its still prone to violent outbursts by any number of aggrieved parties or grudge bearing nations. Adding a few loud mouth tourists in all the wrong garb with white tube socks is gratuitous next to adding a theme park based on American comics and cartoons in the area. The insurance on a capitalistic enterprise like that has got to be underwritten by a financially healthy firm that treats risk like the expectation of sun heating nearby Arabian deserts. Hooray for Hollywood - here comes their billions earned on the backs of a carrot eating, wise cracking bunny plus a wily coyote charged with babysitting a stalker cat named Sylvester and a yellow bird usually locked in a cage that need a skilled professional negotiator. Jimmy Carter is already booked in the area.



The theme park idea does have a few cha-ching things going for it. Youthful demographics dominates the Middle East. Petro dollars produced a surfeit of surplus incomes for the region's title holders on oil fields. For several years deals have been inked with Viacom/Paramount to do a fun place based on the Titanic and DreamWorks bringing diversity with the lime green Shrek and the lesser known Kung Fu Panda. Time Warner is sticking Bugs Bunny right out there as the front guy amidst an adult beverage Budweiser with Anheuser Busch snagging an island for their use to build a Sea World. Universal is so going to bring it with a giant ape, King Kong and who knows how the whole evolution thing is going to play out in 2012 when Jurassic Park, the T-Rex play park, opens as part of the Dubailand deal.

With their Spidey sense fully activated, Tatweer is the UAE government controlled company jumping on the web of opportunity by signing a mega deal with Marvel. Abu Dhabi already has luxury buildings construction out in the sea dredging up the sea bed to make multi million dollar sand castle islands that can be seen from space, Burj - the world's tallest skyscraper along with a Frigidaire snow & ski resort in the desert. Enter Marvel Comics main man, Wonder Woman sans burkha and a host of other characters to build the economic brand on its own island in the United Arab Emirates. Dubailand contains multiple resorts and facilities with in 3 billion square feet.

Investors, studios and park operators are all aiming to cash in on what some observers call the Middle East's decades-long fascination with American culture. Hollywood movies are popular in the region, and Western fashions are hot commodities among residents who travel abroad.

"On the one hand, they hate America. On the other hand they love America to the bone," said Michael Izady, an expert on Middle East culture who reaches history at Pace University in New York.

The theme park market is open — with no major facilities currently operating in the
Middle East.

The projects are no-brainers for the entertainment companies that have jumped at what amounts to free brand expansions with no capital at risk. Few details have been provided about the deals, which entertainment companies simply describe as licensing arrangements for intellectual property and help on designing the parks and attractions, with no mention of possible royalty payments.

Seems relentlessly pushy American characters, like Captain America, may get benched for the maiden voyage. One of my funniest moments was watching Porky Pig in Italian while on the Via Veneto. There is a time and a place to invite tourists and their bankrolls. But there is a time to say have you lost your mind to companies too. Keep looking for that 'Disney' treatment of Civil War battlefields on Hallowed Ground - Americans said no and they meant it. Too much is not a good thing on the cater to tourist front, especially with certain aspects of American culture deemed corrosive by many in polite Muslim society.


Rami Farouk Daher sets out to look at multiple aspects and implications of tourism throughout the Middle East. As always, scholarship on certain areas is not as deeply discounted for books as American works, but worth it to learn more from perspectives beyond the US. His offering is Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change and Transformation deeply drawing upon his architectural background and familiarity with heritage sites.

China Moves Yellow River for 2008 Olympics

Befitting a concerned host, Beijing has nowhere near enough water for the upcoming special few weeks when the world focuses its attention on running, no-splash dives, and backflips. Problem "solved" - divert the second largest river in eastern China to gush towards Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics too. Only a nation worried because its international prestige is on the line with an economic motive to profit first from tourists followed by multi-national corporations eager to chain smoke, feed and drink on China's capitalist boom would disregard Mother Nature's pending Vengeance to reroute a cultural icon of a river into a dying lake almost fifty miles away. Like the mighty Mississippi in the US, there are a series of locks and gates on the silt-filled Yellow River that will be opened, allowing rushing water at 70 cubic meters per second to fill what's left of China's largest freshwater lake in just under 120 days.

At the same time, four reservoirs that naturally feed Baiyangdian, northern China's largest freshwater lake, will instead provide additional water for Beijing, which suffers chronic shortages, according to the paper.

The lake, about 70 kilometres from Beijing, has been decimated by environmental degradation for more than a decade as both water use and pollution has skyrocketed in tandem with China's booming economy.

It would then largely flow along the ancient "Grand Canal," one of China's earliest water projects, built nearly 1,400 years ago.

Regardless of the Olympics, Beijing is exploding in size from construction, displaced people, a robust tourist industry and being the center of government. Due to drought striking Lake Baiyangdian, feeding China's capital, water is at a premium with no real replenishment in sight. The city needed a longer term water solution, but this engineering fait accompli also harms agriculture productivity gravely needed in a billion and half person China, deprives farmers and others who relied on the river for centuries. Not that the Yellow River's water is all that clean with any number of manufacturers and others using it as both a toxic refuse dump and fresh drinking water.

Northern China is wracked with water shortages due to soaring demand, an ongoing drought and global warming. Per capita water usage in Beijing is already far below national averages.

Meanwhile, a separate project to divert Yellow River water to the Shandong city of Qingdao, where Olympic sailing events will take place, was completed last week, the paper said.

From 8 August to 24 August 2008, The Games of the XXIX Olympiad will go on making memories in a striking and colorful fashion with The Fuwas or good luck dolls, floral tributes and an incredible architectural vision in the main stadium. It's the after effects as China goes in to a rainy season and the landscape is no longer a natural barrier to the coming flash floods and erosion caused by the Yellow River's Diversion.

The Three Gorges Dam Project was built to solve a power issue by leveraging and harnessing the Yanghtze River, but it has had a stunning lack of consistent success in providing electricity from this decades long enterprise while displacing millions of China's indigenous people. Special and exclusive for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China is altering the natural flow of the Yellow River for a new long march. The Yellow River also has bears two informal names, China's Pride and China's sorrow as the Chinese Cradle of Civilization or Mother River.

From late 2007, comes a beautiful book, Yellow River: The Spirit and Strength of China authored by Aldo Palvan.

Coming in May is the 2008 Edition of The Complete Book of The Olympics by David Wallechinsky, son of acclaimed author Irving Wallace, who attended his first Summer Olympiad in Rome, now enthralled with all things Olympic.

Libraries Invaded by Young People

Old world people born post-Watergate era, in the Go-Go 80's or when Bush the Smarter was president, who now have enough new world electronics per capita to bring down a power grid, are discovering the ancient world of the local library. Thomas Jefferson gave his collection to start the Library of Congress and libraries have been an American staple ever since. The internet was supposed to end the quaint notion of getting a library card, but now, I am not the only one with a card that actually goes into the library and sees the Dewey decimal system in full gloriously dull Times New Roman type on little white labels on each book and smiles. And the young people going to the library and using it actually return again and again during daylight hours, in big numbers, according to a joint study from Pew Internet/American Life.

"The age of books isn't yet over," said Lee Rainie, Pew's director.

The study found that library usage drops gradually as people age -- 62 percent among those 18-30 compared with 32 percent among those 72 and up, with a sharp decline just as Americans turn 50.

"It was truly surprising in this survey to find the youngest adults are the heaviest library users," Rainie said. "The notion has taken hold in our culture that these wired-up, heavily gadgeted young folks are swimming in a sea of information and don't need to go to places where information is."

What's the draw? The working theory is most of these people were in their teens as libraries transformed themselves and powered up with PC's, DVD's and other modern technologies. Online may give information. But there is a difference if you can hold the book or reference material in your own hand. Answers about medical issues seem to be the biggest initial information quests and then it blossoms. Leading in using the library, Gen Y'ers also realize the library is a great spot in urban settings to snag free WiFi. A fast connection rules! But it is better than being at Starbuck's because there are plenty of electrical outlets at the library to plug into, just no triple lattes or baked snacks at the Librarian's information counter.

"These findings turn our thinking about libraries upside down," said Leigh Estabrook, a professor emerita at the University of Illinois and co-author of a report on the survey results.

"Internet use seems to create an information hunger and it is information-savvy young people who are most likely to visit libraries," she said.

Sixty-five percent of them looked up information on the Internet while 62 percent used computers to check into the library's resources.

Public libraries now offer virtual homework help, special gaming software programs, and some librarians even have created characters in the Second Life virtual world, Estabrook said. Libraries also remain a community hub or gathering place in many neighborhoods, she said.

The Library of Congress is a masterpiece of architecture created from marble, limestone and one man's foresight. It is a treasure and though only having been in it once, I vow to return. The Library of Congress: The Art and Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building, weighing in at a hefty four pounds and with a price tag worthy of that because of the color pictures, simulates the feeling of being in America's grandest library. Henry Hope Reed, John Young Cole and Herbert Small are the editors.

In Just 3 Minutes Crooks Steal Picasso in Brazil

Faster than boiling an egg the old fashioned way, brazen burglars in São Paulo with a hydraulic jack and a crowbar, pulled off a stealth caper at the break of dawn ripping off a Picasso artwork while nabbing Brazil's own neo-realist Candido Portinari's (1939) "The Coffee House" or "O Lavrador de Cafe" in two separate rooms. Yep, the stylish modern cement fortress, Museum of Art, is shut tight for a few days in its own Blue Period, as it looks for Picasso's (1904) "The Portrait of Susan Bloch" to repair the damage done to one of the nation's most successful exhibits and its own sterling reputation in Latin America. The thieves were caught only on tape rolling in security cameras while duty guards were busy changing shifts. Monetary value of the two pieces has fluctuated between $55 and $100 million USD in news reports. The insurance company will be the final arbiter of worth, not the museum's curator.

Jumping over a glass partition, they climbed an open concrete staircase leading up into the entrance of the two-story modernist building, which hovers over a large plaza on stilts of steel.

For a short time, they could have been seen from blocks away. But the thieves worked quickly. A few jabs of the crowbar, and they were able to slip a common car jack under the metal security gate. A few more cranks and they squeezed inside.

"It was a professional job; it was something they studied because the paintings were in different rooms," said the lead police investigator, Marcos Gomes de Moura.

"The prices paid for such works would be incalculable, enough to give you vertigo," said curator Miriam Alzuri of the Bellas Artes Museum of Bilbao, Spain. (AP Photos/Sao Paulo Museum of Art)

Such a robbery is making worldwide news at a time when art galleries and collectors are feeling the credit Grinch as investors check their portfolios to make sure a big enough nest egg is still able to afford owning art and the art's value continues to climb. The modern masters of the twentieth century will ascend in value as time marches on. Brazil's São Paulo Museum of Art, founded by the meat mogul Chateaubriand, is counting its lucky stars today as these thieves were picky-picky-picky and did not bother with the renowned Renoir, Raphael or Rembrandt that were right on the way to stealing the other two smallish paintings. That smacks of either already having a particular buyer lined up who is not concerned about provenance or seriously undereducated art thieves.

Picasso is a a biographer's dream as much of his life is marked by his paintings and what was happening at the time. There is so much, the stories are broken into separate books to form a trilogy. John Richardson has the latest paperback version with A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy 1881-1906 and followed up last month with a hardbound book, A Life of Picasso 1917-1932.

Wonder of the World City Suffers Attack

It is a renowned monument to architecture sixteen years in the making, built from love, for love and about love from a heartbroken Emperor Shah Jahan to his most favorite beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after she died in childbirth. Years ago, the late Princess Diana famously sat achingly alone on a white marble bench, in front of the building committed to being the most famous symbol of Love. Today, in the city of Agra, tourists and residents are urged by local police to stay indoors as rioting follows a traffic accident. The Taj Majal remains open through two of its three gates.

Police imposed a curfew Wednesday in parts of the northern Indian city of Agra that is home to the Taj Mahal and advised tourists and residents to stay indoors after rioting that followed a fatal truck accident, officials said.

Rioting occurred after a speeding truck, (lorry) careened into a group of pedestrians, killing four Indian Muslims. Riot police reacted killing one person. Crowds turned violent throwing stones and other objects at police at the chaotic scene of the traffic accident. Out of a sense of caution, the Taj Majal was shuttered, then reopened shortly afterwards. Tourism at the world famous landmark is expected to remain unaffected by today's incident, but the site of many vehicles burning is not going to prompt tourists to explore the cityscape of Agra. Schools are closed for the next three days in reaction to the violence and to allow tempers to cool. (Picture from AFP)

Take a magnificent virtual tour of the Taj Mahal, considered one of the Eight Wonders of the World, and its garden with all of its breathtaking enchantments.

Or read a beautiful architecture book, giving the history and evolution of Islamic architecture in a variety of settings in Islamic Art and Architecture: From Isafan to The Taj Mahal from Henri Stierling.



The Complete Taj Mahal: and The Riverfront Gardens of Agra by Ebba Koch is just an exquisite book in elegance and beauty devoted to the history of the treasure that is the Taj Mahal.

Marvels of Architecture Produce Digital Walls of Water

Spain will feature the innovative and intriguing design from MIT at Expo Zaragoza 2008. William J. Mitchell, head of MIT's Design Laboratory and former Dean of Architecture at MIT explains the technology:

Equipped with suitable sensors, Water Walls can detect the approach of people and, "like the Red Sea for Moses, open up to allow passage through at any point," said Mitchell. "This provocatively subverts the fundamental architectural conception of an opening as something, like a door, found at a fixed location."

The theme of the Expo is water. This architecture displays the fusion of water, art, technology in an astounding display of imagination. A video presentation from Wired is here.

From an Italian perspective, Chris Parades provides the poetic combination of water and architecture, naturally named Architecture Water. As always, when architecture and art are combined the books are beautiful while adorning many a coffee table, but they are meant to be treasured. And yes, they are pricey, very pricey. But if in Spain, go see the water walls live when it opens and report back here!