{"id":28743,"date":"2023-10-09T08:51:40","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T06:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=28743"},"modified":"2023-10-27T11:58:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T09:58:04","slug":"the-tate-embraces-morocco-with-the-casablanca-art-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/the-tate-embraces-morocco-with-the-casablanca-art-school\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tate Embraces Morocco with The Casablanca Art School<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
This summer, the Tate Gallery\u2019s seaside satellite, Tate St. Ives in Cornwall, opened a blockbuster exhibition straight out of Morocco, curated by Morad Montazami of the Tate Modern and Madeleine de Colnet for Zam\u00e2n Books & Curating<\/a>, in conjunction with the Tate St. Ives\u2019 Director, Anne Barlow and the Sharjah Art Foundation<\/a>.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sophia Kazan Makhlouf<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why The Casablanca Art School<\/em><\/a>\u00a0at St. Ives? What could be the relevance of a Moroccan art college opened during Morocco\u2019s French occupation, with its bright, ice-cream colors of the 1960s and 1970s, to visitors of the Cornwall Tate? Certainly on paper, the North African colonial outpost of Paris\u2019 prestigious Ecole Des Beaux Arts is oddly juxtaposed with earlier work of the St. Ives\u2019 Modernist community, by Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Bryan Winter, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Sir Terry Frost, which flourished from the 1930s and 1940s. And yet Barlow, who has been involved with numerous international and biennale exhibitions and awards, particularly Kaspars Podnieks and Kri\u0161s Salmanis\u2019 2013 Latvian Pavilion at Venice, with work tackling identity and representation, expresses to the viewer how both histories reject traditional modes of painting.<\/p>\n

\"Mustapha
Mustapha Hafid, “Voyage cosmique (Cosmic journey),” 1972 (collection of the artist).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

St. Ives and Casablanca\u2019s brands of modernism explore exciting and fresh approaches to color and representation, based on the landscape and history. While the work of St. Ives artists delight in the brilliant, coastal light of the West Penwith, the cliffs and headlands, so Casablanca artists are inspired by the tribal Amazigh symbols and beliefs that predate the country\u2019s occupation by the French and by its earlier Islamic occupation. These reflect the landscape and return to its deep-rooted African beliefs.<\/p>\n

Artworks in the Casablanca Art School exhibition are many and varied. They include an array of paintings, ceramics, photographs of Amazigh tribal jewelry, as well as 1960s and 1970s film footage, architectural maquettes, woven textiles and printed posters, many of which come from the Tate\u2019s own collection. Work from the estates of artists such as the artist and educator Farid Belkahia, director of the school from 1962 until 1974, Mohammed Chab\u00e2a and Mohamed Meleh, who joined the school as teachers in 1966 and 1964 respectively. Also included in the exhibition in an entire wall spread out with magazine covers and designs are examples of Abdelatiff La\u00e2bi\u2019s revolutionary cultural journal Souffles, <\/em>to which many of the school\u2019s artist contributed. The journal was banned in 1971 as a political \u201ccrimes of opinion\u201d and La\u00e2bi was imprisoned, but this challenge too seems to find its reflection in the art of St. Ives, which was a melting pot of defiance and socialist artistic beliefs, as artists escaping World War II and fascism in Europe sought solace in St. Ives, a town built on the fishing industry and on strong Methodist principles.<\/p>\n