#Choucair hashtag - Bluesky

@mdstamper.bsky.social

3 months ago

$Painted in 1943, this self-portrait comes from Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair’s early, searching years before her long Paris stay. With a background in natural sciences, she valued systems that could be tested and rebuilt. Color becomes structure and light behaves like geometry. That same year she spent 7 months in Cairo, Egypt during wartime closures. With museums shut, she studied old mosques and buildings, absorbing the logic of Islamic design of how line, proportion, and repetition can carry meaning without relying on illusionistic depth. She depicts her own headshot with a composed and unsentimental expression. A pale headscarf wraps closely around her hair, forming an oval frame. Her skin is built from light, warm-beige tones interrupted by cool blue shadow and soft rose, so the face reads as overlapping planes rather than rounded flesh. Dark arched brows and half-lidded eyes meet ours with steady, slightly weary calm. Her muted brick-red mouth remains closed. She wears a brown coat over a green garment with a squared neckline, while the background dissolves into blocks of light brown, grey, and blue, keeping our attention on the geometry of her features. Identity is carried less by setting than by method as the self is assembled plane by plane and fused into one steady gaze. Around this period, while taking philosophy classes at the American University of Beirut, she was told Greek art was “superior” because Islamic art lacked human images. This remark sharpened her commitment to the visual language she found essential. Seen in retrospect, the fractured planes of her face bridge portraiture and the modular abstractions and interlocking sculptures she would later develop, often compared to verses of Arabic poetry. The painting asks us to meet her not as an emblem, but as a thinker at work who is modern, rigorous, and quietly refusing any hierarchy that would place her culture, or her gender, at the margins.$

Painted in 1943, this self-portrait comes from Lebanese artist Saloua Raouda Choucair’s early, searching years before her long Paris stay. With a background in natural sciences, she valued systems that could be tested and rebuilt. Color becomes structure and light behaves like geometry. That same year she spent 7 months in Cairo, Egypt during wartime closures. With museums shut, she studied old mosques and buildings, absorbing the logic of Islamic design of how line, proportion, and repetition can carry meaning without relying on illusionistic depth. She depicts her own headshot with a composed and unsentimental expression. A pale headscarf wraps closely around her hair, forming an oval frame. Her skin is built from light, warm-beige tones interrupted by cool blue shadow and soft rose, so the face reads as overlapping planes rather than rounded flesh. Dark arched brows and half-lidded eyes meet ours with steady, slightly weary calm. Her muted brick-red mouth remains closed. She wears a brown coat over a green garment with a squared neckline, while the background dissolves into blocks of light brown, grey, and blue, keeping our attention on the geometry of her features. Identity is carried less by setting than by method as the self is assembled plane by plane and fused into one steady gaze. Around this period, while taking philosophy classes at the American University of Beirut, she was told Greek art was “superior” because Islamic art lacked human images. This remark sharpened her commitment to the visual language she found essential. Seen in retrospect, the fractured planes of her face bridge portraiture and the modular abstractions and interlocking sculptures she would later develop, often compared to verses of Arabic poetry. The painting asks us to meet her not as an emblem, but as a thinker at work who is modern, rigorous, and quietly refusing any hierarchy that would place her culture, or her gender, at the margins.

“Self Portrait” by سلوى روضة شقير / Saloua Raouda Choucair (Lebanese) - Oil on board / 1943 - Tate Modern (London, UK) #WomenInArt #art #artText #arte #SalouaRaoudaChoucair #سلوىروضةشقير #Choucair #TateModern #LebaneseArtist #LebaneseArt #SelfPortrait #ModernArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists