A revolution in fine arts:The sure-realism

An article that I translated for Mourad Elloumi

Biography

MOURAD ELLOUMI, born on the 27^th - 6 - 1961, graduated from the National Institute of Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Tunis in 1986.

He has been passionate about cinema, art and literature from an early age. He regularly participates in cultural events and especially the training of young people in painting clubs. Between two short rewarding experiences, one as the artistic director of a publishing house and press (Tourist Gazette) and the other as the responsible for his own communication box (Fine Art) ,he landed in 1988 in the world of education and dedicated  himself to the education of fine arts in order to contribute to the development of freedom of expression and  the creativity project at school.

Thus he cultivated his passion for painting and made several solo and group exhibitions between 1992 and 2000 (Sidi Bou Said Museum, Gallery khayachi La Marsa, cultural center abdeaziz Djemail, cultural center el Menzah ....). His commitment to freedom of expression and the human rights deprived him for several years from participating in official exhibitions under the old totalitarian regime.

In the aftermath of the "Arab Spring" the breath of freedom consolidates his career of an engaged artist .His recent thinking fits in this context and leads him to the exercise of a research that meets the foundations of a new plastic writing.

The project of these recent achievements entitled “Synergy” is a plea to the manifesto of the new "Sure realism".

The Second Republic

the first manifesto of the new « Sure-realism”

Mourad Elloumi

Tunis

"There isn't any aesthetic revolution that would do without the support of a political revolution." 

JEAN RICHARD BLOCH*

 Democratizing a Pictural Space and Developing Habits of Perception.

“I don’t know where the imaginary stops and where the real begins”

Today, works of art and architecture must actually have the status of Humanities and Sciences thus allowing to their authors to take part in philosophical and socio-political debates of the country. Anyway, for many centuries, thinkers have  defined painting as a "window on the universe," the painter becomes a mediator and the art an instrument of knowledge; the work of art is no longer based on a simple aesthetic pleasure but also on the thought as a tool for criticism.

Politicians, thinkers, historians, journalists and others take back the history of Tunisia with a new and free vision in order to illuminate the areas that remained dark, to explain the events buried under the wrinkles of three thousand years of history for a better understanding of the present. Artists and men of culture share, in their turn, that solidary impulse so as to deal with the rich pages of our history with the scientific rigor that imposes itself and to project it towards a better future.

 As it is urgent to retrace the sequence of the universal cultural movements that have marked our long history and made of Tunisia  a multicolored fabric, often contrasted and sometimes contradictory (Berber, Arab, African, Roman, Eastern, Western, Muslim) it is also important to reorganize and harmonize this beautiful mosaic battered more than ever after the revolution.It is in the context of The Arab Spring and the background of the constant insurrectional climate,intensified by the unprecedented ideological and political instrumentalization that the risk of conflict between the multiple shades would have extended the country into  the chaos.How to escape from this situation without return to the Elimination Policy?

Which solutions to consider in order to preserve the diversity without losing the uniformity and reconstruct the future together?

Far from being homogeneous, the new image of the society has to be perceived as a rich diversity to value by a plastic research deep in the heritage. It is up to artists and cultural workers to dig into this diversity and exploit any opportunity of creation that will allow them to reach the supreme superstructure and meet the ideal of the human dream.The artist does not have to stop at the stage of a passive testimony acting as a standardized or sacred optical reflection and often marked by a personal background, the artist should act as an actor freed of all normalization.

However, we must admit that one of the great mysteries of this universe is manifested by the existence of opposites, contrasting and contradictory things whether human, physical or metaphysical. It is only through the achievement  of the common values that we could be lead to the supreme reality of the sensitivity and the human dream. However, do we have, first of all, to look for the opportunities to bring everything together and join this experience to the idea of Warhol who said “The most attractive and most exciting attraction is sought between opposites that never meet."

It is a matter of expanding our field of vision in time and space in order to understand the diversity better,gather the opposites in order to be able to assemble the incoherences, this helps us express better the historical heritage

 and especially to harmonize the  diversity of the Cultural Heritage.It is also and inparallel a matter of answering to  the complexity of the human nature  characterized by a cocktail of realism and surrealism, of expressionism and  impressionism and sometimes even of abstract obsessions.New connexions  remain to be established in order to recreate a new resulting, a synergy between different forms that reflect a new  human "sure reality" social or cultural more expanded than the real of the moment, it's the new "sure-realism".

However, it must be noted that this approach  is totally different from the foundations of  the creative inspiration  proposed by the famous théorist of the surrealist group Qndré Breton defined the surrealism as "a pure psychic automatism whereby one proposes to express the actual functioning of thought

 either verbally or in writing, or in any other manner.Dictation of thought in the absence of any control of the mind, apart from every aesthetic or moral concern"***

 Now ,it's obligatory to rebuild a new writing that respects the requirements and objectives of the new "sure-realism" .It's compulsory to look for a creative cooperation not only between the human and social characteristics by also between the various plastic components of the pictorial space.We must put in place a synergy able of creating a new global effect,which will allow us to explain the choices between the new iconics,iconographics,and iconologicals  and understand the link between denotation and connotation of the realised works.

Thus, the space is divided into several simple geometric shapes. Each shape is a unique space, which sometimes tells its own story through footprints of figures, symbolic unfinished objects or movements which become part of the depth. These unique spaces remain relative and not absolute spaces because they seek to find a place in the whole. In fact, every culture and every form of human expression acquires a real sense through its relationship with other forms and any human act is a detail which leaves traces unfinished in space and in time.

Light, values, shapes, volumes and perspectives obey no law. The mixture of contrasting, animated colors, escapes the real codes. A mixture of styles reflected through the presence of floating, fluctuating colors and ill-defined outlines from one side but also by the presence of pure intersecting lines forming geometric areas, all in a very abstract language. From the other side, the touch of superimposed fragmented colors, in search of an impressionist space evocative, able to penetrate reality and move gradually towards autonomy of colors liberated from the representation of reality. Finally, color passages are looking for a figurative representation.

The construction of all these elements is orchestrated by a ratio of values. The staging of various shapes and colors seeking a new organization and new reports that obey only one truth: balance and unity of opposites, cohabitation of inconsistencies, complementarities of contrasts and freedom to diversities. An alternative space was born with new codes and new scalable and differing standards.A space through which we wonder where the imaginary stops and where the real starts.Thus, all exceed the real things to a new writing through which the space becomes mixed, from a physical and abstract side, from another side in search of a certain reality, an impression, an expression, a space that juxtaposes several sources and different styles like the Tunisian postmodernism.

This mixture of styles and sources should draw our attention to the need of valuing differences and therefore developing a search of a new attitude toward existence, give importance to the imagination and the dream beyond reason and logic in order to put rhythm in the reality and recreate it by giving it a new meaning, a new soul. This mixture should free us from all standard shapes because in reality, everything is ephemeral; everything is variable in time and in space.

Assemble, reorder, all this variety of forms that never meet, collect this rich diversity of styles and techniques and unite them, seems to be the pure imaginary, but basically it's real. What was impossible yesterday is possible today, and will perhaps be possible tomorrow thanks to the valuing of all forms of creation, the openness to all that is different, the union of all opposing styles (around the same concept) and finally complete freedom of expression.Infact it's all about demonstrating that the same pictural space could be democratised and consequently freed of the totalitarianism of the unique style and escape all types of visual discrimination in order to be able to respond to the aspirations of  the most complex human and social reality, it's a new approach to reality:the approach of the accumulation of trends.An approach that may develop our too narrow habits of perception that are limited in time and in space.

 A topic for debate, common sense will prevail soon, I'm sure.

Mourad Elloumi

 Profssor of fine arts

Artist painter