M52 Shakir Hassan al-Said
One Dimension (1973)
The One Dimension Group (Al-Bu’d al-Wahad) was founded by the Iraqi artist and writer Shakir Hassan al-Said (1925–2004) in 1971, after he had suffered an acute spiritual and mental crisis and left the Baghdad Modern Art Group (M12). The new group’s ideology was complex. Essentially it rejected conventional three- and two-dimensional art in favour of an illusory ‘one’ – or inner – dimension, similar to the concept of existential temporality promoted by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. In practice this ‘One Dimension’ was difficult to manifest artistically, as drawing or painting on a surface is two-dimensional; instead, al-Said’s paintings did not convey conventional forms or shapes, but the trace of something, like a crack in a wall.
At the same time, inspired both by Heideggerian ontology and by the mystical form of Islam known as Sufism, al-Said began to employ the Arabic language, in its written form, in his work as the means to reveal the hidden essence of being. Joining forces with the abstract painter Madiha Omar (1908–2005) and the Cubist-inspired Jamil Hamoudi (1924–2003) – both of whom had been pioneers of the Arabic letter in modern art in the 1940s – al-Said sought to create a unifying Arab modern art through the expressive use of calligraphy and other forms of script.
Al-Said’s elucidation of the concept of ‘One Dimension’ was first published in the catalogue for the opening of the group’s second exhibition, in Baghdad in March 1973, along with essays by the other artists. It encapsulates his desire to create a spiritual form of art that explored the meaning of existence and expressed profound universal truths.
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The principle of adopting the letter in art, then developing it in order to express its meaning, makes it necessary to study One Dimension from several perspectives.
1
From the philosophical perspective, we can consider the thinking of the enthusiast for adopting the letter in art as transcendent thinking. He does not attempt to delve deeply into research with an experimental scientific approach, but rather attempts to branch off into the experiment of comparison between two worlds: the linguistic one (the world of the letter) and the representational one (the world of two dimensions). So, from this perspective, One Dimension is a human/non-human vision because it goes beyond its own world towards its universal horizon. The artist who is an enthusiast of adopting the letter will not be satisfied with representational art of itself because he will add letter signs to it. This means that the painting will become more than an attempt at representation because, if artistic representation is essentially one of form (spatial), then the interjection of a linguistic element goes beyond the heart of this act to its horizon (in time). And this means that what the artist wants to debate at that time is not human or spatial existence but the problem of the existence of space-time. Thus, the fundamental subject of One Dimension is the existence of the universe itself.
In this sense, the theory of One Dimension presumes that the true meaning of the universe is realized by reverting from form to its linear eternity, and from size to its morphological eternity. It is a practice of transcendence (and by implication absence) through the relationship entered into between the self and the external world, in such a way that this relationship does not become a restriction within which subjective human existence is confined, but rather a developed relationship in which the self senses its own being within the universal presence.
We can observe the human/non-human features of One Dimension when we compare the Surrealist vision with the Contemplative vision. The Surrealist vision is at its core a human vision because it holds that the authentic form of human existence is not consciousness, but rather the combination of emotional expression with subsurface layers of awareness or the subconscious. Hence Surrealist alienation is an alienation that does not transcend its human setting. The Surrealist is a human being who believes in his complete positive humanity, but feels that Western traditional art is impeding his human reality as it continually hides its bright and authentic side. And this aspect is what calls him to the subconscious or the world of dreams and hallucinations. From here he returns with his new vision of true human existence. However, the Contemplative vision holds that human feeling, insofar as it is positive towards the universe, constantly criticizes its true existence because it is not enough to express the truth of existence in space-time. However, it can be a productive feeling if it does not become devoted to the universe merely because a negative existence is inconceivable. For if ‘amazed’ is the paradigm of the Surrealist man, then ‘contemplator’ is the paradigm of the Contemplative man … or the One Dimension man.
This Contemplator is a man who feels his universal existence through his humanity when he makes his negativity into a new element to unify with the creation as a whole, for he does not live (himself) as positivity facing the negativity of the external world but rather lives (himself) as negativity facing the positivity of the same world.
Thus the ability of the graphical surface to express the self as soon as he accepts the positivity of the linguistic letter to interject his world into the world of the painting. The adoption of the letter in art, then, is no longer anything other than the universal position of the Contemplator, because this adoption strives to reveal the unity of the two worlds that he lives in simultaneously – the world of thought (the linguistic one) and the world of vision (the representational one).
2
As for the technical aspect, One Dimension is concerned with transforming linguistic symbols into a representational dimension. Because if, in the olden days, the ‘vitality’ of outward appearances was the philosophical basis of a whole theory of worshipping the various deities through metaphysical thought – and, in another sense, of choosing ‘allegorical models’ to express knowledge, and not perceptible vision to express the visual senses – then the ‘principle of imitating nature’ became, in the modernist era, the philosophical basis of human and scientific predilection; whereas, in the current era, the ‘conciliatory technique’ – i.e., a form that expresses the unity of universal existence – is the new framework for expressing comparative vision. Therefore the discovery of collage merely broadened such a vision.
In One Dimension, artistic technique becomes an attempt at collage when it unites in a painting the letter signs on one hand with their representational environment. Hence, in the technique, the letter also plays the role of a witness from the world of language when it is present at the heart of the pictorial surface. In reality, it remains surrounded by an aura from the world of the linguistic concept, in addition to its features connected with the adopted Arabic calligraphy. For the adopted letter, and the distance mapped out by it, is the rhetorical witness: it is, indeed, all the oral and symbolic heritage of the world of thought that can be read. It is true that the technique of modification will transform the letter in its turn into a representational sign, either by changing it into a non-linguistic form or by breaking it up, but it will remain an expression of the concept of the spectator in the world of language. In summary, although the conciliatory technique of One Dimension art seems to be an attempt to bring together various materials, but at its core it combines two worlds … Thus it is a clear ideological collage.
3
As for the expressive aspect of One Dimension, the script environment is a rich one, which brings together the internal and external dimensions of the creative possibilities in art. Arabic script has varied methods of expression. There is the concentrated Kufic style, and there are other forms which have curved momentum, such as the Naskh script, the Thuluth script, the Persian script, etc. … But whether it is all those richly figurative and expressive forms of script which are adopted, or more everyday forms, such as ordinary handwriting, children’s writing and graffiti – they all remain an expression of the innermost human soul, which presents itself in a spontaneous manner, loaded with conscious and subconscious expression at the same time. Or, in another sense, when a painting is charged with the letter in this way, the expression in it almost represents what a seismograph communicates through its signs … For there is a form of writing used by schoolchildren, especially those at elementary school, and there is a form of writing used on city walls that is filled with alarm and fear and spontaneity, and also teems with signs of ambiguity and repression and deception.
One Dimension, then, aspires to express the human soul by combining these forms of writing whenever they encounter walls or earth. Hence writing’s expressive role in art.