The poetics of calligraphy: an interview with Mouneer Al-Shaa`rani.

Ghazoul, Ferial J.

In the interview, Mouneer Al-Shaa`rani--artist, calligrapher and book-designer--traces his trajectory in the world of aesthetics from his early training in Damascus by the leading calligrapher of Syria to his study of Graphic Design and his subsequent exhibitions in the Arab World and Europe as well as his writing on the history and significance of Islamic art. Elaborating his views, Al-Shaa'rani explains how he struggled against three currents in order to contrast his very own mode, namely, (1) the traditionalism of conservative calligraphers, (2) the dismissal of calligraphy as a modern art by western-oriented artists, and (3) the concoction of the so-called "Letterist Artists" who used alphabetical letters in their works, but were unable to free themselves from western notions of a painting. The poetic dimension of Al-Shaa'rani's calligraphic paintings comes from his choice of powerful poetic verses or philosophical sayings of mystics as well as in his mode of rendering the lines and curves of the written words so as to surprise, move, and challenge the spectator-reader. Al-Shaa'rani's fascination with the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh led him to formulate it in his own wording before he rendered it in a calligraphic triptych indicating the narrative stages of the ancient epic.

Ferial J. Ghazoul is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo and author of several books and articles on medieval literature and postcolonial criticism, including Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context. She is the editor of Alif and the co-editor of The View from Within. She has translated several texts from and into Arabic, English and French, including writing by Althusser, Riffaterre, Ricoeur, Said and Matar.