Dialogue: Thana Atwi
From Iraq and Saudi Arabia to Britain and then America, the journey of study, design and the arts extended, and from the small brochures that his father gave him, his artistic talent began to grow and is linked to the spirit and lines of the language. Majed Al-Yousef, the Saudi artist specializing in Arabic calligraphy, took this ancient art into wider fields, and combined it with poetry, specifically with the poems of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, “may God rest his soul”, and in luxury German wristwatches that carried the word “Emirates”, in Sheikh Zayed’s centennial as well, and the names of senior Arab leaders are engraved on it.
Al-Youssef delved deeply into the psychology of calligraphy, its construction and textual architecture throughout the years of his work, and deduced from the transformations that his own theories have undergone about the artistic and engineering methods of this art. He sees fonts as engineering and design, and deals with them as an artistic product before they are texts and words. Al-Youssef’s letters and manuscripts resemble the movement of life, and form a center where the Arabic alphabet meets and interacts, giving an impression of originality, strength and the historical value of Arabic calligraphy. The “Cultural Union” met the artist, Majed Al-Youssef, at his residence in Dubai, and it was this dialogue that sheds light on his experience.
*First of all, the clear third is your handwriting in which you sign your works. What distinguishes this line?
– The clear third is the most difficult among the types of fonts, it needs skills in writing, drawing and design, and evaluating the calligraphy is by mastering, and this requires a lot of practice and practice, as is the case of a musician or jewelry designer, it has a personal spiritual aspect and can be written in a mystical way .
Other fonts have degrees of freedom, and have more flexibility, but the challenge in the clear is the structures, his handwriting is strong and his letters as well, and each piece of a single letter can be studied separately, as it is a mixture of (literal and calligraphy) and this feature is not found with the same intensity in other fonts .
* But why did you choose to work with the clear third in particular?
– For two reasons. The first: I do not like writing very much, so I was not attracted to long texts. The second: I like to build my own compositions, and this stems from my interest in photography and drawing since childhood.
* She is currently working on a qualitative project, which is a book that includes selected poems for the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, may God rest his soul. What are the details of this work?
It is undoubtedly a rich and different work experience. For some time now, I have been working on a collection of poems selected for the founder of the state, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, “may God rest his soul.” All of them are in Nabati poetry, in which the formation of words depends on kasra and sukoon to a large extent compared to classical Arabic. . I plan these poems in clear thirds, and turn them into digital material and electronic files. The challenge in the project is the limited time, I work 16 hours a day, and the difficulty lies in putting all the words on lines as well, as they must be balanced and take into account spaces and spaces, and in general, the work is nearing its end, and the volume will be issued by an American publishing house.
In addition, I am currently focusing on my work in Saudi Arabia, as it is an emerging and promising environment. I have recently designed a fixed mural in the Horse Museum, which will be opened soon in Riyadh, as part of a project with the Ministry of Culture and an Italian company specialized in museum design, and I am preparing for two exhibitions in the Kingdom as well. .
letters abstract shapes
* In the centenary of Zayed, I took the line towards accessories, specifically watches. How was the resonance of this experience, that is, the combination of these two worlds?
I like to mix calligraphy with design products. The abstract visual language of calligraphy depends on the shapes of the letters without focusing on reading. I like the shape of the letter itself. During learning and gaining experiences, we try to study letters as forms rather than letters or words. When we sketch straight letters, curves, and so on, we think of letters as abstract shapes, not just for reading.
These forms, which are sections of letters or words, I saw that they could be recombined to resemble modern architecture in which free forms are used that are harmonious with each other and bear special aesthetic qualities, and calligraphy bears all these qualities, and during the research period I met during the Week of Hours in Dubai, a specialist In the German watch industry, his workshop produces limited edition watches and according to customers’ special requests. We discussed the issue together, and after a while came the centenary of the late Sheikh Zayed “may God rest his soul.” He suggested, in cooperation with one of his concerned partners, the idea and he contacted me. The design was a great challenge for me, that is, to write a word in a very narrow and limited space.
* We note that the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are among the countries most eager to revive Arabic calligraphy. How do you see this interest?
In fact, the interest of the United Arab Emirates in calligraphy came to motivate calligraphers in general to return to this art, and we saw a large number of Arab, Turkish and Iranian calligraphers, and even from other countries in Europe and Asia, interested in participating in the events that were held in the UAE.
Since the eighties, Turkey has started holding calligraphy competitions, and Iran continues its interest in this field, but the impact of the active role of the UAE in this field was enough to attract everyone’s attention, especially at the beginning of the millennium. Also, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s special interest in calligraphy, and a general devotion to Arabic calligraphy, was a qualitative and very important initiative because they considered it a national mission. In Saudi Arabia, it is known that there is a large base of young calligraphers who are at the beginning of the road, and the year of Arabic calligraphy provided an opportunity for them to learn about the movement of this art, and to communicate with the great calligraphers in the Kingdom, and this is a factor that will undoubtedly help in reviving Arabic calligraphy.
* In your paintings, the depth, complexity, and overlapping of my letters, how did you reach this composition in calligraphy?
When studying the history of fine art, I was attracted by the developments that took place in art in Europe and the artistic movements that emerged from the end of the nineteenth century until the period between the two wars.
With the beginning of Impressionism, then abstraction, cubism and the philosophies that followed, I realized that the development of art there could apply to Arabic calligraphy itself, for calligraphy is originally an abstraction. In classical painting, we draw the painting and compare its conformity with reality, and after the appearance of abstraction, the approach to nature began to differ, and the painting became bearing signs or parts of a subject that the artist wanted to communicate. This method gave me an incentive to apply it on the line, I tried to introduce this philosophy, especially cubism and futurism that came out of Italy, during the two world wars, and the most important thing that distinguished it was movement, everything moves and nothing is fixed, and trying to assemble the parts in the sense of cutting the parts of the painting and reassembling them Putting it all in one frame. What I do is different from the hurufiyya and does not fall within it. The hurufiyyah tried to combine calligraphy with plastic art, and all of these attempts came from plastic artists, not calligraphers. The movement started in Iran and then spread to Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and other countries, with two artists who were influenced by calligraphy, and tried to embody their impressions of it.
As for me, I came from the other side, being a calligrapher, well aware of the details of calligraphy and the techniques of integrating it into visual art, to come out as an art and not only as a job. It focused on the correct letter form and its use in a new painting, whose goal is to provide a visual experience more than a text for people to read, and it was something completely new.
* The new fonts that we see and read about its modern schools, do you think that they are close to the foundations of Arabic calligraphy or are they not similar?
Typography is a natural development of calligraphy, and because of the existence of printing and the digital world, we need to develop fonts that can be used in design, and this is what happened in Europe, China and Japan, but we still have a large gap between calligraphy and design in our Arab countries. Since the late sixties, the interest in calligraphy began to decline, and during the nineties the field of graphic design began to appear significantly as a craft and study that attracted many to it. The Arabs, and this greatly affected the level and quality of production when the product was in Arabic, except in rare cases.
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