HASSAN MASSOUDY
A Survey

 

 
Hassan Massoudy a fait son apprentissage en calligraphie traditionnelle comme enfant en Iraq. Il a completé ses études à Baghdad vers la fin des années 60, quand il s’est exilé en France, où il habite depuis. La fin des années 60 à Paris était un moment privilégié pour un calligraphe, considérant toutes les tendances artistiques qui était actives à l’époque. Bien que tout jeune il eût déjà développé ses propres innovations, le bouillon culturel de Paris lui a indiqué de nouveaux problématiques à résoudre. On peut voir ses adaptations de la calligraphie traditionnelle comme des détournements radicaux. Mais en même temps, la tradition de la calligraphie musulmane s’est toujours nourrie de sources variées, et la formation de Massoudy l’avait préparé pour ce qu’il a rencontré en France. On pourrait soutenir la proposition qu’une calligraphie, telle qu’on la trouve au proche orient ou en Chine, se caractérise par la possibilité d’expérimentation, permettant à l’artiste d’intégrer diverses éléments et même de faire des innovations individuelles. Cela met en question la notion des idées occidentales de l’expérimentation, qui sont souvent mécaniques.

Je doute pourtant que Massoudy s’intéresse beaucoup à ce débat. Ses activités comprennent des exercices de calligraphie dans son atelier, bien entendu, et en même temps il la pratique comme une forme de spectacle traditionnelle. Ce spectacle engage non seulement la musique, mais aussi la récitation de contes, qu’on peut mêler avec la calligraphie de diverses manières. Au niveau élémentaire, comme à l’école primaire, il s’agit d’écrire en écoutant de la musique pour rendre compte du rythme et de l’enchaînement narratif. Raconter une histoire facilite la compréhension d’un texte, et facilite aussi la mémorisation. Le public musulman accepte facilement que les arts soient mélangés. Notons en passant que pour les Chinois, la poésie, la musique, la calligraphie et la peinture font un art composé. Le public non-musulman n’a aucune difficulté à accepter ce sens communal, bien que certains soient surpris de le reconnaître.

La communauté est essentiel pour Massoudy, et cette communauté n’est sûrement pas limitée aux Musulmans. Son œuvre vise souvent la paix et la tolérance comme valeurs primaires, ce qui le mène tout naturellement à participer à l’Amnesty International, UNICEF, et d’autres organismes de leur suite. L’idée de la paix s’exprime chez Massoudy en des proverbes. Les proverbes communiquent la fraternité et l’accord dans une communauté, et chez Massoudy ils créent des liens plus vastes, avec l’espoir de rassembler les cultures du monde à travers une expérience commune.

Massoudy a contribué aux douze derniers numéros de Kaldron, et on trouvera quelques’unes de ses œuvres sur ce site, mais il importe de rassembler ici une exposition spéciale. A côté des œuvres touchant à la paix et aux proverbes, nous proposons aussi une rubrique sur la calligraphie, où Massoudy s’empare des formes européennes. Il faut bien se rappeler que l’original d’une œuvre est souvent de format très grand, et que Massoudy y attache des textes supplémentaires et aussi des encadrés.

- Karl Young

 

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Hassan Massoudy began his apprenticeship in traditional calligraphy as a child in his native Iraq. He completed his studies in Baghdad in the late 1960s and expatriated to France, where he has lived since. The late 60s was a great time for a calligrapher to be in Paris, with many confluent and divergent movements going on in all the arts. Although he had developed new ideas on his own as a young man, the cultural foment of Paris provided Massoudy with additional ideas to work out in various ways. Some would see his revisions of caligraphic traditions as radical departures. But at the same time, the Islamic tradition of calligraphy has always drawn on diverse sources, and Massoudy was partially prepared by his basic training for what he found in France. You could argue that calligraphy such as that of the middle east - or China - has an inherent experimentality built into it, that not only allows the artist to incorporate many elements from different places and circumstances, but encourages individual experiment. Thus it could raise some questions about our mechanical western notions of experimentation.

But I doubt that Massoudy has much interest in arguing about things. His activities include practicing his calligraphy in his studio, as you might expect, but also as a form of traditional performance art. This includes not only music, but also story telling, which can be integrated with calligraphy in a number of ways. On its simplest level, this is central to forms of elementary education, in which writing to musical accompaniment helps teach the rhythms and continuities of movement; and stories aid not only in understanding a text, but also in remembering it. Adult Moslem audiences more or less take this continuity of arts for granted, as a part of their heritage. Let me note that in the Chinese tradition, poetry, music, calligraphy, and painting also make up a composite art. Non-Moslem audiences seem to find little trouble in relating to this sense of community, even though some surprise themselves with their response.

The sense of community is essential for Massoudy, and that community is most emphatically not limited to Islam. Much of his work focuses on peace and tolerance as a prerequisite of all that has value, and this quite naturally leads him into work with Amnesty International, UNICEF, and other related organizations. If peace forms one of Massoudy's major themes, it reaches back into one of the basic social currencies of his tradition, the proverb. Proverbs may promote fellowship and agreement in a limited community, but Massoudy reaches out to those of other traditions in the hope that these will help form a common tender, based in shared community experience, that may bring the world's cultures together.

Massoudy contributed to most of the last dozen issues of Kaldron, and some of his work may be found elsewhere at this site, but it seems fitting to bring this survey together here. In addition to strings of examples related to peace and proverbs, we have set aside a section on calligraphy itself, where Massoudy in one way or another adapts specifically western forms to his texts. Please remember in looking at these that the originals are often large, and that, in addition to the main text, Massoudy often paints elaborate auxiliary texts, and auxiliary texts within auxiliary texts.

- Karl Young

Peace

Calligraphy

Proverbs


When this survey went on-line, it was the only source for work by Hassan Massoudy on the internet. He has since established a home page in France, with more examples of his work, notes in several langauges, and information on exhibnitions. Click here to go to his site.

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This is a Cooperative Presentation by Kaldron and Light and Dust Anthology of Poetry.