“The west-eastern divan” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the most famous anthology of Persian poetry and it is one of those books and pictures, which have contributed to the image of the Orient in the mind of the Occidentals. Looking at the paintings of Hind Nasser means for me at first looking from the occident, looking from the north. I do live in a country where the palette of the painters reflects the many greens of our vegetation, the silvery tones of our skies and the wetness of our atmosphere. But then, looking from the north means also to look at the orient as if it were a dream compensating for the lack of primary colours and experiences.
Goethe did never visit the country of Hafis, but many European painters since the 19th century travelled through the Orient around the Mediterranean and brought back the emotional impact of landscapes unseen before. Until the time of the Fauves and the Expressionists of 1910 the occidental notion of the orient was bound to images, to subjects, and it was only then that it concentrated on a colour scheme and abstract references.
What happened when Kandinsky saw one of his paintings put upside down and discovered it’s abstract qualities? At that time Sigmund Freud had analysed man’s dreams and Roentgen had invented the x-Rays. For the first time in many centuries the human being became transparent and the inner landscape of man became visible as a reflection of the landscape which surrounds him.
This is what Kandinsky discovered: That the exterior landscape he had tried to depict suddenly was superseded by another image which was the landscape of his own sensations.
This constant dialogue between an ever changing inner landscape becoming richer with the constant growth of a personality and extrovert discoveries can be the dominant source of a creative process. When I met the Jordanian artist Fahrelnissa Zeid in the late 80’s I was extremely fascinated by the persuasive force of this source, and I needed some time to understand that it was doubled by the deep conviction to live between two cultures and to serve as a vehicle of communication between the orient and the occident.
Fahreinissa Zeid had lived, as an oriental, in the cultural center of Europe, in Paris and had been surrounded by the strongest representatives of the Ecole de Paris. Hind Nasser belongs to those to whom Fahrelnissa Zeid transferred all her convictions and experiences, all her knowledge and wisdom. Hind Nasser belongs to the next generation which lives and works in it’s home countries, liberated from dominant art trends created in cultural capitals.
Her work allows to continue our talk about the dialectics of interior and exterior landscapes. The landscapes which surround her are those of an oriental country, and clear, unmixed primary colours dominate her landscape paintings. But a big part of her work which might be called abstract and which in this text, dialectically, projects inner landscapes is, in oil paintings or paper works, dominated by dark colours and energetic gestural movements, circling, spiraling, curving lines which, avoiding ornamental embraces, flow together into monumental, even threatening ciphers. In the dialectics of this text the interior landscape is tormented, dramatic – and, if I may say so, northern like the paintings by Edward Munch.
The exterior landscapes are southern. It is easy to see in them the reflections of paintings by Matisse and, looking from the north again, some of the most beautiful works of the series seem to reflect the colour schemes of Mogul paintings and miniatures.
In the sophisticated art world in which I live mass media, colour photography and TV have exerted a strong influence on contemporary art. The primary colour scheme of red, yellow and blue which is basical to technological image production has strongly affected our perception. The “Sharp focus realism”-painters since the 70’s have used the authenticity of colour photographs and TV-images in their paintings and they have created, in our customs of perception, a flowing zone in which a photograph develops painterly values and a painting carries photographic elements. Where the exterior landscapes of Hind Nasser are the most realistic they seem to touch this borderline where the suggestions of a photographic illusionism start to work.
Looking at these paintings I begin to admire an artistic personality who covers, with great inventive force and discipline, a wide range of images of the inside and of the outside world, of the “northern” darkness of the soul and the “southern” beauties of the world.