Page 255 - Features of an Era
P. 255
roduction: Historical Chronicle of Art and the Problematic of
Transformations and Sources
Throughout the history of international art, the interrelation between art and
transformations occurred in different eras represents a model of interaction between
forms of human creativity and the power, with their successive changes, their
historical dialectic with the march of development, and with the different powers
which came successively on the stage of history. The problematic of interaction gets
more complicated while combining the historical chronicle and political one and also
when the purposes of the art historian intersect with the current accounts or affected
by his position of rejecting or supporting the official discourses by authorities. So,
because of this overlap, episodes could be omitted inadvertently or deliberately, facts
could change or could be changed, and discourses could be interpreted out of their
context and lose their fundamental significance. The repetition is the result when
such texts, full of these intersections and accounts, are put into circulation. They
spread widely due to pertinacity sometimes or lack of review and verification by
the researchers or the writers showing inaction at other times. The writers of most of
documented texts related to the history of Arab art get information, without review or
checking, from a small number of sources whose authors are famous and trusted. So,
their works have become like the undebatable principles, like indisputable facts. So,
because of just taking successively what was taken from who had taken and repeating
constantly repetitive and widely known information, countless mistakes have been
made in the Arab art and baseless information and ideas have been disseminated.
The mistakes vary with varying degrees of effect: omission which could be rectified,
full confidence in sources, publishing without a thorough review and going to prove
what is not supported with historical facts. In this complex context, we find ourselves
before a large quantity of historical material which has generated a picture of our
modern Egyptian art in the public awareness. Despite of the parallelism of its general
features and the main political transformations of the same period, those features
sometimes are retouched and have deceptive shades. We may find no exacerbation
of the effect of those retouches or shades, but we find, in the context of chronicle of
what relates to Muhammad Ali dynasty, in spite of the vast literature on it, that the
thorough research on this epoch is little. Being so confident, the later writers have
repeated what was stated in texts by the early writers and as a result, important events
fell into oblivion and subsequently imperfect outcomes were produced in addition
to truncated significance.
So, it is necessary to review and verify, and to recall the omitted events and
forgotten ones in order to have a comprehensive picture-as much as possible- and to
reveal the historical truth of this important epoch.
255
Transformations and Sources
Throughout the history of international art, the interrelation between art and
transformations occurred in different eras represents a model of interaction between
forms of human creativity and the power, with their successive changes, their
historical dialectic with the march of development, and with the different powers
which came successively on the stage of history. The problematic of interaction gets
more complicated while combining the historical chronicle and political one and also
when the purposes of the art historian intersect with the current accounts or affected
by his position of rejecting or supporting the official discourses by authorities. So,
because of this overlap, episodes could be omitted inadvertently or deliberately, facts
could change or could be changed, and discourses could be interpreted out of their
context and lose their fundamental significance. The repetition is the result when
such texts, full of these intersections and accounts, are put into circulation. They
spread widely due to pertinacity sometimes or lack of review and verification by
the researchers or the writers showing inaction at other times. The writers of most of
documented texts related to the history of Arab art get information, without review or
checking, from a small number of sources whose authors are famous and trusted. So,
their works have become like the undebatable principles, like indisputable facts. So,
because of just taking successively what was taken from who had taken and repeating
constantly repetitive and widely known information, countless mistakes have been
made in the Arab art and baseless information and ideas have been disseminated.
The mistakes vary with varying degrees of effect: omission which could be rectified,
full confidence in sources, publishing without a thorough review and going to prove
what is not supported with historical facts. In this complex context, we find ourselves
before a large quantity of historical material which has generated a picture of our
modern Egyptian art in the public awareness. Despite of the parallelism of its general
features and the main political transformations of the same period, those features
sometimes are retouched and have deceptive shades. We may find no exacerbation
of the effect of those retouches or shades, but we find, in the context of chronicle of
what relates to Muhammad Ali dynasty, in spite of the vast literature on it, that the
thorough research on this epoch is little. Being so confident, the later writers have
repeated what was stated in texts by the early writers and as a result, important events
fell into oblivion and subsequently imperfect outcomes were produced in addition
to truncated significance.
So, it is necessary to review and verify, and to recall the omitted events and
forgotten ones in order to have a comprehensive picture-as much as possible- and to
reveal the historical truth of this important epoch.
255
