Page 119 - Art Review

Simone Fattal Watercolours

Heni Publishing, London 30 November – 7 January

You’d be mistaken in thinking Simone Fattal’s as a charm against devastation – coming from modernist painting is clear throughout. The
watercolours were simple. In their uninhibited an artist who, in 1980, was driven from Beirut palette echoes that of Fattal’s partner and fellow
style, vivid colour and joyous mood, the by the outbreak of civil war. Early pastel draw- artist, Etel Adnan, and she cites Paul Klee as an
Lebanese artist’s paintings are – superficially ings of trees that prefigured Fattal’s current important influence, but the combination of
at least – reminiscent of a child’s daubs. paintings were lost during the conflict. sunny tones, dabbing brushstrokes and arcadian
My House (2015) even recalls the famous House- Like trees, fruit also appears throughout mood are also strikingly reminiscent of Fauvism.
Tree-Person drawing test, often used as part Fattal’s work. Paradise, as described in the The only break in mood comes at the show’s
of the psychological assessment of children; Quran, is a garden filled with trees and fruit; end, where a small cluster of works abandon
in Fattal’s watercolours there are no people, but in the accompanying book, she remembers the overall sense of levity. This is clearest
there are plenty of houses and trees. Given that her grandfather’s ‘real Arabic house’, with in Days of sorrow (2012): a blur of wet browns
the ceramic sculpture for which Fattal is best its courtyard filled with fruit trees, as being and rather unsubtly glued fragments of
known largely comprises abstracted humanoid built on a paradisiacal model. She cites charcoal, suggestive of explosions and rubble.
forms, the preponderance of trees over humans the importance of memories to her painting Despite Fattal’s obvious sincerity, their sudden,
in these works is particularly noticeable. – in particular memories of her childhood heavy-handed grimness renders them at odds
Trees appear throughout, either fore- in Damascus, which she describes as a ‘lost with the rest of the show; these mixed-media
grounded as the subject or incidental. This is paradise’. Whether pictured while growing, works would perhaps be better suited to another
perhaps no surprise, given the potent symbolism as in The dates (2014), or as still lifes in bowls, exhibition altogether. What hits home here
that Fattal ascribes them. In conversation with fruit is depicted with an innocent, almost is the mood of optimism and warmth, which
curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in Heni Publishing’s prelapsarian pleasure. Some are painted so – thankfully – prevails.
accompanying book, Fattal describes what loosely as to approach abstraction, whereas Created by a war-exiled artist trained
she sees as the almost apotropaic role of trees others are more naturalistic. Fattal, who studied in logic and aesthetic philosophy who founded
in her homeland: ‘The trees, they are what philosophy in Paris and Beirut, describes these a publishing press of experimental literature,
protect the house, protect cities. For instance, watercolours as being ‘like phenomenology these watercolours are a vision of someone
Damascus is protected by the gardens sur- – to understand what it is about’. Nevertheless, unbinding themselves from rigour – and
rounding it… With the destruction of these what predominates over any intellectualising relishing every moment. If you’re in need
gardens evil comes.’ Viewed in this context, is a Matisse-like delight in beauty; the reference of some visual vitamin D to ward away
her apparently glib watercolours bear a serious also rings true in the occasional collage of cutout greyness and cynicism, this might just
undercurrent. They are a paean to trees paper. The formative influence of European be it. Isabella Smith

My House, 2015, watercolour, 33 × 25 cm. © the artist. Courtesy Heni Publishing, London

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