ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 surveys local debates over the universalist assumptions of modernist abstraction during the 1960s, a decade in which several of Lebanon’s leading artists expressed a dedication to abstraction as a truly modern language. In 1964, when Shafic Abboud (1926–2004) won first prize at the Salon d’Automne for his painting Child’s Play, critics fiercely debated the public’s ability to understand abstract art and questioned its relevance for a national aesthetic. Later that year, painter Stélio Scamanga (b. 1934) wrote a manifesto-like statement, “Toward a New Space: The Perspective of the Abstract.” Influenced by Byzantine icons and Islamic art, Scamanga proposed a theory of two-dimensional spatial depiction in contrast to Western art’s three-dimensional pictorial space. This chapter focuses on a series of exhibitions, manifestos, and critical reviews in the press to map out the various positions on abstraction in Beirut, contextualizing the different aesthetic visions within the competing ideologies and political alliances of the Cold War, growing concerns over Lebanese nationalism, and art’s role in representing national ideals.
