The politics of art and culture in modern Egypt : aesthetics, ideology and nation-building / Patrick Kane.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-242) and index.

Art and cultural production in Egypt during much of the last hundred years have operated against a backdrop of political crisis and confrontation. Patrick Kane focuses on the turbulent changes of the 1920s--1960s, when polemical discourse and artistic practice against the entrenched and co-opted conservatism of elite and state culture developed. Radical forms of cultural criticism and dissonance emerged, and this legacy continues to resonate through contemporary activism and dissent. Rivalries within the elite and intense clashes between landlords and rural workers, over the material conditions of labour and regional disparities, were set against the Depression and the Cold War and defined this era. Kane charts the Egyptian Surrealists movement from the late 1930s, framing it in the context of struggles against the older Nahda paradigm of academicism that sought to separate itself from mass culture. The Surrealists, many of whom were Upper Egyptians or from rural towns, advocated the discourse of a broader aesthetic experience, based on the inclusion of all classes and members of society. This critique was formed in the context of the rise of mass political mobilisation, which culminated in the revolts and coup of 1952. The critical philosophy and practice of the Contemporary Art Group emerged in the late 1940s, drawing on Sufism, surrealism and elements of Islamist anti-Westernism. Artists such as Àbd al-Hadi al-Gazzar, Gamal al-Sagini and Ramsis Yunan criticised Nasser's state authoritarianism and the imagined unity of the nationalist agenda. Works on the building of the Aswan Dam in the 1960s, for example, attacked the social problem of migrant labour in Upper Egypt. Kane provides rare insight into the Egyptian cultural and aesthetic experience, and how it has been shaped within a context of political and social conflict. It is an invaluable source for scholars of Art History and Contemporary Art, Aesthetics, Politics and the Middle East. --Book Jacket.

The social horizon of Egyptian aesthetics -- Art institutions, agrarian conflict and fascism from 1908-40 -- Art in Egyptian civil society, 1938-51 -- The festival and the state : the contemporary art group and a philosophy of traditional arts -- The landlord-peasant battles as a subject for the arts : from Buhut to Kamshish -- Conflicts in the arts over upper Egypt : ʻAbd al-Hadi al-Gazzar and his contemporaries -- Conclusion : political currents in the philosophy and experience of Egyptian aesthetics.