Postwar art and historical roots of Beirut's cosmopolitanism

This dissertation charts the production of Lebanese cosmopolitanism from the nineteenth century to the present, examining how this putatively national trait is established through the visual arts. It contends that in order to understand the strategies of a group of artists who have come to represent artistic production in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), we must consider the historical formation and failures of Lebanese cosmopolitanism as a national myth. The end of the civil war coincided with a period of celebratory globalism in the art market, and in the following decade postwar artists from Beirut garnered the attention of the western art world. Exhibition catalogues and critical reviews alike characterized this body of work as emerging out a tabula rasa for the visual arts: no audience, no institutions, and no markets. This dissertation argues instead that the postwar generation did not develop out of a historical eclipse created by the civil war, but is part of the much longer history of Lebanese cosmopolitanism. By resituating the postwar generation within this history, we can understand the mechanisms by which the western art world fabricates a mythology of a local art. Tracking Beirut's transition from under the Ottoman Empire and French Mandate to an independent capital besieged by civil war through to the postwar period, I identify those moments when the project of defining Lebanese art comes to the forefront.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Rogers, Sarah A. (Sarah Anne)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nasser O. Rabbat and Caroline A. Jones.

• Architecture.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/45935

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/45935