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A Prior #22, 2011

Picasso in Palestine & Palestinian Statehood: The importance of “normality”1

By Bailey Eisen Student ID 100027437 27 April 2012 Contemporary Art and Geopolitics in the Arab World Sciences Po-Paris

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Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 18086. Print. 181.

 

 

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The conflict between Israel and Palestine is one of the most prominently discussed conflicts in the Middle East and around the world. While there are innumerable facets to this issue, the central question is that of Palestinian statehood. Since the UN mandate that created Israel and Palestine in 1948, Israel has controlled most of the region. This has left the Palestinians without a state, both in practice and theory. This laid the foundation for what became an increasingly complicated conflict, with both regional and international elements, and including social, legal, political and many other aspects. Whether through negotiations or actions taken against Israel, or direct appeals to the UN and the international community, this fight for statehood has been central and ongoing throughout the Palestinian community. Should Palestine be a recognized state in the international community? 2011-2012 has been a significant year regarding this question. On September 23rd, 2011, President Abbas spoke in front of the UN General Assembly and started Palestine’s application to be recognized as a state by the UN. Even though this was unsuccessful, in October 2011, “the vote of UNESCO’s full membership was 107 to 14, with 52 abstentions” to make Palestine the 195th member.2 In 2012, the International Criminal Court decision that the “current status granted to Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly is that of “observer”, not as a “Non‐member State””3 means that it will not recognize Palestine as a state, and thus will not hear its case against Israel. Additionally, talks among the Quartet on the Middle East, (including the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the UN), which were largely seen as failed so far, will start again this month in Washington. The past year has been marked with both significant successes and failures, however most important is that there has been a constant high level of discussion and debate throughout the international community regarding this question, and principally taking place in international organizations and among UN appointed mediators. This could be a crucially important shift in the fight for Palestinian statehood, because it draws very different attention from the press and international community at large than the decentralized violence and images of hardship that have generally been at the center of the discussion. 2011 was also a very important year for Palestine, but in a completely different way. From June 24th-July 20th Picasso’s “Buste de Femme” was shown in the International Academy of Art Palestine in Ramallah.4 This “marks the first time a European masterpiece has been seen publically in the West Bank”5, drawing attention from around the world. After two years of discussions and negotiations, and estimated insurance and transport costs of £50,000, the “Buste de Femmes” arrived in Ramallah from the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The painting was greeted with enthusiasm and excitement by the city, and the exhibit quickly became important in Palestine and around the world. In this paper, I will look at the changing nature of the discussion on Palestinian statehood in the past year and its relationship with the Picasso in Palestine project. In the first section I discuss Picasso in Palestine in more detail, focusing on the political, legal, and pragmatic issues that had to be overcome for the project to be realized. In the second section, I look at the effect that this has had in the Palestinian community itself. In the third section I will look at the relationship between Picasso in Palestine and international politics. Not only has this project arguably changed how the Palestinians see themselves, it has also changed how they are seen on                                                          2

Erlanger, Steven, and Scott Sayare. "Unesco Accepts Palestinians as Full Members." The New York Times 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 3 Abrams, Elliott. "Is Palestine a State?" Web log post. Council on Foreign Relations: Pressure Points. 4 Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 4 International Academy of Art Palestine. Picasso in Palestine. Picasso in Palestine. June 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 5 Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .

 

 

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the international level. The Picasso in Palestine project has influences not only in the art world, but in the larger social, political, and legal spheres as well, both inside and outside of Palestine. In the end, these elements were as important, if not more important, than the exhibit itself. I: Picasso in Palestine According to Khaled Hourani, the art director of the International Academy of Art Palestine, who thought of and led this project, “the idea started like a joke: ‘I was asking why shouldn’t a Picasso go to Palestine?’”6 The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven was hosting a conference of members of the art community in the Middle East, and the director, Charles Esche, had asked the group what they would do if they had access to the museum’s collections. Even though Hourani was joking when he said this, the idea stayed with him and he became determined to convince Esche to help him. For Hourani, the project was created because of the initial implausibility of the idea. How would Palestine ever be taken seriously by the international community if its current condition meant that even the most quotidian of activities in the international art community, the loan and transfer of art work, cannot be imagined? As Esche explained, the project “wasn’t a thing I embraced, like, ‘Oh fabulous,’ you know? There was a sort of questioning of what it would mean to take a Picasso from this Western European culture and show it in Palestine.”7 There were countless hurdles, both theoretic and pragmatic, which for Hourani was an important part of the project itself. “In the making of Picasso in Palestine,” wrote Rasha Salti and Khaled Hourani in their contribution to A Prior 22, “the means are as interesting as the end. The means are, in fact, an end in themselves.”8 One of Esche’s initial concerns was theoretical, “is it a form of cultural imperialism? Is it a colonialist form of educating the natives, if you like, to describe it in the crudest way possible?”9 Although the pragmatic issues facing the project were massive, it is important to note that it was the idea that the project had echoes of western imperialism that initially caused worry. Ironically, this displays the critical reason for Hourani’s project: to break this cycle. The longer the Palestinian fight for statehood went on, the stronger and more resilient the image of Palestine as an occupied territory became. For Esche, to work with Palestine was to further entrench this notion in the international community, when in reality it would have been the lack of action that would have strengthened Palestine’s image as a non-state. By using this project to highlight the current Palestinian condition, it brings the question of statehood to the forefront, but for the first time the Palestinians are not victimized. It forces the observer to honestly ask the question, why is it that Palestine cannot function in the most basic capacity as a state? In reality, there were much more serious problems. The first was in regard to insurance. “With an estimated value of $7.1 million, the painting is the Van Abbemuseum’s most valuable work”10, and is widely respected around the world. Any damage to the piece would be a blow to                                                          6

Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 7 Baers, Michael. "No Good Time for an Exhibition: Reflections on the Picasso in Palestine Project, Part I." E-flux. 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 8 Rasha Salti and Khaled Hourani for A Prior in Baers, Michael. "No Good Time for an Exhibition: Reflections on the Picasso in Palestine Project, Part I." E-flux. 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 9 Baers, Michael. "No Good Time for an Exhibition: Reflections on the Picasso in Palestine Project, Part I." E-flux. 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 10 Lawson, Graham. "Picasso in Palestine: A Prized Painting Is On Rare and Welcome Visit to Ramallah." The Jewish Daily Forward. 15 July 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. .

 

 

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the Van Abbemuseum, and the international art community more broadly. To make matters more complicated, since the museum is actually public, the first responsibility the museum had was to protect the painting for the people of Eindhoven and the Netherlands. In this way, the museum had a democratic responsibility to its own people to secure the painting. This would prove incredibly difficult to do, with most insurance companies turning the museum down. In the end, Ruud Ijmker of Reaal of the Netherlands was interested in the project because “anyone can insure normal stuff, I’m the crazy one who goes for the extraordinary things”.11 However, security concerns aside, the first serious problem was that Palestine, since it is not a state, did not exist under any international insurance code. Unable to finalize an actual destination for the paperwork, Fatima AbdulKarim, who worked with Hourani on this project, went to the Oslo Accords. Yet “it wasn’t clear what was the jurisdiction and for whom… Oslo missed out on one of our basic fields of work: art and culture”.12 After years of negotiations with Palestinian, Israeli, and Dutch authorities, organizers “were still not sure that the painting would travel, 48 hours before the opening”.13 Remco de Blaajj, a curator at the Van Abbemuseum who played a central role in the project, confessed that “he himself could not precisely define what had been the exact stumbling blocks” and “he was not even sure that ‘legal status’ regarding the painting’s travel was ever established”.14 In the end, it is unclear how the project was able to proceed, and most writers on the subject suggest that there was a universal agreement among the Palestinians, Israelis and the Dutch who made sure that “requirements were waived”.15 The most concrete example of this happening is in regard to the deposit required by Israeli customs, which would have amounted to 15% of the value of the piece, which was waived by authorities. The requirement of such a deposit would have killed the project. Ijimker went to Ramallah several times to try to figure out how best to proceed. The conditions for travel seem standard, “the insurance company required the normal safeguards: three guards in close vicinity and other guards nearby, camera surveillance, and temperature and humidity-controlled room.”16 However, these requirements were difficult to fulfill in Palestine. First, there were serious security concerns regarding the painting’s journey from Ben Gurion Airport to Ramallah. The Qalandia checkpoint sees somewhat regular confrontations between Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian demonstrators, and it was feared that this could pose a threat to the painting or cause the checkpoint to close. While the painting was transported in a climate-controlled facility, if they were not able to make it into Ramallah it was unclear what the organizers would do. The heat and high humidity could do serious and long-term damage to the painting.                                                          11

Baers, Michael. "No Good Time for an Exhibition: Reflections on the Picasso in Palestine Project, Part I." E-flux. 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 12 Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 13 Lawson, Graham. "Picasso in Palestine: A Prized Painting Is On Rare and Welcome Visit to Ramallah." The Jewish Daily Forward. 15 July 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 14 Lawson, Graham. "Picasso in Palestine: A Prized Painting Is On Rare and Welcome Visit to Ramallah." The Jewish Daily Forward. 15 July 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 15 Lawson, Graham. "Picasso in Palestine: A Prized Painting Is On Rare and Welcome Visit to Ramallah." The Jewish Daily Forward. 15 July 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 16 Urquhart, Conal. "Picasso Coup for Tiny Art School in Occupied Palestinian Territory." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. .

 

 

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Second, security for the journey itself proved to be complicated. Once through the checkpoint, the painting was “then driven for three miles without an escort through an area where Israeli forces rarely venture and Palestinian police are not allowed to operate.”17 Finally upon arrival in Ramallah it was placed under the security of the Palestinian Police, and at least two armed guards watched over the painting until it left at the end of July. Third, the curators and insurance company were very worried about the facilities at the International Academy of Art Palestine. The painting would need to be in a humidity controlled, climate controlled environment, which was particularly important given the high heat and humidity in the region. The IAAP in reality is a one room classroom in Ramallah, and had none of the necessary capabilities to exhibit such a piece when the project was first discussed. “The academy had to build a room within a room, with a glass sliding door,”18 and was able to outfit this half of the room with some humidity and climate controls. In the end, the curators only allowed two people into the room at a time (with the two armed guards) to further control to climate, and ensure that they did not negatively affect the conditions. Despite these issues, in the end the project was able to come to fruition when the Picasso arrived in Ramallah and the opening took place on June 24th 2011. The opening was widely covered by international press, with everyone from Al-Jazeera to AP and CNN sending reporters. It also attracted a varied crowd, including President Abbas, “Palestinian intelligentsia, Israelis who had illegally travelled across checkpoints, local friends of the academy” as well as experts, researchers, sponsors, and curators from around the world.19 The opening was particularly important however for the Palestinian people, who were closely following the project. The following days were dedicated to conferences on the project, with speeches by leading names in the art, history, and political communities, and most notably a speech by President Abbas at the opening. The final schedule of events itself emphasized the complexity of the project. After a day of discussions at Birzeit University, those attending and participating in the conference were invited to Al Ma’Mal in East Jerusalem to see “an exhibition of documentation relating to the project, including reproductions of letters relating to Buste de Femme and the original loan request from Hourani”.20 However, most notably, “Israelis attended in numbers but as Palestinians are unable to leave the West Back without a permit, students of the Academy and Hourani himself remained in Ramallah.”21 In the end, the process of getting the Picasso to Palestine as well as organizing the opening and the exhibit are a fascinating display of the issues and the reality of Palestine. The project itself, including the struggle to get the painting there, have had important effects on the Palestinian and the international community, and in many ways displays a side of the Palestinian conflict that is generally hard to see. This project has shown what it is like to try to function without a state, and the difficulties that face the every day lives of people in the Palestinian territories. During the project Hourani said that, “prospects had become so bleak that ‘we were                                                          17

Urquhart, Conal. "Picasso Coup for Tiny Art School in Occupied Palestinian Territory." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 18 Urquhart, Conal. "Picasso Coup for Tiny Art School in Occupied Palestinian Territory." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 19 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 20 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 21 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. .

 

 

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talking about needing a state first before we could bring the Picasso.”22 However, “he reasoned, ‘ if we have the state we don’t need the Picasso’”. II: Picasso in Palestine & the Palestinian Community As the Norwegian Minister of International Development Erik Solheim said, “art is of vital importance in national identity-building. It helps build bridges, plays a part in social development and inspires people to reflect on their situation.”23 Uniquely, in this case it was the exhibition and not the creation of art that brought the Palestinian community together, and displayed this community to the rest of the world. What has become clear is the sentiment of “defiant optimism”24 that is now prevalent throughout the Palestinian community, and the project’s success has shown that “there are possibilities in impossibilities”.25 One of the main goals of the exhibit was to foster a dialogue between the Palestinian people and the Picasso. The choice of the Picasso is very interesting, for its cultural relevance as well as for how it was chosen. In Palestine, Hourani writes that “Picasso is similar to a myth, and his works are iconic in our culture,”26 and as Younes Bouadi explained during his presentation, in Palestine “Picasso” is used colloquially to mean a great artist.27 Despite the fact that Palestinians do not have access to any established art institutions such as museums, the entire community would be able to relate to a Picasso in this sense. This created a universality for the Palestinians that another, less well-known, artist would not have been able to create. In the end, everyone was able to interact with the art in their own way, even though it was just a single painting. AbdulKarim recounts that she, "overheard the security guards discussing it and they came to the conclusion that it was a woman cradling her child in time of war as she has one eye on the child and one eye on the surrounding danger."28 The piece was also important because, as Hourani writes, ”Picasso represents for us, and for the international world, the most celebrated contemporary artist. He’s renowned for his works, which demonstrate messages such as freedom and resistance to oppression and wars.”29 The painting evoked the political nature of much of Picasso’s work, especially since it was painted in 1943 during a wartime, which is supposed to remind the viewer of the Palestinians’ currently fragile and often violent situation. Additionally “in Palestinian art, the Palestinian woman symbolizes identity, land, and the homeland and vice-versa.”30 The painting of a woman thus expresses many of the issues and sentiments that exist throughout the Palestinian                                                          22

Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 23 Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 180-86. Print. 182. 24 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 25 AbdulKarim in Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 26 Hourani, Khaled. "Picasso in Palestine for the Very First Time: An Interview with Khaled Hourani." Interview by Nancy Rosenbaum. Web log post. On Being Blog. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 27 Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine." Contemporary Art and Geopolitics in the Arab World, Class 3. Institut Des Etudes Politiques De Paris, Paris. 16 Mar. 2012. Lecture. 28 Urquhart, Conal. "Picasso Coup for Tiny Art School in Occupied Palestinian Territory." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 June 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 29 Hourani, Khaled. "Picasso in Palestine for the Very First Time: An Interview with Khaled Hourani." Interview by Nancy Rosenbaum. Web log post. On Being Blog. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 30 Hourani, Khaled. "Picasso in Palestine for the Very First Time: An Interview with Khaled Hourani." Interview by Nancy Rosenbaum. Web log post. On Being Blog. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. .

 

 

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community today. The combination of the importance of Picasso and the role of women in Palestinian art, made this piece both evocative of and relevant to the current condition of the state of Palestine and all of its struggles. This piece was also important since, “the underlying logic of this choice follows the ideological structure of democratism. The fact that the choice for the Buste de Femme by Picasso among other Picassos from the collection of the Van Abbemuseum was determined by the students of the IAAP instead of picked by Hourani, reconfirms the Picasso in Palestine project bears the hallmarks of democratism such as participation and decision making on the basis of a majority”.31 In this way, the project was a symbol of a Palestinian people who could make their own decisions by way of a democratic structure. This “demonstrates how art can play a role in the nationalist vision of an occupied people struggling for some normality while forging the nascent institutions of a state”.32 In particular, recent decades have been characterized by a period of great turmoil for the Palestinian people, without institutions or a state structure to rely on. With great effort, Palestinian institutions were created, such as the social programs put in place by Hamas, only to disappear again. This absence is usually met with anger and resentment. However, this project allowed Palestinians to look at the question of institutionalization with hope. While they have suffered serious setbacks and are still in the very early stages of organization, such a high profile project based on democratic ideals shows that there is reason to believe that self-run Palestinian institutions governed in a democratic and stable way are not completely beyond reach. If anything, this hope that the project allowed the Palestinian community to have is arguably the most important result of this project. As AbdulKarim remarked, “we are born to a generation of defeat…but the discourse is changing. And we are no longer the generation of defeat.”33 She goes on to suggest that just as no one was able to foresee or have reason to think that the youth in Cairo would be so motivated as to start the Arab Spring, and fight for their rights and their own government, most people, including the Palestinians themselves, have not had reason to think that this situation would change. The completion of such a major project, with so many hurdles can give the Palestinian community a concrete event to rally around, and give them hope for their own future institutions. Without this hope, there is no reason to think that anything would change. This hope gives, especially the younger generations, renewed motivation and belief in their cause. Most importantly, this project, while clearly displaying the serious difficulties of the Palestinian experience, is not, in the end, negative. This is an incredibly positive experience, showing that despite the difficulties that the Palestinian community has faced, there is reason to believe that with perseverance they may be able to be overcome. In general, the Palestinian community is victimized and angry about their experience, which fuels the cycle of disappointment, anger, resentment, violence and victimization. This project was able to address the problems associated with the lack of a state without fueling these sentiments. In this way, it emphasizes the direction in which members of the Palestinian community have been moving: attempting to disassociate with violence and anger, and instead promote perseverance and “defiant optimism”.34                                                          31

Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 180-86. Print. 181-182. 32 Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 33 Tolan, Sandy. "Picasso Comes to Palestine." Al Jazeera English. 16 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 34 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012.

 

 

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In an editorial printed last year, President Abbas wrote “the State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter.”35 Not only does this project reinforce this idea throughout the Palestinian community, but it also shows the international community that the Palestinians are dedicated to this cause. This project is so important because the Palestinian community must first rally around the goal of a peaceful state based on human rights before it can be realized. Hourani explains that in this sense the importance of the project was its relationship to “normality”.36 For Palestinians, the project was “in the service of imagining what a normal institution of art in a normal state might look like”.37 III: Picasso in Palestine & the International Community This “normality”38 is also very important for Palestine in terms of its international politics. As Bouadi writes, “Palestine had to be on the international art map as a place where a Picasso could and would be able to go. The integration of Palestine within the contemporary art, by means of the displaced Picasso, would thus be a metaphor for Palestine’s possible recognition by the United Nations. The freedom of art would thus in a certain way the “democracy to come” [sic]”.39 In this sense, this project had two goals on the international stage: first, to show the difficulties of the Palestinian community to the world, avoiding the stories of victimization, anger, and violence, and second to show that the Palestinian people were capable of organizing and acting as a state, even with the significant hurdles they faced. The opening, as well as parts of the exhibit, “was awash with international media”.40 Reporters from the major news organizations around the world came, and the story was picked up by the American and European press in particular. The press attention was universally positive, especially the foreign press. Uniquely, Palestine was receiving widespread coverage from the international community with headlines like “A Picasso comes to the Palestinians” from CNN.41 The pictures that accompany the articles are equally ordinary, showing lines of people waiting for their chance to see the painting. In the end, what is striking is how normal everything seems. Ramallah is developed for the occupied territories, but yet it is still surprising to see it this way, since more commonly it is associated with violence and hardship. From my research on the project, I have yet to find an article or blog that is truly critical of it. In the western press, the focus of the stories was mainly on the success of the project and Palestine’s ability to complete it. The article in the Telegraph even called the project “an unlikely triumph after a three-year battle.”42 Additionally, the British press often referred to the                                                          . Abbas, Mahmoud. "The Long Overdue Palestinian State." Editorial. The New York Times 16 May 2011. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. . 36 Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 180-86. Print. 181. 37 Baers, Michael. "No Good Time for an Exhibition: Reflections on the Picasso in Palestine Project, Part I." E-flux. 15 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 38 Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 180-86. Print. 181. 39 Bouadi, Younes. "Picasso in Palestine: Displaced Art and the Borders of Community." Continent 1.3 (2011): 180-86. Print. 181. 40 Aikens, Nick. "Picasso in Palestine." Web log post. Frieze Blog. 6 July 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 41 Khadder, Kareem. "A Picasso Comes to the Palestinians." CNN. 27 June 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. . 42 Blomfield, Adrian. "Picasso Exhibition Opens in Palestinian West Bank." The Telegraph. 24 June 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2012.