A letter to honour Shaker Hassan Al Said

In 1983, an article that you had entitled “A Letter from a Professor to His Students,” appeared in the Baghdad daily, Al-Qadisiyya. And here I am, 19 years later, writing this letter to tell you that I am one of those students to whom the letter was addressed, with such kindness and delicacy, and to recognize the important place that you occupy in my heart, as well as in the artistic movement in Iraq.

Our first meeting took place a quarter of a century ago. I must have shown you a few of my paintings, after which you told me: “I would really like to see you again and to follow the progress of your work.” Your words filled me with an indescribable joy. I then told myself, naively, “This is proof that I am on the right track.” Two years later, in 1983, you wrote the preface to my first catalogue in Baghdad. In the same year, you published an article entitled “Youthful Artists or Young Artists?” in the daily Al-Jumhuriyya. In it, you wrote the following about me: “Although I occasionally see him dedicating less time to his art than to worldly things, I am convinced that it is a temporary phase.” These words instilled in me a feeling of great responsibility. Our last meeting was 15 years ago -- I never saw you again. However, you have remained for me the spiritual father and the closest friend. Your voice on the telephone nobly encouraged me to bear the hardships of daily life for the love of art.

During our encounters, you spoke to me of the slain Sahrawardi, of Abdelqader al-Jilani, of Hallaj and Ibn `Arabi; or of the Al-Awfaq group and of Al-Bu`d al-wahed. I comprehended your words only much later. You also spoke to me of Matthieu, Miró and Tapiès. Yes, Tapiès. Your discourse on the two groups rang in my ears just like your words on this life and the hereafter, the manifest and the esoteric, presence and absence. I felt that you were attempting to create a harmonious fusion of those concepts.

Of all the renowned international artists, you spoke to me especially of Tapiès. In fact, when you published your famous article, “Tapiès and Us,” which sounded more like a confession, the artist was transformed into a myth in our eyes. In those days, I never thought that twenty years later, I would meet Tapiès in person and tell you about this encounter. I offered him the catalogue of your group exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe with Degottex, Gysin, Ben Bella and Lee Ufan. In that exhibition, organized to celebrate the inextricable destiny of signs, you were one of the major signs. A few days after this meeting, I contacted you to tell you of my excitement, and to share with you an event that I thought would make you happy. But the absence in your voice dissuaded me. It was as if Tapiès no longer interested you or that my voice came to you from a past that you had left behind for ever. At that moment, you were undoubtedly closer to Sahrawardy and Hallaj than to Tapiès. You had then spoken of absence as eternal presence.

In your book Liberty in Art, you wrote: “When we progress beyond vision, we realize that real art is the art of nothingness.” You must have reached the summit in order to perceive this nothingness, and you achieved this through half a century of contemplation, work, writing and painting.

On 5 March 2004, I realized that you had become part of this nothingness. As I looked at the drawings that you had sent me with Gerard and Marie Martinez five years ago, a profound sadness overwhelmed me – your absence had become final. Those same drawings that inspired me now attempted to condole me. Inspired by one in particular, I made a series of my own drawings that seem to emerge from your presence, not to remind me of you, but to keep your memory intact in your ‘presence’.

Himat