L’École de Tunis: The Arts in Post-Independence Tunisia
Introduction
To engage in discourse on Tunisian fine arts, one must inevitably pay homage to the legacy of the École de Tunis. This movement has been recognized by scholars as the ‘Golden Age’ of Tunisian art.1 It included influential figures such as Safia Farhat and Yahia Turki, who embedded their artistic markers into widely recognized features of the Tunisian fine art scene, and had come to represent the quintessential interpretation of ‘Tunisianity.’ Existing scholarship on modern Tunisian art has primarily focused on these artists’ philosophical and ideological queries in a post-independence Tunis,2 as the country grappled with colonial residue and struggled to situate itself within prevailing definitions of modernity. Rarely has research addressed the theoretical and aesthetic side of the modern art practice in Tunisia. However, even less attention has been given to the institutional context that paved the way for the rise of the École de Tunis as a comprehensive art movement.3
To say that the group dominated art production in post-independence Tunisia between 1956 and the late 1980s would be an understatement. The École’s artworks proliferated throughout the country’s public and private spaces, and resonated beyond the confines of art galleries to decorate hotels, banks, and government buildings.4 The National Institute of Productivity in Radès, the Central office of the Tunisian Sugar Company in Béja, and the Hotel les Palmiers located next to the presidential palace in Monastir, are just some of the many buildings that carry Safia Farhat’s and Abdelaziz Gorgi’s decorative imprint – both of whom were among the most prominent artists in the group.5 Moreover, a number of experts such as Hamdi Ounaïna and Naceur Ben Cheikh, my interlocutor for this essay, agree that the École had a defacto monopoly over the aesthetics of postcolonial creative output in Tunisia.6 This begs the question of how a specific mode of expression – that of the École de Tunis – came to dominate the country’s visual identity despite the variety of interpretative currents and independent active artists that existed at the time. This essay proposes an institutional explanation of this phenomenon that positions the rise of the group in a broader postcolonial economic development agenda, amidst government priorities and a curious case of artistic lobbying.
The École & Artistic Lobbying
During the very politically charged period of the late 19th century and early 20th century, the artistic enterprise in colonial Tunisia deemed art, ideological affiliations, and political alignments as inseparable. The first step towards the evolution of the École de Tunis’ role as the official representative for the arts in the regency was the opposition of its founder, Pierre Boucherle, to the Salon Tunisien.7 Boucherle, an orientalist himself, was discontent with the curatorial direction of the Salon,8 which was the first pseudo-institution for the promotion of European arts in the colony that was founded in 1894.9 He argued that there were “few real painters at the 1937 Tunisian Salon and few quality works. Orientalism, hitherto invading, seems, to me, to be on the way to regression.”10 This critique is reflective of the choices of Alexandre Fichet, who was the president of the Salon. Fichet, a man of many hats, not only opened the doors to young artists marginalized by the metropole and encouraged avant-gardist experimentation, but was also known for his socialist tendencies and affinity to Tunisian nationalists and the independence movement at large.11 He contributed to several publications opposed to the colonial government, such as Le Scorpion, among many others.12 This opposition was parallel to the debate taking place in mainland France about French national identity between the progressive leftists, who advocated for universalism, and the colonial conservatives.13 Therefore, the separation from the Salon was not merely an aesthetic detachment but a potently political one as well. By speaking against the innovation currents and promoting orientalism, Boucherle posited himself, and by extension the École, as the legitimate representative entity and sole professional art collective vis à vis the colonial government.
This paved the way for the opening of official dialogue between the École, then named Le Groupe des Dix (the Group of Ten), and the colonial government. In a letter addressed to the French Resident-General, signed by Boucherle and Yahia and sent on February 5, 1948, the group cited the precarious situation of “professional artists” in Tunisia and requested the increase of the state’s art purchase budget, alongside access to more state funding.14 Two years later, in 1950, Tunisia enacted the law of one percent, which was already applied in France. This law mandates that one percent of the cost of construction work must be allocated toward the decoration of public buildings chargeable to the State.15 The one percent law enacted under the colonial administration was repackaged as part of the independence legislation. It was reintroduced under a presidential decree, dated August 27, 1962,16 citing “the integration of the artist’s activity into the life of the society” as its main purpose.17
Unsurprisingly, Boucherle received the first commission under this law followed by other members of the École who managed to secure 13 out of 20 procurements within two years.18 This meant that the group had more access, collectively, to funding than any other active artists during that period. In addition, the budget of the Commission d’Achat, which was tasked with the purchase of artworks from artists in Tunisia, was increased.19 These two instances represent a very peculiar moment in the history of art in Tunisia when an art collective managed to lobby the state in their favor and initiated a monopoly over art production that continued through Tunisia’s transition from a French colony to an independent state.
My interview with Dr. Naceur Ben Cheikh, who was an active artist during that period, revealed that Société Zin,20 a joint enterprise between Safia Farhat and Abdelaziz Gorgi, was founded to cater specifically to the one percent law.21 Despite the lack of access to reliable archival records, he shared that Société Zin was de facto the first choice of public procurement committees, securing the majority of big-scale projects and proliferating their art in public spaces, frequented by workers, employees in factories, and government institutions. While, on paper, the selection procedure for commissioning artworks was supposed to go through the evaluation of a committee, in reality, nepotism played a significant role in allocating the contracts.22 Dr. Ben Cheikh, who also served on this committee, recounts that Abdallah Farhat, Safia Farhat’s husband, who worked in several ministerial positions, had considerable influence over their work, and was even present in the room when some decisions were made.23 Moreover, Safia was responsible for replacing the previous head of the Fine Arts Institute of Tunis as part of the independence government’s nationalization efforts, which meant the further legitimization of the École’s dominance and the consolidation of uncontested authority over the arts.24
State-owned entities, like hotels and public buildings, contractually mandated under the one percent law, also underwent the same preferential treatment in the procurement selection process. During that time, enterprises built and managed touristic infrastructure, mostly European enclaves where a peculiar mixture of traditional oriental aesthetics and a progressive liberal feel was starting to take shape all along the Mediterranean coast. Of particular intrigue are the several hotels across the country that still, to this day, own and display works by the likes of Farhat and Gorgi, prompted by the economic development architecture of Tunisia post-1957.
Resilience Amidst Post-Colonial Agendas
During the 1960s, coined the decade of development, the Tunisian independence government undertook major infrastructural projects under the direction of the-then Minister of Planning, Ahmed Ben Salah.25 Consequently, artworks were commissioned during the construction of centralized state-run offices, hotels, schools, and universities, as well as during the makeover of Monastir, Former President Habib Bourguiba’s natal city.26 The Ten-Year Plan was a comprehensive economic development framework introduced by the independence government to uplift the nascent republic from crippling underdevelopment, with its cornerstone being the tourism and the artisanal textile industries.27 Reflective of the Bourguibist state-sponsored feminist agenda, the investment in the textile field was used as a mechanism to modernize women’s work and transform artisanal jobs into industrial ventures. Safia Farhat’s collaboration with female artisans and her overall artistic direction, however controversial, fit perfectly with Bourguiba’s state feminism agenda. These artworks made their way to hotels that also “purchased handmade objects such as rugs, ceramic vases and ashtrays, and wrought iron candelabras to complete the decor.”28 The collaboration between the arts and the tourism industry ran so deep into institutional structures that, to this day, the Tourism Ministry’s official name remains the ‘Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts.’29
In the aftermath of the failure of the cooperative system, the end of the 1960s marked the dawn of economic liberalization. Tunisia’s socialist experiment was rendered obsolete, the unionist Ben Salah was jailed for abuse of power, and Hédi Nouira was appointed as prime minister. Throughout this political turmoil, the École still utilized its network within the state to sustain its dominance over Tunisia’s newly flourishing art market that had come to replace the state’s direct support. Dr. Ben Cheikh recounted that during the inauguration of Gallerie Gorgi, the first Tunisian-owned private gallery, Prime Minister Nouira was present. He had announced, in the company of the most prominent bankers and elites of Tunis, that the time had come for the private sector to take over the sponsorship of cultural activity that had the potential of becoming lucrative, citing the examples of Egyptian and Lebanese cinemas.30
Opposition Currents
The monopoly of the École did not go unchallenged. In 1966, an exhibition was held for an emerging group of young artists named Le Groupe des Cinq (The Group of Five). An excerpt of the manifesto for the exhibition reads as follows: “Here in Tunisia, five painters intend to express their anxieties and their feelings in the language of their century. Here in Tunisia, five painters refuse the ease of cheap folklorism, the temptations of the typical, and opt for the difficulties of confrontation and the risks of openness.”31 Néjib Belkhodja, a multidisciplinary artist, spearheaded this opposition effort as a founder and president of the group.32 His artistic inquiry embodied an openness to emerging international art movements, such as modern abstractionism, and focused on grounding his work in a local context while trying to capture an alternative essence of Tunisianity. This endeavor is excellently encapsulated in his series of paintings of the Medina of Tunis that showcase a seamless fusion of analytical cubism grounded in the calligraphic Kufi technique. Belkhodja’s battle, however, was not only aesthetic, and he was highly vocal about his opposition to the dominion established by the École. In the same year as the exhibition, he was quoted in the daily newspaper L’Action saying that “[the École’s] painting, which in principle should help to build an authentic national culture, is in fact, a visible part of neo-colonialism.” To him, a transition was yet to happen from “painters of Tunisia” to “Tunisian painters.”33
According to Dr. Ben Cheikh, who was a friend of Belkhodja and part of Le Groupe des Cinq, Belkhodja was determined to organize an opposition bloc or at least affirm the presence of a different perspective on Tunisian fine art in a collective form.34 The militancy of Le Groupe des Cinq did not stop at amplifying their dissidence by redefining the discourse surrounding Tunisian art identity. The group engaged in the direct dismantling of the École’s grip over institutions. In 1979, amid the second general elections of the National Union of Plastic Arts, the leadership of the union was turned over to Le Groupe des Cinq from the École.35 The main aim of this takeover, which Belkhodja orchestrated alongside Ben Cheikh, was to take down the union, which represented to them another extension of the cooptation mechanism that slowly transformed its adherents into decorators catering to specific tastes and needs rather than genuine artists involved in research and innovation. The money endowed to the union was subsequently returned to the state’s treasury and the organization was uprooted and dissolved. Around the same time, Belkhodja undertook a short-lived radical experiment of popularizing fine art by mass reproducing prints on old newspapers and distributing them in the old city where he used to reside.36 Nevertheless, the opposition bloc, despite its great efforts, did not ultimately change the hierarchical structure of art consumption and production in Tunisia. However, they managed to construct a different ideal and prompt an alternative route to those rightly willing to contest the self-proclaimed old guard.
Conclusion
The École de Tunis’ domination of Tunisian visual identity and situating of an artistic standard in the country’s post-independence period was, at its crux, an institutional one. First, its legacy of the professionalization of the art world by positing the École in opposition to the Salon de Tunis and aligning with the conservatism of the colonial establishment enabled it to become a representative entity of the government. Second, the enactment of the one percent law, from which they profited immensely, was propelled by this newfound position that enabled the group’s advocacy on behalf of its members for increased funding and attention from the state. Third, the privileged relationship between the movement’s leading figures and the independence government allowed the École to capitalize on large developmental projects undertaken, including the influx of investment in tourism and textiles in the ‘60s and the economic liberalization in the ‘70s. Finally, the failure of any other art group to truly challenge them and shake their grip on power propagated in government committees and artist unions bolstered their monopoly and domination of arts institutions and production.
That said, to imagine a Tunisia without artists like Safia Farhat is to imagine a house with no windows. These artists were the mirrors against which the nation saw itself for the first time and recognized its own features. The École joined a nation-building effort and gave their people bodies of work to cherish as national gems of pride. To dismiss their work as neocolonial replications is to ignore altogether the environment they dealt with and their personal struggles to understand what it meant to be Tunisian. They are simply products of their time, and while their brushstrokes might have been refined under a colonial gaze, they envisioned a future that belonged to them. This essay’s aim is not to demonize or degrade the École or its artists in any way. However, it is of the utmost importance to understand the role institutions and agendas, colonial or independent may they be, played in shaping the identity of a country.
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The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author, and do not represent Fiker Institute.
