Modern Art in Cold War Beirut by Rogers Sarah;

Author:Rogers, Sarah; [Sarah Rogers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2021-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Beirut’s Appeal, Ferren’s Appeal

In a 1962 memo to President Kennedy, the Lebanese ambassador to the United States suggested a more aggressive cultural and commercial approach in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon, “the showplace for the Arab world.”37 As detailed in the first chapter, the Lebanese capital of Beirut had served as a regional center for economic, political, and missionary activities since the second half of the nineteenth century. By the early 1960s, the city had developed into an artistic hub for Lebanese and Arab artists, many of whom settled in Beirut after their studies abroad in Paris and Rome. Much of Beirut’s appeal stemmed from Lebanon’s laissez-faire economy. Set in place under the French Mandate, the country’s open political economy molded Beirut into a regional capital for international commerce, trade, and tourism. This, coupled with the country’s relaxed censorship laws, attracted to the capital a broad mix of businesspeople, journalists, writers, artists, and tourists. Moreover, Lebanon’s national identity as a crossroads between East and West primed its pro-Western foreign policy and potential strategic use to the United States.

In 1963, only a year after the Lebanese ambassador’s memo to Kennedy, the USIA initiated its sponsorship of artists’ residencies abroad with Lebanon. Ferren was an easy choice to launch the program. Despite the precarious beginnings of abstraction in United States—yoked as it was to leftist politics during the witch hunts of McCarthy and Dondero—by the early 1960s, the formal languages of modernism had survived a stunning turn of fate. As art historians have documented, abstraction had been popularized through the mass media, the staunch efforts of individuals such as MoMA’s Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and the Whitney’s Lloyd Goodrich, and government agencies.38 Framed as a representation of the individuality and freedom posited by the United States government as national values, abstract expressionism in particular marked the ascent of American art on the global stage. In similar terms, representatives for the State Department explained their choice of Ferren in a 1964 Newsweek article: “As an abstract expressionist, he is a member of a distinctly American school.”39 Despite formal affiliations with his American peers, Ferren’s artistic trajectory suggests certain differences as well, ones that would later position him as an ideal candidate for the USIA’s involvement in Beirut: his francophone beginnings and his service in the Office of War Information.

Born in Oregon in 1905, Ferren moved to Los Angeles with his family before the restlessness of young adulthood brought him to San Francisco. There he had his first seemingly accidental encounter with art-making; on his way to work as an engineer for the phone company, Ferren passed an art supply store with plasticine in the windows. Curious, Ferren purchased some and began to model small clay busts and figures. Soon after, Ferren took a job in an Italian stone yard, where he worked for the next four years. In 1929, he traveled to Europe, where once again, apparent happenchance shaped his career. At the time, Ferren didn’t speak French. Drawn to the familiar sounds of his native language on a beach in St.

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