Visual festivals of color, shape and light

By Bonnie Wells

Published on November 16, 2007

As a child in his native Iraq, M.J. Alhabeeb remembers peaceful sunny days on the family's rooftop patio, watching his mother or grandmother apply henna to her hair.

An evocation of those moments, in acrylics on canvas, is included in Alhabeeb's solo exhibition "Contemplations," on view through Nov. 29 at Burnett Gallery in Amherst.

The lush canvas of "Curves, Sun and Henna," radiating warmth and serenity, is dominated by a woman given over to caring for a cascade of golden hair with the swirl and shadow of sand dunes. She rises out of and is interpenetrated by an abstract background of geometric forms in Alhabeeb's signature cubist style, with a bowl of henna mixture and an ancient double-edged, fine-toothed wooden comb close at hand.

"There are few things I miss [from Iraq]," said Alhabeeb, who moved to the United States in 1982. "This [rooftop patio] I miss, especially on starry nights when you have the moon and the stars and the breeze."

Alhabeeb's fascination with art started in those early days, watching his older brother create the intricate, graceful designs of Arabic calligraphy. When a 4-year-old M.J. picked up a piece of chalk and replicated one of the designs on a concrete wall, his astonished family began to encourage him in art, as did his primary school later on. "And I rode on it, on this wave," he said. "Painting and calligraphy grew together. I am one of a few who does both."

Though Alhabeeb went on to study economics at the University of Baghdad, earn his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and join the faculty of the University of Massachusetts in 1992, now as a professor of resource economics, making art has been an integral part of his daily life for 30 years.

"Painting is a thoroughfare for my imagination and a mode to free my mind and alleviate my tension," Alhabeeb writes in an artist statement. "I feel I can breathe better and think clearer as the painted forms start to take shape and color on my canvas."

On a tour of the Burnett exhibit last week he offered a peek under the hood. Standing before the lavish "28 Circles," he gestured to the image of a curvy woman in a red dress at the center of the canvas with her head bowed toward her clasped hands. "I started sketching this woman and thought, these - her shoulders, head and breasts - are circles. I thought, why don't I do it all in circles?"

The interpenetrating orbs that fill the frame invest the piece with sumptuousness and bounce, as well as a certain spatial mystery.

Women and curves are repeating themes throughout the collection. "If a painter does not paint a woman, what would he paint?" Alhabeeb asks, "a bicycle? A car? It's a beautiful thing to paint, and we are part of it. Nobody can deny that a woman is a symbol of love, of security."

Women are prominent subjects in two dramatic exceptions to Alhabeeb's mainly non-narrative work. "Iraq I" and "Iraq II," which, like Middle Eastern "Guernicas," express the destruction and despair of the war, are dominated by three women in postures of misery.

"In my mind is the pain," Alhabeeb said, "especially for women, because women are the biggest victims in this conflict; they are left to keep the family together. I've seen women make these gestures, these cries for help."

Though the "Contemplations" collection includes examples of several artistic styles - small works of caricature, expressionistic portraits and realistically rendered scenes from ancient Assyrian lore, some drawn from Alhabeeb's longtime work in illustration - what dominates the show are his large-scale cubist works.

"The early cubists thought that the artist should paint what is beyond the physical world," he said, "with perspective violated, direction of light or line violated. It makes it like all is transparent."

Alhabeeb said that rather than expressing a narrative, he moves to the canvas to explore an idea he has about shape, color or light. "The play of shapes is what concerns me most," he said, referring to his painting "Abstract III," as "a visual festival of shapes and spaces and light."

"When I was a school student, up to college, I had in my mind this idea that art had to answer a cause - political or social," he said. "Later on I realized that this is wrong. Art should not be restricted by any of the above."

Alhabeeb has corralled his passion for freedom of expression into the book "Art, Creativity and Freedom," written in Arabic for a Middle Eastern audience.

"I came from an area where art was strangled by a totalitarian system," Alhabeeb said, adding that in the 40-year Baathist regime, all art had to pass through a politically motivated committee in order to be shown or performed publicly. While that was bad, now is worse, he said; art venues and theaters are closed.

"It's a calamity, but what we all hope is that democracy and art will flourish again," he said. "The book emphasizes how central freedom of expression is to an artist, especially now when religious authority seems to hold the ground - and for a new generation to understand the value when you can say and sit and paint what is in your mind."

"Contemplations" is on view through Nov. 29 at Burnett Gallery on the second floor of Jones Library at 43 Amity St. in Amherst. More information on the artist as well as a gallery of his works can be seen at the Web site people.umass.edu/mja.