Footnotes

Provenance:
Property from a private collection, Amman

Exhibited:
The Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation, Darat Al Funun, Seven Iraqi Artists, Amman, Jordan, 1990

An important Shakir Hassan Al-Said from the wall series exhibited during the artists residency at the Darat Al Funun in Jordan

"In 1990, with the onset of the first Gulf War, Al Said left Baghdad for the Jordanian capital. Working closely with Shoman, Al Said directed a lecture series on contemporary Arab art that took place over a two-year period at the Scientific and Cultural Center at the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation. Furthermore, the lectures were published in 1995 as Hiwar al-Fan al-Tashikly (Dialogues on Art), making a substantial contribution to the region's art history—one that predates the contemporary flurry of archiving practices." - Excerpt from 'Histories in the Making: The Khalid Shoman Collection and Darat al Funun' by Sarah Rogers

"I was tasked to be an art consultant to the foundation and to initiate a plastic art program in line with the annual program (1990-1992). I selected topics that consider and establish [Plastic Arts Discourse] that encompasses contemporary thought, that culture that does not limit itself to the artist per se, but extends to the audience and art viewers, literature and journalism, critics and aesthetes. This is a new perspective on the meaning of art, and is on the mind of the intellectual world. Art work is not produced by the producing artist alone, but in the interaction of all related counterparts, as well as what is emitted by the work itself after its independence from the artist.
In a few words: The discourse of the plastic artist is complete only with the interpretation of the viewer, as there is no longer a "sender" or a "receiver", but an "artistic effect" that has been produced by the artist and remains subject to only the viewer. As we hoped to highlight on the importance of artistic effects in and of themselves. This is because our effort in artistic culture believes in the meaning of art as a sum of the receiver, the sender, and the letter." – Shakir Hassan Al-Said

Shakir Hassan Al Said's Fragments of Tradition (1990) is a powerful and richly layered painting from one of the most important phases of his career. It was created during a pivotal residency at Darat al Funun in Amman, where he lived and worked at the height of the Gulf War. As conflict reshaped the region, Al Said was simultaneously directing a major lecture series on Arab art and producing a suite of works that would come to define his mature vision.

This painting is among the finest examples of his Jidar (Wall) style, a body of work that merged abstraction with spiritual, philosophical, and archaeological inquiry. In Fragments of Tradition, scratched lines, buried symbols, and fading textures evoke the worn surfaces of ancient walls, layered with the traces of past civilisations and cultural memory. The earth-toned palette, punctuated by streaks of white, red, and ochre, gives the impression of something excavated, as if the painting itself were a living artefact.

The composition also connects directly to Al Said's One Dimension group, a movement he co-founded that sought to merge Sufi metaphysics with visual abstraction. The gesture here is both expressive and controlled; the symbols and scrawls do not narrate but point to a deeper inner language - one that exists beneath the surface of representation. The artist's hallmark interest in time, decay, and revelation is on full display - the wall as a site of memory and loss, but also of endurance and continuity.

Fragments of Tradition was exhibited in Darat al Funun's 1990 group exhibition and stands today as an exceptional and rare painting from this crucial period. It embodies Al Said's lifelong commitment to developing a modern Arab visual language - one rooted in heritage, but unbound by it; abstract, yet deeply material; contemporary, yet timeless.