SECRET LIVES
Eddie Chambers
Secret Lives
To look at one of Ali Kazimıs paintings is not only to look at something wonderful, something remarkable. It is also to look at something deeply intriguing. Kazim is a fine and highly skilled and accomplished painter, but he is also a deeply compelling and accomplished teller of mysterious and wondrous stories. These stories in turn contain subtle, yet strong references to autobiographical narratives and reflections on the self. The artist uses watercolour pigments as his preferred medium of mark making. Yet Kazim's work demonstrates a very unusual technique of using these watercolour pigments to give an almost layered, textured effect that give weight and form to the figures in his paintings. There is a depth and a richness to Kazimıs colours that we might not ordinarily associate with watercolours, or think that watercolours could achieve. In addition to being an artist of exquisite ability, Kazim intrigues us with the subtle nuances, body language and arrangement of the figures in his paintings.
We are never quite sure what to make of the narratives in Kazimıs paintings. Paradoxes abound. The figures he paints all male, and only ever depicted from the waist up are naked. Yet this nakedness conceals as much as it reveals. We might imagine that our gaze would render these naked, or semi-naked men vulnerable. But these figures decisively empower themselves by excluding us from the privacy of their actions, gestures, body language and interaction with each other. It is almost as if Kazim is allowing us glimpses of his inner self, or glimpses into the lives and preoccupations of men like himself. We might fondly imagine that the unclothed body might facilitate a greater understanding of these figures, but we can never know the totality of what Kazim depicts.
Consequently, returning again to one of his paintings is, in essence, like seeing it for the first time. It might give up some of its mysteries and secrets, but in revisiting one of Kazimıs paintings, we are, simultaneously, obliged to question any tenuous certainties of perception that we may previously have held about the work. Kazim intrigues us with visions and scenarios that are, ultimately, beyond our full or complete understanding. Loaded with what one writer has called ³mystery and incongruity², Kazim delights in adding cryptic layer upon cryptic layer. There is great beauty in the artistıs rendering of ultimately inscrutable males doing ultimately inscrutable things. Even the most seemingly simple of gestures or acts confounds us with its inscrutability. This act, of denying us access to secrets, is what makes these such powerful and engaging paintings. Whatever the secrets of identity, of dialogue, of understanding, of experience, that lie within these paintings, they are as human as they are sacred, as sacred as they are human. With this emotive interplay between the human and the sacred, Kazim has indeed hit on something remarkable.
There is great beauty in the males that Kazim depicts. But perhaps out of necessity there is also great strangeness. A male in one of his paintings is shown removing or trimming his facial hair with a distinctive cutthroat razor. But in another painting, a male figure uses the same sort of razor for the trimming or shaving of armpit hair. There is perhaps something curious about a man seeking to remove bodily hair, particularly that which oftentimes remains hidden from public view. With hair being one of the major demarcations and differentiations of gender, is the male seeking to attain some sort of androgyny or hermaphroditism? Or does the shaving of ones armpits signify, for men, some sort of supposed cleansing or beautifying process, pretty much as it might do for certain women? The painting Iım referring to is titled Fridayı, indicating, perhaps, a pre devotional act of ablution, the ceremonial washing of parts of the body, on the holiest day of the week. Ultimately of course, answers to these questions if genuine questions they be evade us. Inscrutable, strange, mysterious and secretive men engaged in equally inscrutable, strange, mysterious and secretive acts. Ironically, in facing Kazimıs work, the only thing that is certain is the beautiful and haunting uncertainty that characterises much of his work.
We are, it seems, destined to be forever on the outside of the characters in Kazimıs paintings. We can, apparently, do little more than observe and wonder about secret thoughts, secret lives and the secret expressions that his male figures, without exception, carry. For example, in the painting Whisperı, one male, using his hand for added secrecy, whispers something into the ear of another. Intriguingly, Kazim must know that he is in effect inviting us to speculate on the nature of the secret these two men now share. Is this a story, an announcement, a recounting that dare not declare itself in wider company? Casting around for answers, we might ask ourselves if this furtive congress amounts to a declaration of what, in 1894 the poet Lord Alfred Douglas wrote of as being ³the love that dare not speak its name.² There is though, one thing of which we can be quite certain. The sombre and brooding palette that Kazim has used for both figures and background emphatically discount the idea that the whisperer is declaring or exchanging a frivolity.
We are, in a similar vein, intrigued by Kazimıs painting, Secreteı. A man, again naked at least from the waist up, places a hand behind his ear, as if expecting, hoping, to hear a secretı. Or, perhaps, a story, a confidence, a request, an announcement, a recollection or a declaration suitable only for intimate exchange between two individuals. Interestingly, as viewers of the painting, we find ourselves cast in the role of (perhaps reluctant) speaker. The man in the painting takes pleasure in expectancy. Dare we declare, or request or reveal that which the listener yearns to hear? The painting resonates with a certain sensuality and the male takes undisguised pleasure in his expectancy or anticipation. It is though, the light, bright background that gives the painting its sense of anticipated fulfillment.
We might ordinarily think that beauty (that near indefinable combination of visual qualities that please the aesthetic senses, especially the sight) is something we primarily associate with women those blessed with it and those seeking it. But many of the males in Kazimıs paintings declare a fondness for beauty. They care not for that which is merely handsome (the much more accepted term that we choose to apply to visually pleasing male features) and instead, unashamedly, outrageously seek and indulge a sense of male beauty, or male adornment. In Fragranceı a man (I need not mention his now familiar nakedness) adorns his shaven head with a single flower, its luscious petals complimenting not only the man himself, but also the indulgent, decadent blue background of the painting. Does the male depicted beautify himself for a lover? For himself perhaps? Or is his adornment a defiant and provocative gesture against a society ill at ease with male sensuality or public displays of male effeminacy, that is, singularly unmasculine men, feminine in appearance or manner? Like Secreteı, this painting resonates with a delicious sensuality and again, the male takes certain pleasure in his sense of expectancy or anticipation. And like Secreteı, the light, bright background gives Fragranceı its outrageous sense of indulgence and anticipated pleasure.
But Kazimıs paintings also explore ideas of spiritual or religious devotion and identity. In this endeavour, the artist uses the simple yet profound motif of the prayer cap. Symbolic of spiritual or religious devotion, Kazimıs prayer caps are creations of great skill, devoutness and beauty, in which we see and appreciate the making of these caps and all that that making implies. For Kazim, or at least, for the males in his paintings, there is great beauty in religious devotion, as much as there is in other areas of human existence, endeavour and experience. Within these paintings there is a fascinating interplay between the notion of beauty as that earlier mentioned combination of visual qualities that please and indulge the aesthetic senses, and the beauty to be found in simple spiritual or religious devotion. The males in Kazimıs paintings, in embracing the former notion of beauty, refuse, simultaneously, to distance or separate themselves from the latter notion of that which is spiritually beautiful.
Perhaps more than anything, Ali Kazimıs work fascinates and intrigues us because we think we discern within it what one writer has called ³very private feelings and equally privateı fragments of autobiography² being brought ³into the public arena². These are, as the same writer asserts, works of ³pure simplicity and maddening complexity². His are remarkable, beautiful paintings that, like the males he draws and paints, reveal as much as they conceal. Surprisingly perhaps, given the artistıs subject matter, these are singularly unsentimental works that do much to (re)animate our ideas of male sensuality, beauty and spiritual devotion. This is a privileged opportunity to see for ourselves remarkable works by an equally remarkable artist.