“Khalil Gibran: The Prophet’s Return to New York Through Art”

“Khalil Gibran returns to New York after 100 years”, such is the theme of the exhibition which is held for three days in one of the entrance halls of the Glass Palace in the megalopolis. This exhibition of a few days brings together some thirty works of art, oil paintings, watercolours, charcoal drawings and other mediums as well as the first edition of his masterpiece The Prophet, embellished with twelve original illustrations by the author, and also his manuscripts, his tools and brushes, seven notebooks of handwritten notes. Everything comes from the Khalil Gibran museum in Bécharré. This is a very quick overview for this internationally renowned Lebanese-American poet and painter. Sponsored by the University of Balamand in collaboration with the Lebanese University, the World Council of America and the Gibran Museum in Bécharré, and under the leadership of the Lebanese Mission to the UN, “this exhibition in the premises of the United Nations does not imply the approval of the UN”, clearly displays this institution.

Notebooks by Gibran Khalil Gibran. Picture SZ

“The Prophet”: a universal message of peace

The works of this poet, writer and painter revolve around themes of family, marriage, women, nature, love and religion. The Prophet, a book of 26 poetic fables in prose written in English and published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf, is his most famous masterpiece that has marked many generations. The exhibition shows fragments of this work arranged in a glass display. A second glass display case houses his manuscripts, his notebooks and his tools and brushes.

First edition of the “Prophet” published in 1923 by Alfred A. Knopf. Picture SZ

Gibran Khalil Gibran died on April 10, 1931 in New York, at the age of 48. The Prophet entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2019. The author ordered that upon his death royalties and copyrights to his materials revert to his hometown of Bécharré, Lebanon. The National Gibran Committee (GNC) of Bécharré, which manages the Gibran Museum founded in 1935, is a non-profit society holding the exclusive rights to manage the copyrights on its literary and artistic works.

Gibran’s family, a painting painted in 1914. Photo DR

“Style and ideas are one”

The works presented at the Glass Palace are significant. They reflect the Symbolist pictorial trend of the early 20th century. Oils, charcoal drawings, watercolors and watercolor drawings have the themes of nature, women, women and children, love and family. Some portraits and paintings are signed and dated, others have no signature or date. Some exhibited works are accompanied by reflections and personal impressions that Gibran Khalil Gibran describes in his numerous correspondence with Marie Elizabeth Haskell and her husband. This female patron he met in Boston would become a protector and a friend who supported him financially. In 1908, thanks to her support, he left to study art in Paris. It was in the City of Light that he studied with Auguste Rodin. After Gibran’s death, Haskell bought the Mar Sarkis monastery in Lebanon to bury him, and in his will, Khalil Gibran bequeathed his studio to him. Haskell donated Gibran’s writings, which included his intimate letters, to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

General view of the exhibition dedicated to Gibran Khalil Gibran at the Glass Palace in New York. Picture SZ

It is interesting to read the notes that accompany certain pictorial works exhibited on the picture rails of the UN. L’Automne, a signed and dated oil painting, was presented at the Spring Salon of 1909 at the Grand Palais in Paris. “The opening of the Salon was a great event. I have never seen such a crowd in my life, nor seen such enthusiasm. Speaking of the Salon, most French newspapers mentioned my name along with other artists that I would gladly have wanted as teachers. Autumn looks rather pretty on the marvelous walls of the Grand Palace,” he wrote to Mr. Haskell, May 10, 1909.“Autumn”, an oil painting by Gibran Khalil Gibran presented at the Salon du Printemps in 1909, at the Grand Palais in Paris. Photo DR

Women and nature have a special meaning for this painter. Woman in Nature is an unsigned and dated painting “Ca. 1914”. The painter describes his vision thus: “What is the benefit of imitating Nature when it is open and so accessible to all who see and hear? Rather, the work of art is to understand nature and reveal its meanings to those who cannot understand (…) The mission of art is to bring out the unknown from the more familiar. And for the work Woman Discovering Nature, an oil signed and dated 1912, he wrote to Mrs. Haskell: “It is difficult to separate the style from the subject. What a man wants to say determines how he says it. If he has a vision of life, he always presents this vision to us in different forms. We unconsciously contradict ourselves when we say we like a man’s style and not his ideas. Style and ideas are one. »

Gibran also painted extensively portraits of women and her family and made self-portraits. About the painting entitled The Family of the Artist (Ca. 1914), he wrote to Marie Haskell on January 6, 1909: “Twenty-six years ago, I was born this same day, twenty- six years. I have already made twenty-six trips around the sun – and I do not know how many times the moon has traveled around me – and yet I do not understand the mystery of light. Today I hear the voices of all the great and small souls who have helped in the making of my soul. Memory brings me all the shadows of past days and nights. As for the charcoal work entitled Quatre faces (1915), Khalil Gibran specifies in his correspondence to Mrs. Haskell: “The only way to work is to do everything with the best that is in you. With the deepest of the heart and with the eyes that are the fountain of tears (…) If there is something in my work that attracts people, it is probably something that speaks of the loneliness in all of us . Art and poetry for Gibran were a spiritual exercise, a bridge between matter and spirit, a means of raising man to divine knowledge. « Art is a step of nature towards the Infinite. Pictorial art is the contemplation of human beauty, the manifestation of perceptible perfection, perceived in its nudity – the nude being practically the only subject in Gibran’s painting – proof of the immanent reality of the Creator present in his creatures. .

Bio express

A child of exile, all his life Khalil Gibran made his art a link between the West and the East. Born on January 6, 1883 in Bécharré, Lebanon, the young Gibran, from a modest background, his father having impoverished the family, immigrated with his mother and his brothers and sisters to the United States in 1895. In Boston, he joined a class for immigrants and at the same time takes courses in an art school. Gifted, he was quickly noticed by a teacher who introduced him to the photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. At the age of 15, he returned to live in Lebanon for four years to study at the Sagesse school in Beirut. He returned to Boston in 1902 and exhibited his first drawings there in 1904 at the Day studio. With financial assistance from his newly met benefactress Mary Elizabeth Haskell, he studied art in Paris from 1908 to 1910. In 1911 Gibran moved to New York. He also corresponded with May Ziadé since 1912. He died at the age of 48 having acquired literary fame on “both sides of the Atlantic Ocean”.