Mohamed Njeim Favorite
The famous French poet and writer Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was an admirer of the experience of the international Dutch painter Van Gogh, and he wrote an important reference about him in which he shed light on the life of this artist who occupied people and puzzled them with his own life, just like what occupied them with the life and works of some other art greats such as Salvador Dali, Picasso, Renoir, and other icons of modern art.
After Artau embraced freedom, he visited one of the art galleries devoted to the works of Van Gogh, and was amazed by his genius and his extraordinary ability to interrogate nature and paint it in paintings that are very deep and aesthetic. Hence, the idea of writing this deep and immortal book, “Van Gogh, the Suicide of Society,” arose in Artaud’s head, and it took him to devote himself to it for a while. This book, which some critics called “The Pleading” in view of its importance, was crowned in 1948 with the famous Sainte-Beuve Prize in France. He suffered all kinds of poverty, exclusion, and exploitation, and he is the exceptional plastic artist whose influence is still evident until now in global formation. This is in addition to Arto’s preoccupation with composition, as he was also a plastic artist, and left a distinguished collection of paintings. Some plastic and scenographic works were collected by him with major international plastic artists such as: Picasso and Baltus, and this is what he clearly embodied in this book, which is charged with an excess of meanings and deep symbolic connotations. .
Western cultural pattern
This valuable book, issued in translation by the International Center for Visibility Studies in Tangier, chronicles Artaud’s personal experience, and his close contribution to the making of modern and contemporary cultural and artistic history, as he had the upper hand in establishing the Surrealist movement whose most important statements he formulated, and headed the editorship of its famous magazine: “The Revolution.” Surrealism. In addition to being one of the most important figures in experimental and avant-garde thought, whether in theatre, cinema, or even poetry. Not to mention that this work also unveils an important experience that Arto lived personally, and drew with his spirit and body all its details, and it is evident in his anthropological journey that led him towards the Trahumaras tribes in the wasteland of Mexico, to discover the red Indian, and the culture of the Indians that overturned a group of postulates that believed It has western culture.
The Arabizer believes that the issuance of the Arabic translation of my books “Van Gogh Suicide of Society” and “Revolutionary Discourses” by Antonin Artaud aims to contribute to bringing “Arti” thought closer to the Arab reader, and to put these two texts at his disposal, in order to invest them in enriching the critical perceptions in circulation, and correcting A group of fallacies attributed to Artaud in his relationship to theatre, or surrealism, or plastic art. And the enrichment of the Arab library, which is in dire need of works of this kind.
