Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › The Monument: Art, Vulgarity And Responsibility In Iraq

The Monument: Art, Vulgarity And Responsibility In Iraq

Samir al-Khalil
Reviewed by By John C. Campbell
Summer 1991
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Samir al-Khalil
University of California Press
1991
168 pp.
$35.00

The author of the acclaimed Republic of Fear (reviewed in Foreign Affairs, Fall 1989) contemplates with distaste the relations between art and Saddam Hussein in today's (or yesterday's) Iraq. Taking as his starting point (or chief target) the egregious Victory Arch constructed by Hussein to commemorate Iraq's "victory" in the Iraq-Iran War, he traces the decline of public art in Iraq from a high point in the 1950s, when it led the Arab world in the visual arts, to its deformation under the Baath regime. He blames the regime but also the artists for allowing themselves to be suborned and the Iraqi public for its supine acceptance of monstrosities. Cited as "unwitting culprits" are none other than Andy Warhol and Robert Venturi.

Related

Snapshot, March 3, 2011
Rage Comes to Baghdad
Raad Alkadiri

Although the current protests in Iraq are unlikely to lead to the country's collapse, Iraqis’ patience with their government’s inadequacies is wearing thin. Should Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki be nervous?



This article appears in the Foreign Affairs/CFR eBook, The New Arab Revolt.

Read
Essay, Jul/Aug 2006
When the Shiites Rise
Vali Nasr

By toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has liberated and empowered Iraq's Shiite majority and has helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This development is rattling some Sunni Arab governments, but for Washington, it could be a chance to build bridges with the region's Shiites, especially in Iran.

Read
Essay, Jan/Feb 2006
Women, Islam, and the New Iraq
Isobel Coleman

Although questions of implementation remain, the new Iraqi constitution makes Islam the law of the land. This need not mean trouble for Iraq's women, however. Sharia is open to a wide range of interpretations, some quite egalitarian. If Washington still hopes for a liberal order in Iraq, it should start working with progressive Muslim scholars to advance women's rights through religious channels.

Read