حديقة الرسامين.

المؤلف:
مؤلف الكتاب هو تيري موجر، مهندس معلومات، قدم إلى المملكة العربية السعودية وكانت لديه رغبة في الابتعاد عن الحياة اليومية الغربية، ونية حاسمة للانغماس في ثقافة هذه البلاد.
منذ لقائه الأول مع البدو، تولدت لديه الرغبة في الترحال،وبعد أن تجول في الصحاري العربية الكبرى، اكتشف منطقة عسير فكانت عشقه الثاني.
واحدة من مفاخر موجر، هي اكتشافه لمن سماهم بـ "الرجال الخضر"، وهم رعاة ماعز يعيشون في المنطقة.
فيما بعد، أبرز قيمة التقليد الرائع متمثلاً في تكوين الجدران الملونة في عسير، وهو التقليد الذي تمارسه النساء، وقد انكب موجر على التعريف بهذا الفن المجهول والنادر في الوقت ذاته.
عاد تيري موجر إلى فرنسا، ليلتحق ببرنامج دراسة جامعية في مدرسة الدراسات العليا للعلوم الاجتماعية في باريس، وخصص أطروحته للدكتوراه في "أنثروبولوجيا العمارة والفن الجداري في عسير "بالتوازي مع هذا العمل وسع موجر ميدان أبحاثه ليشمل 8 كتب، وعدد من التقارير، والمعارض والمؤتمرات والندوات.
الكتــاب:
صدر الكتاب عن مركز أسبار للدراسات والبحوث والإعلام في الرياض بالتعاون مع "ARABIES TRENDS". و"حديقة الرسامين"، هو كتاب مصور مصحوب بدراسة أثنية - جمالية لمؤلفه الذي رصد العمارة التقليدية وزخارفها الملونة في جنوب المملكة العربية السعودية، مصوراً وباحثاً في جذور تشكيلاتها البديعة، وبساطة أشكالها، وغزارة دلالاتها، ووفرة تنويعاتها وعناصرها المولدة لملامح فلكلور يثير البيئة الاجتماعية بمظاهر سحرية تجعل من الحياة اليومية لغة لونية ذات تعبيرات رمزية بمفردات تاريخية غير منطوقة تتداول وتقرأ ضمن السياق الاجتماعي، وتتحدد على ضوئها المبادرات الفردية والجمعية التي تشارك في النسيج الاجتماعي لتلك المنطقة.
يتكون الكتاب من مقدمة وسبعة أجزاء وملحق، و يبدأ بعرض تاريخي ولمحة عن الطبيعة الجغرافية للمملكة العربية السعودية ومن ثم منطقة الجنوب، ويدرس المكونات الأساسية للفن المعماري، ثم يتطرق إلى فن الرسوم الجدارية والتلوين والزخرفة، وفي الأخير يقدم الكتاب مقارنة بين الفن الكلاسيكي والفن الحديث.
كتاب نادر في محتوياته؛ حيث يشكل النص امتداداً للصور الـ 200 التي تعكس بأمانة شديدة أدق التفاصيل لعمارة دون معماريين، وتمنح فرصة لقراءة خاصة لكل ما تزخر به من جماليات على صلة وثيقة بالعادات والتقاليد والوظائف الاجتماعية، مما يجعل من هذا الكتاب مرجعاً علمياً وجمالياً لتلك المنطقة في المملكة العربية السعودية.
المواصفات الفنية للكتاب: -
الحجم 24 × 30.5سم بورتريت (حجم كتالوجي).
- 288 صفحة ملونة (كاملة الألوان).
- 200 شكل ملون(يتضمن صوراً ورسومات وخرائط).
- الورق الداخلي: 170 غراماً كوتيد فاخر.
- تجليد فاخر مع جاكيت مطبوع 4 ألوان 170 غراماً.
- لغة الكتاب: الإنجليزية.
Introduction
UNDER THE WINGS
OF THE SHAHINE
Seeking radar specialists for the Middle East, “this rather laconic job advertisement was the beginning of the adventure. Saudi Arabia was opening its doors to me thanks to the Shahine contract, a Thomson-CSF project for the Saudi Ministry of Aviation and Defence. Word had it that it was the “contract of the century”. After having supplied electronic equipment and weapons systems, French engineers were needed to go and train the Saudi users and maintenance crews. Thus it was that I arrived in Hijaz in 1979, at the maintenance school of Ta’if. this was my official position, but I also had the firm intention of submerging myself in a different culture and sharing the Saudis’ daily life, thus adding a touch of humanism to what was weapons deal. My wife joined me in this project, and made its realization possible when it came to approaching the tribes-while men are threatening, women are reassuring
My wanderings led me to the most isolated and inaccessible regions on the ancient boundaries of the Saudi Kingdom. As soon as I encountered the Bedouins, I was gripped by a passion for the deserts of Arabia, for they quenched my thirst for freedom and provided a magical escape from the constraints of the modern world. Little by little, I stubbornly gained the tribes’ confidence and became a rare witness of their Lives.
I started to lose my Western convictions and abandon myself to their culture, their adaptation to a hostile environment is exemplary. Faced with the encroachment of western technology, I found myself invested with the moral obligation of memory an essential testimony for future generations. It is clear that we most want to photograph something that may disappear rapidly. During my ten years there, I used all of my energy to put together a photographic corpus covering the various tribes. At the same time, I started thinking about how it may help this people to become better known- a process that some call “last ditch anthropology’.
After having traveled through the Arabian deserts in search of the declining Bedouin culture, I discovered the region of ‘Asir, which borders Yemen. This was my second revelation. I now fell in love with this rocky region and its highly colourful tribes, whom I was later to call flowered-men. But above all, it was the discovery of that variance between extremes: sedentary life against nomadic life; the vertical, polychrome houses against the oblong black tents. Finally, there were deserted places as opposed to the desert. At the same time, I learnt how to recognize the image a society wants to give of itself, or the affirmation of its mastery. Architecture, be it woven or built, exists only in the thought that creates it. It tells of a combat or alliance with space.
During the Gulf War, my contract was terminated, thus bringing my long stay in Saudi Arabia to a temporary conclusion. Ten years abroad full of thrilling experiences had put paid to my technological career and cast doubts over my system of values. The shock of repatriation did not alter my determination. Saudi Arabia Had a powerful and lasting attraction for me. I decided to take my convictions to their conclusion, to turn my back once and for all on technology and, taking Francois Pouillon’s advice, to attend the seminars at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences socials in order to formalize my fieldwork in Arabia, which had been carried out more by instinct than by method.
After obtaining an FHESS degree, I started a thesis on the architecture a murals of ‘Asir; two subjects that enlighten each other and constitute and artistic heritage that is as exceptional as it is little known. Except when a thesis is seen as an inevitable step towards a tenured position, the alchemy that governs the choice of subject is not determined only by the recent past, but also by deeper roots in which the candidate’s personal background mingles with his field. While the only links I can find with architecture are mere clichés (houses are built, imagined and destroyed like a construction game, like that hut built in the heart of the forest that remains in some corner of the subconscious) I must admit to having an old love affair with painting. In the mural compositions of ‘Asir, I rediscovered an echo of an emotion I still bore with me, which I had felt when looking at the impressionists in galleries and unashamedly copying their paintings from postcard reproductions. If museums are houses containing pictures, then all of “Asir’s houses are museums.
Three trips, in 1994, 1996 and 1998, allowed me not only to take several thousand photographs, but also, in a rather foolhardy manner, to uncover mural compositions coloured with natural pigments, which show how long-lasting this unique art form has been. When examining these frescoes, I experienced the same excitement a prehistorian fells when trying to understand our ancestors by looking at their cave paintings. Most of them have been destroyed by subsidence caused by the heavy rains that fall on the region, or else have been covered over by industrial paint. It is now too late to try and find an effective answer to this chemical dictatorship.
For a budding ethnologist, the aim was also to prove that I had eyes to see and that my photographs were valid reflections. In 1996, I published Impressions of Arabia in a collection devoted to the world’s aesthetic traditions. It is often said that attaching too much interest to photographs can be a way of compensating for a lack of theory. But this reductive idea can be contradicted by the following argument: better than any discourse, photographs can display the wealth and irreducible character of objects such as architecture and murals. We must agree with Leroi Gourhan when he says that of all the branches of philosophy, aesthetics is the most difficult one to express in words. One thing is certain: illustrations are an essential complement to the hazardous uncertainty of description. This remark makes us wonder if the aspect in which we perceive an object does not reflect the way in which it came into existence. Is the logic we use a true part of that object or merely the product of the mind of the person trying to understand the structure? This question has already been asked and deserves to be raised again, following Gellner, who wondered if there was a cognitive order without science. It is clear that knowing how to manipulate a mathematical tool, such as the fractals used in decorative art, does not mean that a person has comprehended it or even noticed its existence. We must accept that decorative art implies the pre-mathematical feeling for rhythm, symmetry and combination.
To use a photographic metaphor, I must say that my way of looking has changed from the zoom to the wide angle over the last few years. Although my research is anchored in the province of’ Asir, it must now be extended to cover not only the whole of south-western Saudi Arabia, but also the north and north-east of Yemen. It is vital to include these areas in the field of my work because they are part of the same cultural domain as ‘Asir, frontiers have caused differences and thus temporal contrasts. Studying them will restore some of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. These yemeni regions are forbidden to Westerners because they are not controlled by the government. To reach them, you must cross the border where the laws of the San’a’ stop, then, as an intruder, mingle with a tribal order in which compassion is meaningless, but where ancient codes show you how to behave to avoid being taken hostage or intimidated. We must agree with Chelhlod when he says that any foreigners who go there alone, without conforming to the nomadic custom, which insists that they take a rafiq , or traveling companion, who acts as both guide and passport, will only have themselves to blame if they are robbed, molested or assaulted.
The ethnologist’s dilemma is well known. He is torn between the need to keep a distance from his object of study and a desire to participate in it. He must, in fact, oscillate between these two poles in order to find the right distance. Rather than remaining neutral and thus aiming at a unattainable objectivity, and without any other justification than the active role that I have taken in situations described in this book, I have included in this analysis the interactions that my own presence and commitment have caused. For instance, Rijal, the jewel in this tradition’s crown, is no longer the sleepy isolated village I first visited in 1980s, when violent floods had made access difficult. Thanks to new infrastructures, tourism is beginning to take root, with hoards of visitors hungry for old monuments. Because of the success of Impressions of Arabia , I am partly responsible for this incursion.
No matter how radical a rupture is with the past, I can never be total and never completely suppress continuity. This work is being finished in the depths of the French countryside near a test centre for missile engines, which sometimes make the house shake and remind me of when I tested missiles in northern Arabia. Will never be able to rid myself of the anachronism that tormented me for so long during my stay in Saudi Arabia? The nearness of Giverny, the cradle of Impressionism, adds another dimension to the work of these women with no veils or canvases. We can say, with Monet, that they paint as the bird sings

المراجع

موسوعة الأبحاث العلميه

التصانيف

تصنيف :الأبحاث