With the Artist Samih Attar

In the spring of 1937, as the artist Youssef Howayek was working in his atelier in Furn al-Shubbak, a boy at the window disturbed him, standing there a long while and peering in... He took him for a bothersome intruder, like most of the boys of that quarter, and picked up a stick to brandish at him, as he was in the habit of doing with the other boys... But the little one was not driven off by the flourish of the stick, and asked the master, with composure and with insistence, to be allowed to look at the statues from inside...

Howayek notices in the boy's face something other than what he was used to seeing in the faces of bothersome boys... so he opens the door, cheerful and welcoming, and leads him among the stone bodies and heads, introducing his statues himself, watching the gleam of wonder sparkle in the little one's eyes, and the ray of admiration rising over his dark face...

That boy of ours was none other than the artist Samih Attar!

He was in those days new to Beirut, having come to it from Tripoli in pursuit of art — the beloved of his childhood — and he found no spring at which to quench his thirst except the School of Arts and Crafts, and there he stayed four years, after which he graduated in sculpture and metal casting at the hands of Mr. Abd al-Wahhab Adada.

His intelligence catches the attention of those in charge at the School of Arts and Crafts, and they engage him as a teacher of metal casting and of copying from the model; but the artist still yearns to draw from the deep seas of art, and what was available to him in Beirut went no further than shallow streams, and could not satisfy his artistic pride, or slake his thirst, or sate his hunger...

And where but in “Rome” — the first homeland of art — lay the goal of his ambition and his hopes?

...To Rome he emigrated in 1949, sent by the Ministry of Education, and he set about moving among its institutes of art, drinking in the world's artistic heritage in great draughts, letting no moment pass without profiting from it... He enrolled first in the “Art Institute” to specialize in the casting of bronze statues — and he is today, in Lebanon, the only one able to cast statues in bronze. Then he entered the school of the “Medal,” and after it the sculpture institute of the Academy of Fine Arts, and from all

Attar to the School of Arts and Crafts, as head of the casting and sculpture department, and as a specialist in the making of ceramics... And in the hall where he works with his pupils, and where plaster heads and commercial clay models lie scattered about, the young artist displays some of the statues he has made since his return, of well-known personalities; the visitor can only feel admiration at the great resemblance between the “likeness” and the original, and then acknowledge the gifts of this rising artist, and the swift strides he is taking, in the art of sculpture, toward the fields of fame and glory.

...Here is Riad al-Solh, and there Sheikh Beshara El-Khouri, and that is Omar Daouk, and Khalil Mutran, and Rashid Baydoun... as though, from the heart of lifeless matter, they were breathing their own breath again!!... And the first monument among his works is the statue of Sheikh Farid al-Khazen, raised before the Jounieh serail in 1952.

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...And now, it is as if the wings of the artist Attar were about to beat and soar into the skies of art, for he is looking for an atelier in one of Beirut's suburbs, where he can settle into quiet, draw his inspiration from models of living beauty, and turn them into brass statues within everyone's reach.

“I shall let no beauty pass without seizing hold of it,” says Attar. “I shall bring to market Lebanese artistic statues no less splendid than what we get imported from Italy and France... And I have it in mind to immortalize our personalities — poets, men of letters, and artists — by raising their statues in the public squares and parks, as is done in Rome and Paris and other European cities.”

And the artist answered a question put to him about his own method of making statues, saying:

“When I design statues, I do not aim to please public opinion so much as I care to satisfy my artistic feeling.

People here, for instance, want their statues polished and smooth, with precision in the details, like the mannequins displayed in shop windows. My heart tightens when I feel forced to go along with them, and I long to be freed of this thing I call a yoke and to take flight in my own artistic skies. What matters to me most in a statue is truth of expression — the “Expression” — and the spirit and the vitality. As for details and polish, they no longer hold any importance in my eyes.”

Here is a Lebanese artist, in the confident stride of his youth, looking out upon the hard and thorny life of art, with a ray of green hope on his brow, skill in his fingertips, and faith and confidence in his head. Do not crush his resolve or humble his ardor — for God's sake — you who are responsible... And you, Lebanese, have you resolved to remain illiterates in art, and so never advance a single step forward??