The Painting and Sculpture Exhibition

The Woman's Word

While watching the opening ceremony of the Third Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, on the evening of the eleventh of last July at the UNESCO Palace, we could wish for nothing but to acknowledge the great effort exerted by the competent department in the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts to invigorate the artistic movement in Lebanon.

It is cause for wonder to learn that the number of artists who took part in the third exhibition reached one hundred and fifty, and that a third of them, by rough estimate, were of the fair sex.

... Figures not to be scorned, for a small country like Lebanon, and a fine manifestation of progress of which we may hold our heads high — and this in the midst of a summer of emigrants and tourists — our kinsfolk and our dear guests...

Some may object that most of this vast output is of no artistic value worth mentioning, that it amounts to nothing more than primitive attempts, and that most of the exhibitors are amateurs, not professionals...

Movement, in itself, is a blessing, I say, and a spur to creative invention on the part of the artists, and to viewing and criticism on the part of the public; and that is benefit enough for both sides — the exhibition, then, is a living school!!

And then, are not the first manifestations of modern art in the world its floundering in a chaos of schools — classical and realist, expressionist and symbolist, etc.... a struggle in full swing, with time alone holding the final word? Let us march with the caravan and await the unfolding of events!...

While we give the Ministry of Education credit for its zeal for the good name of art and the raising of its standing, we cannot, finally, forgo pointing out that hundreds of eyes were, at the hour of the opening, fixed in hope upon the entrance of the UNESCO Palace, awaiting the First Lebanese, under whose patronage the ceremony had been announced; but His Excellency, for the second time, disappointed those hopes and failed to appear... How everyone would have loved to see his radiant countenance, dispensing smiles, showing his lofty sympathy for this young renaissance which Lebanon is recording in his era!