I arrive with a French translator at the October Gallery to find Hassan Massoudy in the middle of a photo shoot for another magazine. On the way here Peggy (the translator) has been telling me how he’s so loved and popular in France. He receives us with a warm smile and I’m slightly taken back by his presence. He’s an elegant man that exudes confidence and wisdom in his posture, his voice and his walk. But he’s also very simple and welcoming.
BCR: How did you get involved in Calligraphy?
HM: Calligraphy is a big part of my culture and I have always been very attracted to it. At the age of 16 I started working as a Calligraphy apprentice, and later had the opportunity of moving to Paris to study at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts. I realized very soon while in Paris that there was not a big response for the art I was doing, so I started to explore different artistic ways. But then I got invited by a friend of mine, Guy Jacquet, who was a comedian, to do a live show together. The show took off well and a few years later we were joined by the musician Fawzy Al Aiedy. It basically consisted of Jaquet reading poetry, while I painted it live, and Aiedy played music.
BCR: So what was the response to your first show, considering it was something very new at the time?
HM: There was a lot of emotion coming from the public, it was very overpowering. They couldn’t understand what it was, yet they appreciated the beauty of it. The public go into the art, the geometry, the rhythm of it. They might not have understood the meaning, but they understood the art and felt the emotion. It was at that moment that I knew that from everything I had done at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts the calligraphy was what I really wanted to do.
BCR: There must have been a big cultural clash moving from Iraq to Paris…
HM: Yes, it’s normal. I came from a desert country from the South of Iraq, and I arrived at the capital of culture. It was a big change, but mainly it wasn’t a bad experience. I really loved the people I met, and all the new experiences I was getting.
BCR: After that show you went on doing collaboration work with others, can you tell us about those?
HM: Live shows really bring out loads of emotion and I like to work with that. After that show I carried on alone or collaborating with others. Recently I did a show in front of 15000 people in Istanbul with another artist. Having all those people in front of you really inspires you a lot.
For at least forty five years I have also been working with charities bringing art to where art doesn’t exist, and trying to raise awareness. I usually refuse to work with galleries. The last exhibition I did in France was 20 years ago. I don’t like the commercial aspect of it. Most of the time art is put in the galleries to pay the bills, and it’s a shame because you lose the essence of art. It just becomes a commercial object. The reason I’m doing this exhibition with the October Gallery is because I have a good relationship with them. I can see they do it for the love for the art. In France they take the artist and they sell all his work very expensively, and when they’ve used him they dispose of him. The artist doesn’t get all that much money, and after they are done with him he also finds it hard to get his work out because they found something new to use. The artist is lost after that. I don’t want to be part of that system, so I earn my living from my shows, exhibitions in local libraries, books and selling cards.
BCR: Since you mentioned books, how did you get involved in writing?
HM: I have written for the Arabic press for 40 years. Now the writing of those books just came as an evolution from that and Calligraphy, which is the old Arab language. For the occidental public it’s just geometry, you can’t imagine the meaning of it. It’s from the colours and the shape that you take meaning. So the books can come as a translation.
BCR: I can see from the work around this room that you have some western poets like William Blake just behind me. So you’re not just using traditional eastern work...
HM: Arab Calligraphy is present everywhere in our culture, across buildings, walls… and the tradition is to have short meaningful sentences, proverbs or poems. So what I do in my work is to combine the global way of thinking incorporating the work of several artists and philosophers around the world.
BCR: Are there any particular themes for each exhibition you do?
HM: sometimes yes, I do exhibitions with a theme in mind. I did one about the desert, one was on the man, I like everything that touches nature. I also did one on the four elements - earth, water, fire and wind.
BCR: In the western culture sometimes we are made to believe that people that go into the study of Calligraphy do it as a way to find enlightenment...
HM: I don’t really like that belief that people go to Calligraphy for enlightenment. Because whether it’s William Blake’s work or any other artist, once you give so much of yourself to something it becomes spiritual. Every form of art is spiritual, the artist goes inside himself and outside for inspiration, and gets to know himself and grows because of it. For me it is very simple, art is like water - if don’t drink my water I die.
