Gannit Ankori. Palestinian Art.

• Author: Shabout, Nada
• Position: Book review

Gannit Ankori. Palestinian Art. London: Reaktion Books, 2006, 143 color plates, 19 halftones. 7-1/2 x 9-3/4. Paper, $35.00.

FROM THE OUTSET, THE MAIN problem with Gannit Ankori's book is initiated by the ambitious title Palestinian Art. Possibly a more appropriate title would have been Chapters from Palestinian Art or, and in keeping with art historians' tradition, a subtitle that would narrow the sweeping, all encompassing claim that is not fulfilled. A narrower qualification might have helped explain her specific choice of limited artists, as well as affirm her aim to avoid reducing the various individual experiments to a collective whole, as exemplified by her grouping of artists.

Perhaps with the expectation of a comprehensive meta-narrative suggested by the book's title, Ankori's organization of the book becomes confusing. Ankori might have benefited from referencing some of the earlier attempts to categorize Palestinian art, which were included in her bibliography. Earlier classifications of Palestinian artists divided them generally into three groups, within which diversity and multiplicity are maintained: artists of the occupied territories (now living under the rule of the Palestinian Authority), artists living within Israel, and artists of the diaspora. The basis for this grouping is that each group, while sharing many substructural commonalities with the other groups, faced its own added set of problems. (1) Ankori's categorization of the individual artists in parts II, III and IV are particularly problematic in their attempt to bridge pronounced lines and forge continuity on the one hand, while creating other imaginary ones on the other. While she makes no distinction between works created under occupation and others created in the diaspora, she certainly amplifies what she perceives as ambivalence in the relationship between "Arab-Israeli" artists and Palestinian artists.

The impact of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 on Palestine and the Arab world as a whole cannot be overstated. The argument of a pre and post-Nakba rhetoric has been applied to various aspect of cultural, political, and historical developments in the region. Thus not surprisingly, and as Kamal Boullata has long argued, it had a tremendous effect on the development on the visual arts. Ankori's main premise, which she maps out in Part I (the first three chapters contested by Boullata), revolves around 1948 as a decisive moment in Palestinian history. Nevertheless, she often contradicts her emphasis of al-Nakba, as evident in the titles of her chapters, by claiming a sort of art historical continuity; a "thesis" that she "cannot fully substantiate"...