MULUGETA TAFESSE and the Provocative Object In 1981 Mulugeta left the Addis Ababa School of Fine arts, where he had been a student and later an instructor, to complete his studies in Sofia, and later in Antwerp and Tenerife, and to obtain MFA; the title of 'Laureate Visual Arts of Higher Institute for Fine Arts' and his Ph.D. A few years after he left the country, the news of his group show in Sofia reached the art community in Addis Ababa. Although he had had his successful solo exhibition in Addis in 1981 at the Alliance Ethio-Francaise, his show in Sofia, before he even completed his studies, stunned and surprised many and gratified his friends as well as his students at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts. They knew his ambition. His intent was to tell the world that he had already reached that stage in his career, and that he was an accomplished artist and wanted to be recognized as such despite the fact that he had to return to an art school even after several years of training and teaching experience. He had exhibited this unusual attitude even while he was a graduate student at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts. He wanted to talk and write and create what he thought and believed was art and be himself, several times overlooking the advice of his instructors. It is not the objective of this essay to dwell on the anecdotes of his school days and professional career that might shed light on his character. However, his terrible temper and strong individualism as well as the apparent power in his stop-and start mode of speaking in refined, well chosen, and poetic words are not to be omitted. He is a product of a third generation of professional Ethiopian artists with creative genius, and an avid reader of the history of modern art. His paintings, not convincing in the conventional fashion, are far from the socialist-realist style craze of the eighties. They are of a different kind, a prodigy type, with unusual brush strokes and the look of an unfinished canvas with the white surface and the pencil drawing under the paint clearly showing through. In his diploma work, Emperor Tewodros II, YeQwaraw, 1980 he treated the canvas in an unconventional manner with patches of cold blue and ocher colors, and emotionally agitated and elongated figures. His art almost seemed to be a response to the traumatic times, his figurative expressionist style dealing with suffering and death, redemption and regeneration. Emperor Tewodros II was probably set forth as a symbol of endurance during a period of despair. We cannot help but think of this painting and several others he did at this time when we look at his paintings now, some fifteen years later. The subject matter has changed progressively, - provocative? But the luminous tone of reflection, the effortless change from brilliant to somber, and the physiognomy that doesn't represent mere beauty are all the same. His diploma work, Emperor Tewodros II, brings to many of us a great deal of historical as well as national sentiment, but for Mulugeta it was most of all and before anything else a painting painted on a canvas in a certain way which satisfied him for its harmony and composition. His 1996 -1998 paintings, (some displayed online see Fretsion Gallery) exceptional for their artistic technique and a far more sophisticated approach, are all analogous with his previous works. If memory serves me, in 1980, while he was defending his diploma work, he spent the entire time allocated in analyzing and interpreting the application of the painting, the drawing, the composition-in short, the formal elements-rather than the subject matter of the painting. This is unusual; graduates defending their works typically spend more time talking about the historical or national significance of their work than about the nuts and bolts of how it was done, executed or achieved. Mulugeta picked this popular subject matter not so much for its historical value, but to avoid exclusion and animosity by the socialist cadre. The significance of the subject matter is and has always been secondary to him. Needless to say Mulugeta is proud of his past, but never explicitly shows the pride or the burden of it. It is also true even with subjects one would think are very dear to him. For instance, in 1979 he painted his school sweetheart, Seble, in the same manner. However, he gave the maximum natural attention to her eyes-the gateways to the soul-evidently to give the look and the resemblance. The cloth, the garment and the background and the treatment of the portrait were left as an orchestration of color and of several other joyous matters and as symbols radiating a celebration of love. After a century of secular art tradition and after the works of Gebre Kristos Desta and Skunder Boghossian, Mulugeta's present subject matter can hardly be familiar. In fact, his paintings strike many as overly ambiguous and ambivalent, especially by the standard most of us have for a modern painting and the more so if we expect the work to be related to a social situation or inflated with social content. If Fine Art is to create any kind of "scandal" or protest in our society, it is more likely now, when Mulugeta is about to display his works to the Ethiopian public, than it was some thirty-five years ago when Gebre Kristos displayed his abstract works to Addis Ababansi. To the lay observer, Gebre Kristos's paintings are only color harmony in the avant-garde style of western abstract painters; Mulugeta's are color harmony with a cover-up of presumably erotic nude figures, which is an aberration and a social taboo. These paintings of Mulugeta's pick an unusual, dangerous and risky subject and will definitely cause its viewers-except the indifferent and casual observer-uneasiness and shame. The naked body or the representation thereof is seen by Christian Ethiopians as an object of pity, as in Christ on the cross; or of shame, as in Adam and Eve; or of symbolism, as in most African art. A nude figure is rarely an object of aesthetic contemplation in the culture. There is hardly anything in the literature or art works of early or present-day Ethiopia which illustrates or shows people-bathing, swimming, or even in a bathtub-naked for the sake of showing the beauty of the naked body. It has been a taboo subject for Ethiopian artists, although live nude study and figure drawing have been offered at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts since the school's inception. Nude drawing is considered a statement of the artist's own humanity and the corner stone of western art. Christian Ethiopian art, which depicts the iconography of the nude crucifixion, did not allow any kind of expression of individual artistic personalities such as is seen in western art. The subject matter is indeed dangerous to even contemplate. Unlike the western artists who support their theses through works of Greek and Roman antiquity, Mulugeta finds in his Christian religion and ancient civilization no encouragement of the fascination with the human body. Even his predecessors, including Maitre Artist Afewerk Tekle are content with the smile and at other times the melancholy eyes in a female portrait in order for it to be sensual. Naked figures in Afewerk's works are next to nonexistent. The few nude figures represented in the "Last Judgment," found at St. George's Cathedral in Addis Ababa, which he painted in 1960, are silenced and overshadowed. The earliest painter who tried to closely and erotically represent nude or seminude figures was the self-taught Tesfay Mandefero, later the student of Ale Felge Selam, in the early 60sii. Still, his nudes are no different from the many descriptions we read in fiction writing. In all instances they are seminude engaged in some kind of activities rather than posing to expose their sensuous and erotic bodies. Certain segments of our society have worked, eaten, walked-in short, done day-to-day activities-nude and seminude for centuries. However, it is only recently that our artists have seen seminude figures as aesthetic objects and represented sensuous and erotic bodies largely as favorite collections for bars and restaurants. The nudes in Mulugeta's paintings are neither erotic nor sensuous, or at least he didn't make them so. He doesn't seem to me to be a symbolist seeking to convey any specific emotional realities. This kind of urge is very unlikely to come from his social background. Born in 1960 in rural town of Hauzien, Tigray, his background is one of deep-rooted, centuries-old Christian tradition where any sort of aberration is harshly dealt with. Unless he were out there trying to liberate society's psyche, he would not depict himself or his background or even his subliminal self. I would say he portrays the social setting of western society where he lives not even as a guest but as a very curious observer. He represents a social setting whose values he does not completely share, and thinks it natural to depict nude figures as subject matter devoid of any implicit or explicit banal content. The portrayal of erotic and nude figures, although the symbolical representation might well be universal and date from antiquity, is definitely a characteristic of western art after the Renaissance, and even more so the fascination par excellence of artists from industrial countries. For better or worse, Mulugeta reflects values symptomatic of the society where he studied, and where he works and lives, although he is a product of a cultural setting where even a pinup nude figure is not tolerated. Needless to say, his position in relation to mainstream art remains highly ambivalent. Much of the challenge and the power of his works may well be lost when he goes back to his country. Other Ethiopian artists who feared the risk of anonymity have avoid this venture by representing subject matters taken from their cultural setting or adapting artistic iconography from their culture. Here is in part, what Mulugeta had to say on the occasion of his solo shows which took place in Antwerp on 10/98 titled "private parts." Coming to Europe as a non-European to live as an artist would seem a far cry from the truth. It is almost obscene, especially at a time when the marginal are [at least feel] isolated from the social and cultural mainstream. I must be like Juno doing wrong who did not keep the word from the age of primeval practices. An ancestral trend. Besides this, exhibiting the multiples from the mechanical era is doubling the paradox. What can you do about it? Excusably a complicated habit; but it is worthwhile working; i.e. to stay effective for the occasion. Is it so committing a sin, compromising with the autarkic easel painting? So exasperating, at the same time seducing, painting seems surviving. You know art is about fooling your tribe or other 'tribes' and making the unimaginable mockery. Art is all about a beautiful lie. You can do it best with old and tested model goddesses such as Juno; also with very much proved crafts; say chess hockey, medicine or art of painting. You can anoint the statue which stood for Juno's imagery and burn to it fats; to the symbol mother of fertility. If I mix up the ritual in worshipping the African and European deities it does not matter. As heavenly beings they are permanently every where and identity-less not identifiable; no matter we are learned to paint them the gamma they do not wear. It had been an easy tourney to Zeus to descend to the plateaus of Ethiopia from Parthenon for a banquet. I came from matriarchal society and I would like to boost the goddesses of all gods; is Isis. Actually no one argues that all humans descended from Africa. Then, automatically we proved to be human also in the old continent in the ancestral home by cultivating the foundation of culture. Only then was the Diaspora possible to the mankind. A hard crunch -Painting. You see the business of painting is not a major but an overall concern of West Europe or what it would become The European Union... The Transavnguardia was an ambitious and too charismatic group for painters with too big market strategy and success and with too little art. I think it does not deserve its fame. But this is a thing of the past. We now all know Painting is a hard crunch. You can not bite it. You can not chew it. Perhaps you can melt the praline in your moth and swallow it down. Try. iii Mulugeta, who has lived and worked in Brussels since obtaining his Ph.D., is a prolific artist, and has been able to show his works in Europe as well as in Ethiopia, individually or in groups, more than two dozen times since 1990. This number includes his show in Addis with the Dimension group. In all his works he has demonstrated his unique approach to painting and his love of painting the paint, and washing the pigment on a canvas. Mulugeta is not a critic of our behavior and does not act as one; the tableaus do not embody a moral philosophy per se nor do they express any high ideals. The choice of his subject matter alone cannot be responsible for his originality, but with color, light, artistic quality, and composition he has demonstrated mastery in manipulation of the flow and wash of the pigment and the thinner medium on the canvas. It is a desire; an emotion and a protest that are expressed through seemingly careless brush strokes, where hallucinating vaporous space and contour merge as a thunderous sky merges with the water of the sea. The images are intense, and psychologically tortured and provocative, with enthusiastic brushwork that reminds us of Gebre Kristos's and Abduel Rahman's oeuvres of the 60s. However, there is no indication of his background nor do we see in his works any cultural iconography. His oeuvres are there simply to be loved and appreciated by all. In that regard alone, by breaking free of long-held beliefs regarding subject matter, figurative or otherwise, without even having to contemplate a desire on his part to liberate the collective psyche, he can be regarded as radical and as unique as Gebre Kristos is in the annals of Ethiopian contemporary art. Notes i Needless to say, the only scandal or controversy in the history of the country regarding art was in the 17th century when the Jesuit missionaries introduce into Ethiopia copies of the painting of the Virgin in the basilica of S. Maria Maggiore, Rome. The Icon, which represented the Madonna holding the infant Christ in her left hand rather than in the usual right hand. In contemporary art history, the arty work is very much tolerated if it is not involved in religious and political matters. ii. Some works of the 'unknown' Tefaye Mandefero are displayed online, see Fretsion Gallery. He committed suicide by jumping down from the cliff of Debre Libanos monastery, Shewa in the late 60s. I am not able to obtain his birth date from documents or from acquaintance. iii Private Parts, wrong doing Juno Roger Vandale Waalse Kaai 31 2000 Antwerpen 28/10/98 P.S. Mulugeta exhibited some of his works recently at the Addis Ababa Alliance Ethio-Francaise. The reception by journalists and by the intelligentsia was as expected rather chilly. By: Esseye G Medhin