TADESSE MESFIN His Florida Connection - Symbolism of the Ancient The true artist in Ethiopia, as elsewhere, prefers to die rather than to stop giving his message and work hard, regardless of past, present and future forms of expression. Kefle Besat 1970 I don't believe in a constant style at all. Style, I feel, is what should come to the artist naturally. The subject matter should, in fact, dictate or inspire the style. Afewerk Tekle 1986 I have always been in the mainstream, but now that I am studying Ethiopian and African art as much as I have studied western art, you notice more usual mainstream stuff in my works. Tadesse Mesfin 1997 "Exhibition of New Works by Ethiopian Artist" reads the statement on the invitation card mailed on the occasion of the opening of Tadesse Mesfin's exhibition at the Graphicstudio in Tampa, Florida 1. "Interpretations of a Foreign Land;" is the title of the featured article on Tadesse's works that appeared in The Oracle, the publication of the University of South Florida of October 23, 1998. None of the paintings displayed are titled and there is no indication of any kind of social or political involvement. Tadesse's chief concerns seem to be the fundamentals of forms, colors, symbols and sensation rather than clear content or ideas. This is a totally new and surprising move--the thematic choice and stylistic approach, including the medium, acrylic--in the long and well-defined artistic career of Tadesse; the promising and inspiring artist, the people's artist, the experimenting artist 2. Following his one-man show in 1991, he participated in more than five group shows, which included his yearly shows with the Dimension Group since 1994. In all these shows he presented works that were nearly abstract or highly experimental works where subject matter becomes secondary to increasingly simplified forms and flat planes of color. In 1997, Tadesse said, "Any influence I had before came from the art schools, which I followed as a good student. I did all that was expected of me. You see more of my interest in texture, line form etc., in my present works. Elements that I ignored before are getting more attention now. My works are not like the ones I did before; they are, however, an outcome of my earlier works. I want my works to create a sort of emotional impact with the spectator--the dynamic nature I want to achieve in my works is coming, but slowly. I am enjoying what I am doing now. Even before, I was not doing my paintings because people liked them. I get pleasure out of my paintings all the time, the more so now because I am totally free to do what I want to do. I am free from a sort of self-imposed slavery" When I asked what took him so long to change and become part of the mainstream? He said, "I have always been in the mainstream, but now that I am studying Ethiopian and African art as much as I have studied western art, you notice more usual mainstream stuff in my works." But what about the socialist realism style? What made you drop that? he answered, "I felt I had to be free from all the rules and regulations and leave several years of academic figurative painting behind me that I have 'swallowed' before, and work through a new form and aesthetic approach, because in the end there is a need for change. However, I would also like to simply return to my early style, the essence of human figure drawing is what I like most." As to what in particular he expected to achieve by studying Ethiopian and African art, he said, "I know there is a lot to be learned and expected. I am searching. If I knew what the end result would be, I wouldn't be doing what you are seeing now. I am still searching." 3 At this point of his artistic career, Tadesse seems to have a desire to be remembered not so much for the sentimental or heroic subject matter he had painted, but for his vision and imagination, his feeling and symbolism. The art critique and researcher, the late Seyoum Wolde who noticed this stylistic change in Tadesses' works wrote:" All these changes could be assumed to the visit of southern Ethiopia by the artist in the middle of the 80's." 4 Going to southern Ethiopia for an artistic venture was a task of enormous responsibility and challenge. Tadesse is talented, very talented. But at this time he did not know where his talent lay. He seemed on the one hand confused about the outcome of his assignment, and on the other doubtful about how his art would be viewed. Like several of his compatriot artists, he had not been exposed enough to works by contemporary international artists or to any kind of new art works to be strongly moved by the paintings once he finished his studies at the academy. There was no place, except the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, to gather and discuss art and philosophy. More depressing yet was the fact hat he didn't seem to be impressed either by the works of his predecessors, well-established artists such as Worku Ghosu's style, Zerihun Yetmegeta's fertile iconography, or even by the exquisite masterpieces of Maitre artist Afewerk Tekle. Even then, for lack of a contemporary art museum. [see article section, "Museum for Contemporary Ethiopian Art" in Amharic] the question is how many of these works he was even able to see to be influenced by them. The only new kind of art work widespread in Addis Ababa at this time consisted of the superficially decorative political posters with bright colors and smiling faces introduced by North-Korean artists. If these works had any influence on Tadesse's art or that of several other artists is a matter of speculation only. Apart from these hypotheses, any influence or inspiration he may have received after he left the academy was limited to color prints in art books and the knowledge he gathered from art history lessons. Despite these facts, deep down he wanted to change his style of painting. The assignment, which took him to the southern part of Ethiopia, gave him a certain freedom of expression and a chance to rethink his art and come out with a new style and aesthetic. By 1997, when I last visited him in his studio he had given up his academic training, and relearning the artistic force from his popular culture and background, evolving with a new form of expression as a result of his own research. Coming to the United States as a visitor, Tadesse was able to visit the most advanced and organized galleries and museums a modern world can offer. He was also able to see some of the modern and postmodern masters' works which until then he had seen only in reproduction. When he finally finished the visit and settled for a month of residency at University of Southern Florida, he found a book about Ethiopian Christian art that contained color reproductions of Ethiopian Christian art motifs and iconography. Tadesse was so fascinated by the simplicity of the drawings and the composition the ancients applied to so complex a subject as the scriptures, that he had to write in his notebook, "The discovery of Ethiopian Christian painting is the major achievement of my visit to the United States". In a long phone conversation he described and explain to me how the ancients simplified the human figure in their drawings, how economically they chose their symbolic colors and linear arrangements, and most of all, how they organized figures in their unique fused compositional balance. He sighed every time he describes a work. At one point, hearing the most disturbed but also highly appreciative and gratified Tadesse telling me of his admiration for the ancients, I mumbled the phrase I memorized from the writing of Solomon Deressa. "Crawling, standing up, and walking upright had to be relearned. What a heartbreak!" What if he had been introduced to these Ethiopian Christian paintings earlier? And I remembered what he had said to me in 1997: "I am studying Ethiopian and African art as much as I have studied Western art" All of the works shown in his Florida exhibition were inspired from the Ethiopian Christian painting and decoration motifs and the drawings of his Yabello/Elkere period. Why was he more concerned with the icons and symbols of bygone days and ethnic decorative ornaments than with the iconography of contemporary Ethiopia: famine, wars, AIDS, malnutrition, political injustice, human rights violations, poverty, and so forth, which are uppermost in the mind of most Ethiopians and of the international community? No artist I know in the recent history of Ethiopian art has traveled as widely throughout the country, has been as closely involved in down-to-earth artistic activities, or as well positioned to observe the condition of present-day Ethiopia as Tadesse Mesfin. However, he chose to show to his American hosts an improvisation of his new art work. He is an ambassador of a different sort, a creative artist yearning for freedom of expression. He demonstrated this through colorful, kaleidoscopically arranged decorative motifs and elegant drawings using acrylic paint as a medium. "I am now free from sort of a self-imposed slavery," he said in 1997, This reasoning alone may not be that crucial, since there were others inspired by Ethiopian Christian painting and folk arts and creating their masterpieces. We have also witnessed other artists, including Tadesse himself, producing exceptionally original works without depending on Christian Ethiopian art for inspiration. Another more pertinent reason drove Tadesse to this art. It is the many years wasted in the socialist realism style which lacked a popular background for his creative force. It seems only a matter of convenience that he became more interested in his present style, following the fall of the military socialist regime. The feeling that his works were not "modern" enough to be pursued, became an intolerable burden to him as it did to many other young artists after the fall of the military socialist regime. There is also the phenomenon of identity, the cornerstone theory of several critics of contemporary Ethiopian art and Ethiopian art collectors. Tadesse seemed overly satisfied to apply the approach and motifs of Christian Ethiopian art combined with the technique from his Yabello/Elkere period, as the most appropriate aesthetic means available to incorporate these two concepts, modernity--no, post-modernity and identity in his art. He filtered and transformed the most significant elements of Christian Ethiopian art and the decorative patterns of the artifacts from the south, through a rigorous painterly approach and incorporating them to his art. The reference is limited, as the concept of art for Tadesse in the 1990s is totally different from Ethiopian artists of bygone days, imitators of the present, the commercially motivated, and even from that of Ethiopian modernists of the late sixties. Tadesse is more urbane and artistic in mimicking --his 'New Works' [see Fretsion Gallery] are devoid of content in the traditional sense. There are no codes, or metaphors in his colorist, almost subject-less, nonrepresentational works. In the narrow sense they are decorative and purposeless; at close look they evoke nostalgia. Unlike the Ethiopian modernist painters of the late sixties, whose works read like scripture and depend on literature, dreams and even philosophy--more analytical in their approach and style and consequently more complex and inquisitive--the significance and reality of Tadesse's work is the tableau itself. It does not attempt to provoke a social upheaval. It is free of any sort of strengthening and backing and is free from wax-and-gold sort of decoding. It would be premature to draw any conclusion as to the future direction of Tadesse's paintings on the basis of a handful of paintings done over a one-month period. However, his tendency and approach and the fusion achieved of the folkloric decoration motifs of southern Ethiopia and that of the Christian Ethiopian art are unique and original. On the other hand, the beauty he discovered and showed us, the social setting and realities he reminded us of, the downtrodden masses, the shabby streets and filthy places, the dilapidated rental houses of Addis Ababa, as well as the wandering elderly, and the alienated, the street boys and the Kebena river, the landscapes he painted between 1972 and 1979 are all things of the past. The events he illustrated so admirably, the fame and the recognition he achieved through his heroic and romantic paintings in the eighties -- he has given it all up to satisfy not only a new need and demand in the new Ethiopian society, but also his own inquisitive mind. If Tadesse cast off his earlier social ties and responsibilities, and "defected," turning his back on his own glory days, and on those of several others who still admire him for his earlier works, it was because the drive was so overwhelming that he turned into an experimental colorist artist, creating art of a different kind. What one may ask in general is whether the position of the painter in our society has changed, whether he has been able to adapt his art to the requirements of the modern post-revolutionary Ethiopian society? Although to some the question is irrelevant, the answer is yes. However, I do not think that the raison d'être of Ethiopian artists is like that of the painters who are free to choose what to do and free to starve. As a matter of fact, I know of no artist, in a century of Ethiopian secular art history, who pretends to be free from a social obligation in whatever form of expression he chooses to employ in his art. The new tendency with some artists is to reconsider and relearn the artistic heritage, the popular culture, and to come out with a new form of expression. The "return to the source," the source in this case being the anti-naturalistic popular culture and folk art, [ornamental, geometric and, anthropomorphic motifs as well as the ancient religious arts] was in a way equally central to turn-of-century western modernists artists and Ethiopian modernists of the sixties. Others still make us marvel at their naturalistic representation of the illusion of the visible world; we are also seeing a flood of kitsch, all, nonetheless, in tune with the social and political issues that concern the country. The assigned trip through south Ethiopia and the residency in Florida, have motivated Tadesse to create art of fusion with great aesthetic quality--bringing north and south artistic culture together in modern, free and democratic art. This symbolizes the power of the artist, however spontaneous, to unite two forms of art; different in concept but alike in approach, in total harmony--the decorative, ornamental and applied arts that plays so large a part in day-to-day life of the people. Where the political leadership fails to find a meaningful, permanent solution, the artist searches and finds a plastic solution of his own. In whatever way the artist expresses himself and experiments with his newfound freedom, if the end result is not directed to "us" as opposed to "others," and recognized and cherished by us, all effort by the artists will be wasted and any sort of creativity will be repetitive and superficial. Art derives much of its power and influence from the strong support and concern of individuals and institutions, and whatever outcome awaits Tadesse in his new creative endeavor will be what determines and defines the next phase of Ethiopian visual arts. Notes: 1) On opening night no Ethiopian was present, although the invitation card and news was distributed by University of South Florida. Tadesse considered it a boycott of sorts. . Forty-five of his works out of more than sixty paintings and sketches produced during the residency were displayed at the exhibition. The Mid-American Art Alliance, the United States Information Service, and the Art Department of USF made the residency possible. From the invitation card to the placement of his work, the event was rather amateurish, not deserving of the standard of Tadesse nor of the host institution. This was not only disappointing to those of us who wanted to see a professionally organized show, but it should be a cause of regret to USF, for not having catalogued and documented the show properly. Some of the statements by Tadesse are from a conversation I had with him on the phone, while he was doing his residency, October 1998. 2) When he was a graduate student at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts in 1972, Tadesse's exceptional talent and desire to express himself by drawing and painting drew the encouragement and admiration all young artists aspire to but only a very few receive. The highly respected and admired art instructor, the second recipient of the prestigious Haile Selassie I national prize and the first practitioner of nonfigurative painting in sub-Saharan Africa, the late Gebre Kristos Desta has praised Tadesse in front of a jury as the most promising artist of Ethiopia. Tadesse Gizaw, another genius in industrial designing, who was among the first art instructors at the Addis Ababa school of Fine Arts, and whom Tadesse Mesfin himself gave all the credit for his knowledge of composition, has been heard to comment that he was proud to have instructed one genius--Tadesse Mesfin, who he predicted would be a very significant player in the history of Ethiopian art. The poet laureate Tsegaye Gebre Medhin so much admired Tadesse Mesfin, that he preferred to address and introduce Tadesse as "my son." Critic and researcher Seyoum Wolde called him Monsieur out of sheer respect for the young artist. In 1972, Michael Tewdros, another talented artist of the early seventies, was quoted as expressing on Ethiopian radio his admiration as well as his concern at how much of Tadesse's talent was wasted because he couldn't afford to buy art material. In his last year at the academy in Leningrad, USSR in 1984, Tadesse had a serious accident with his eyes. How the accident happened is still a mystery, but the news of the accident and the deep concern of his fellow expatriate artists all over the world spread quickly from Moscow to Addis and Dresden, Sofia, Paris, Kiev, Toronto and Washington DC. As recently as 1997, one of the most successful and well-liked artists, Zerihun Yetmgeta told me that Tadesse was very talented and could produce amazing works of art only if he extricated himself from cliques and worried about himself and his art. Well-established artists as well as younger, promising artists discussed Tadesse's condition out of sheer admiration for the young artist's talent. Mezgebu Tessema, one of the most recognized and striking artists of the younger generation, confessed to me that his ideal painters were Tadesse Mesfin and another talented artist, Demissie Shiferaw, when he decided to join the art school. Fesha Esayas, a student of Tadesse in the late eighties, who now resides and works as a studio artist in Santa Monica, California, told me if it had not been for Tadesse's inspiration, he would have quit the school of Fine Arts. Tadesse's talent and contribution to the visual arts were also acknowledged by the Ethiopian government. He was among the country's best-known entertainers and artists in contention for a national award, which he received in 1975. These are only a few remarks on the long list of Tadesse's achievements and distinctions that indicate his importance and significance in the country's visual arts culture in the last twenty years. (Excerpt from an article I wrote in 1997, " Tadesse Mesfin; the promising and inspiring artist, the people's artist, the experimenting artist". Not published.) Tadesse received the government award for visual art again this year, 1999. 3) Interview I conducted in his studio in Addis Ababa, September 1997. It was not formal interview but rather a dialogue in which ideas and issues were discussed and clarified. 4) Seyoum Wolde, Getse Bizu, Exhibition catalogue, The Addis Ababa City Hall Gallery, 1991 (written in Amharic and English on the occasion of Tadesse Mesfin's first one-man show. 'Courage' is the English title for the catalogue). Seyoum classified Tadesse's "creative period" into three parts. The third period he writes, "is being exercised under the influence of Paul Gouguin and Pablo Picasso". I call this period Yabello/Elkere period. By: Esseye G Medhin, 1999