Publication Details
Abstract
Modern Iraqi painting has witnessed numerous changes in terms of plastic formations, technical invention, and the figural representation of individual and collective experience. Nonetheless, the question of the role of subjectivity in guiding stylistic change in the individual plastic practices of Iraqi painters has received little attention. This research is devoted to studying the plastic-structural transformations of the expressive sense of subjectivity in the painting of the contemporary Iraqi artist, Muhammad Hitler, between 2011 and 2022. A qualitative descriptive-analytical model was employed for analyzing 20 documented paintings that form the corpus, kept mainly in the possession of the artist. Two works have been purposely selected as typical examples of contrasting stylistic phases: Girl and the flower basket (2020), typical for Hyperrealism, and The young man and the chair (2022), typical for Expressionism. Parameters of analysis include representation, composition, color, technique, gesture, figure-ground relations, and specific psychological, ontological, and cultural semantic associations including, in the final stage, viewer orientation. Results show that subjectivity is present in both paintings, yet through different visual means. In the hyperrealist work, it is conveyed through expanded detail, optical precision, non-transparent composition, and hidden psychological ambiguity. In the expressionist work, it is activated through chromatic colors, visible brushwork, open composition, semitransparent and reconstituted identity, and the plastic gesture of the vulnerable and distressed bodily movement. The shift in style is, therefore, not from objectivity to subjectivity, but an internal restructuration of the presence of subjectivity from explicit to implicit and from the controlled to the expressive. The study aims to also document a so far under-researched existing Iraqi plastic practice, as well as shows how advances in technology, international artistic idioms, the role of the personal imaginary function, and the local frame of cultural experience interact in guiding the stylistic change of a contemporary painter.