Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint ‘directly from the surrounding environment’ (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi artists to reflect their environmental imaginations. These imaginations ranged from romantic depictions of prelapsarian landscapes to devastating floods, migration and dispossession faced by the majority of the country’s poorer inhabitants who disproportionately bore the consequences of environmental catastrophes and interventions alike.