Muslim Modern Masters Bring Bahrain to Florida Engaging Sharif

Muslim Modern Masters Bring Bahrain to Florida Engaging Sharif

By A. Craig Copetas
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May 20 (Bloomberg) -- The thunder clouds battering Mohammed al-Shroogi's twin-engine Beechcraft on his flight across the Everglades from Miami to Naples are nothing compared with the obstacles that await him on the ground.

``Imagine, Muslim artwork hanging in Naples,'' al-Shroogi says through a radio headset. ``We need to do more of this,'' the Bahraini banker adds as the aircraft laden with modern and contemporary Islamic art makes its final approach on a family expedition to convince Americans that the Middle East is more than a terrorist hatchery.

The voice of al-Shroogi's 30-year-old son, Bashar, crackles over the intercom: ``If we want to make an impact, we bring our art to Naples and the suburbs of Chicago.''

The younger al-Shroogi walked out of a Citigroup Inc. currency trading room in 2003 to lay the foundation for the family's Cuadro Fine Art Gallery in Dubai. Along with his father, the 58-year-old chief executive officer of Citigroup Global Markets Inc. for the Middle East and North Africa, he's helping to spearhead a charge of Islamic artists with his mother Fatima and Naples gallery owner Don Binns. The mission: capture Americans' hearts, minds and money.

The enterprise, which isn't allied with Citigroup, is personal. It's an undertaking born from the al-Shroogi clan's passion for art, the patronage of Bahrain's royal family and the conviction that the Islamic nation a few miles off the Saudi Arabian coast has the muscle to build a genuine cultural bridge between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

Nude Statues

``Art is the method to create a real connection between the U.S. and the Middle East,'' the elder al-Shroogi says above the radio static. ``Americans don't expect Muslims to create contemporary art.''

And they certainly wouldn't expect work by Islam's most celebrated artists to be sold alongside nude statues by American sculptors in an affluent Florida community.

``The wealthiest people in America live in Naples and we don't have an Arab fan club,'' says Erin Green, owner of Naples National Network, a public relations company.

Green was hired by Binns -- CEO of the global financial information-processing firm Mada Group Inc. in nearby Fort Myers and managing director of the IAG Galleries -- to convince locals that buying modern and contemporary Islamic art isn't an unpatriotic investment in radical Islamic chic.

``What we're doing, at the very least, is odd,'' Green says.

When oil cost $25 a barrel, commercial Arab artists trotted out lopsided dromedary camels and Arabian stallions for cheap sale to tourists wandering the souk. The pencils of the descendants of desert Bedouins favored burlesques of hunting falcons and veiled women picking dates.

Priceless Jewels

Classic Islamic art such as calligraphy, tapestry and metal craft found its way into only the wealthiest homes. Priceless Ottoman jewels and Persian Empire silk carpets drew the crowds as the traditional Muslim masterpiece theater in America's major museums, specialized galleries and auction houses.

Yet the al-Shroogi family says the Islamic art story doesn't end with animals, antiques and agitprop.

``There are contemporary Muslim artists every bit as powerful and potentially profitable as Jasper Johns and David Hockney,'' says Bashar al-Shroogi. ``But they're virtually unknown outside the Middle East and a handful of Western collectors.''

An auction of some 150 modern and contemporary Islamic artworks assembled by Christie's International for Muslim investors brought in $20 million this month. ``The sales far exceeded our expectations,'' says Michael Jeha, Christie's manager in Dubai.

Next Wave

At the same time in London, British collector and art-world pacesetter Charles Saatchi separately bought three paintings by Middle Eastern artists. The purchase led http://www.artinfo.com, the fine-art industry Web site, to speculate that collectors view Arab and Iranian artists as the next investment wave on the New York and London gallery circuits.

Binns's role is to encourage wealthy Americans to spend $10,000 to $200,000 for Muslim art, and then display the work on their living-room walls alongside the multimillion-dollar canvases of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

``Our deal is finding and promoting Middle Eastern artists before they're tainted by the drama of those fancy gallery scenes,'' the 58-year-old Binns says while serving champagne and prawns to 150 people who showed up with their checkbooks for the Cuadro-IAG launch. It features an exhibition of Bahraini artist Ahmed Baqer, the first recipient of a diploma in pencil drawing by the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris.

`Fast Cars'

``I like fast cars, fast planes, fast women and the symbolism of our effort,'' Binns says. ``The exhibitions we have planned are vitally important for our times. I'm bringing American work to the Middle East and Bashar is bringing Muslim work to America. This is not showbiz.''

But is it art?

``They told me the people of Florida like horses, so I brought drawings of horses and a few camels,'' says Baqer, 62.

As for all those horses and camels, Mohammed al-Shroogi says Baqer is one of the Middle East's greatest modern artists and that his work would easily sell for more than the $7,000 to $10,000 that the art collectors of Naples paid for them.

``Monkeys! They're all painted by monkeys!'' bellows 54- year-old Abdulrahim Sharif, Bahrain's foremost contemporary painter, whose career includes successful exhibitions in Paris, Singapore, London and Kuwait. At the Christie's auction in Dubai, Sharif's ``The Battle,'' an oil on canvas diptych, sold for $25,000.

Art Mirrors Culture

``I painted camels and horses until my blood pressure exploded and the doctor said I was lucky to be alive,'' says Sharif, chewing on a cigar in his Bahrain studio. ``We are real artists. Why do we promote camels?''

``It was best to begin the project with Baqer and ease American buyers into our dialog,'' Bashar al-Shroogi explains.

``Really big art-market splashes come in finding pop art that mirrors the culture where those who are first attracted to the art grew up,'' al-Shroogi says. ``It takes the Saatchis of the world to step in and discover the wonder of Abdulrahim Sharif's work before the prices take off.''

Lesser-known Islamic art prospectors such as Binns say the place to track down the Damien Hirst of Arabia is Bahrain, a 30- mile-long (48-kilometer-long) Sunni Muslim kingdom one-fifth the size of Long Island, New York, and site of the Arab world's first oil well in 1932.

`Completely Natural'

In 1972, Mohammed al-Shroogi became the first currency dealer at the newly licensed offshore bank Citibank OBU. The kingdom flourished as the Persian Gulf's artistic and commercial hub, and Fatima al-Shroogi was part of the action, trading currency at the Bank of America outpost.

``Art was more interesting than banking,'' says al-Shroogi, who resigned her position to become an accomplished painter and curator. ``Bahrain for centuries has been an international crossroad, so it's completely natural for us to embrace and cultivate art differently from those who live in other Islamic nations.''

Then came the oil stampede. Nowadays it's Dubai where the afterglow never fades.

``Our problem is that Dubai is not a melting pot, there's no cultural blending,'' says Scott Desmarais, director of strategy and business development at the Dubai Culture and Arts Authority. ``We have 200 different nationalities living here and more than 50 galleries, but how do we create a unique and vibrant culture in an environment where people come to make money and then leave?''

Happiness Island

It's a vexing question and one that Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, hired Desmarais to answer.

``The challenge of making Dubai a true cultural community is immense,'' says Desmarais, 44, a former partner at Boston Consulting Group. ``I don't want to buy the Museum of Modern Art logo and use the brand to create a cultural mall.''

United Arab Emirates President and Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan is doing just that, spending $30 billion to create Happiness Island, a 17-mile-long atoll devoted to culture.

The project, scheduled for completion in 2018, includes two golf courses, 29 hotels and a satellite campus of the Sorbonne.

Happiness also includes the French government pocketing $1 billion in return for giving Abu Dhabi the right to erect an ersatz Louvre Museum on the island by 2012. Pharaonic in scope, it commits Abu Dhabi to spend some $52 million a year on cultivating its own collection, with the help of experts from the real Louvre. The Guggenheim Museum -- one of the planned five museums grouped along an artificial canal -- is taking home $400 million for its role in the production.

Front Lawn

The island's principal architects include Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster. ``They're paying me to build the front lawn,'' says Robert Trent Jones Jr., the master golf-course architect. ``It will be a great lawn.''

In Bahrain, Bashar al-Shroogi says his country doesn't need a designer lawn or Western museum executives to teach local gallery owners how to curate art. Seated beside him in the hip Adlia neighborhood of the capital Manama is Bayan al-Barak Kanoo. The owner of 10-year-old Al Riwaq Art, one of Bahrain's six avant-garde galleries, is gnashing her teeth.

``Culture is forcefully injected in the Emirates,'' Kanoo complains. ``Bahrain would never do that, even if we had their oil money.''

Islamic Oasis

Al-Shroogi says that for almost four decades Adlia has been Islam's Greenwich Village, an oasis that percolates with local and foreign artists, writers, poets and rock 'n' roll musicians who would probably receive 20 lashes just about anywhere else in the Arab world.

Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa is more diplomatic.

``The Emirates have their own approach to art, but I think Bahrain is a real, true metropolitan center,'' al-Khalifa says over cups of Arab coffee in the sitting room of his palace. ``Bahrainis don't want to emulate anyone. We have soul. It's essential for Bahrain to remain an incubator for the arts and use our artists to promote a dialog with other countries.''

As the 39-year-old heir to the throne and Pink Floyd fan tells it, ``There's indeed a Greenwich Village-Soho energy here and I will support what we're doing for as long as I have breath in me.''

``You know a little bit of subversion is always good, always healthy,'' says al-Khalifa. ``Art is creative, not destructive.''