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A MODERN RENAISSANCE man, George Bahgory has been a fixture in the world of art for over 50 years now. After graduating from the School of Fine Arts, Bahgory made a name for himself as a caricaturist and was a regular contributor to several local publications. He left Egypt for Paris in 1969, where he flourished as a painter and sculptor as well, even finding the time in between to produce a novel. His works have been displayed in exhibits across the Middle East and Europe, including the Louvre, and he has received several awards for his caricatures at international competitions in France, Spain, and Italy. Now on one of his frequent sojourns in Cairo, Bahgory is soaking up the Egyptian scene. Mandy McClure met Jith Bahgory in Picasso Gallery, the site of his latest exhibit.
The solemnity with which he makes this pro-nouncement captures the essence of George Bahgory: a veneer of humor that barely covers a desire to be taken seriously. One might first pick this up trying to get an interview with him. "May I speak with George Bahgoury?" "George Bahgoury, the great artist?" And then upon discovering the caller's identity, he says gleefully, "Are you going to put my picture in your magazine?" All very tongue and cheek, but there is an element of self-importance that comes through with further interaction.
Humor is serious business for him. While his signature caricatures have inspired the awe of many, they have also garnered the wrath of some.
According to him, singer and composer Mohammed Abdel Wahab once phoned the magazine Sabah Al Kheir to forbid them from publishing a caricature Bahgory did of him. Umm Kulthoum. too. once'.
complained, "that artist is making fun of me." His; most formidable enemy, however, was former president Anwar Al Sadat, who took exception to Bahgory's scathing portrayals of him during the early 70s, and had him brought up on charges of harming the reputation of Egypt and insulting the president. "I just wreaked havoc on him," says Bahgory happily, adding, "Actually, they weren't that bad, but they made people laugh at [Sadat], which led to me being labeled a degenerate."
His later caricatures, for the state-owned AlAhram Weekly, appear to have lost some of this subversive edge, but give Bahgory credit for walking a line of deadly humor for some time. Bom in Bahgor, a small village near Luxor, Bahgory has said that his experience with an began when he was four years old, when he first started scribbling out drawings of his stepmother. His obsession continued in school as well, as he filled his chemistry and science textbooks with endless doodles. "I was good in school," he says. "But my professors hated me because I used to make fun of them with my pictures." Rather than turning out to be the doctor his father had wanted, Bahgory decided to join the School ofJine Arts in Zamaiek in 1949.
After he graduated, he wasn't really thrilled with the prospect of becoming a junior instructor at the institute like so many of his colleagues. Instead, he whiled away the years working for magazines like Rose Al Youssefund Sabah Al Kheir, during what he calls "their golden age." But he later found out that there were perks to the job of instructor he hadn't considered. "I found out that they sent many of the junior instructors on these government-sponsored missions to Spain, France, all over," he says. I said to myself, 'I missed out. 'I could’ve put up with the teaching aspect of it if I had been able to travel like that.'" Not to be daunted by his missed opportunity, Bahgory packed up his bags and headed off to Paris anyway. "I said 'that's enough.' I'll just go to Paris myself," he says. "If I get hungry, I can always draw.
And it was better than the state-sponsored missions because the government couldn't call me back whenever it felt like it." And thus began what Bahgory calls "a thirty-year adventure."
Bahgory has said more than once that his experience in Paris was in some ways a rebirth, opening up the door on a whole new world of possibilities. For one thing, he discovered caricature fairs and competitions in Europe. These not only helped him make a living, but introduced him to a community that he had never known existed before, bestowing a sort of legitimacy on his art he had not really felt in Egypt. "I met the best and funniest people from all over the world," he says. "For me, it was like I was seeing myself in a mirror. Nobody thought it was strange what I did." He has since garnered several first-place medals at competitions throughout Europe.
More importantly, however, he learned how to break free of the set role he had come to play in Egypt. "Here in Egypt, everyone must fit into some sort of mold," he explains. "In the cinema, Faten Hamama always played the role of the wide-eyed innocent. Mahmoud Al Meligi was always the bad guy. I'm always 'that cartoonist'...In Paris, I learned how to express myself freely and that I didn't always have to be one thing."
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