The book retraces the creation of a modern art scene in three selected countries of the Arab Middle East, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq in the late 19th/early 20th century. It then analyzes the question of how the search for a specific form of modernity, global in its language but rooted in local artistic traditions, dominated the visual arts and the discourse on them in the second half of the 20th century. The book is largely based on untranslated Arabic texts and is illustrated with 48 b/w plates.
