Ferren, John 

Pendleton (Oregon, USA), 1905-East Hampton (New York), 1970

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The American, Francophone Ferren lived in Paris in the 1930s and helped Picasso stretch the canvas for Guernica, which made him something of a legend. He came to Lebanon in 1961 to spend a year under the Lebanese-American artistic exchange programme, and settled in Beirut. He received visitors in the old house with red tiles that he rented beside the sea, and the entire city discovered with astonishment that one could lead the life of an artist – that is to say, paint for a living during the day.

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A man of culture and contacts, John Ferren was on the list of those who opened new horizons. Certainly, he could only be shifted in Lebanon. With whome could he exchange ? Schéhadé, who wrote a preface to the catalogue for the exhibition he had in Beirut at the end of his stay? He lived on too many different cultures : those of Europe before the Second World War, of post-war America, of Abstract Expressionism, and of the desire for a more constructed and elaborate painting. Up to a point, he found himself in this psychological no man’s land where he had to reconcile the sensitivity, tradition and intelligence of European culture with the necessary impetuosity of American painting, in order to achieve his own language, and this in a country whose substrata were completely different! But through this cultural juxtaposition, he became close to Lebanon, a country shared between different worlds and cultures and which sought to unite them.

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The Americans made various attempts at opening a cultural centre and art gallery in Lebanon. In Basta in January 1958, a cultural centre lasted no longer than one exhibition. Bizarrely, Ferren’s path was neutralised by a misunderstanding from the very beginning. Chosen for being a Francophone American, he was the image of who the Americans hoped would lead the Lebanese to evolve from a French culture to an Anglo-Saxon culture. Everything was well calculated, except one detail: Ferren represented this desired outcome very well, but he was not Lebanese. The Americans did not understand that it was not possible to transfer Ferren’s culture on to the native model.

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Ferren’s painting is paradoxical. Thoroughly geometric, it is splashed with color like a ball of multi-colored wool ball unwound into the canvas. He exhibited his work on 12th March 1964 at the Centre of Contemporary Art in Beirut.