UNTITLED (LANDSCAPE) 1992

Rashid Al Khalifa made this untitled landscape painting sometime after 1952, presumably in his native Bahrain. Al Khalifa comes from the nation’s ruling family, so his perspective on the landscape is necessarily bound up with the economic and political structures that have transformed Bahrain over the past century. He was trained in England, so there’s an interesting tension in his work between the traditions of European landscape painting and the realities of a rapidly changing Gulf country. The painting itself uses lush brushstrokes and vibrant colors to evoke the feel of a tropical scene, but notice how he abstracts the natural forms to almost dissolve into the atmosphere. How might this connect to Bahrain's social and economic changes, its oil boom and urbanization? What does it mean to represent a landscape that is both home and a site of constant transformation? To answer this question, we could look at the history of oil in Bahrain and its impact on the natural environment. We might also consider the role of art institutions in shaping cultural identity in the Gulf.