For centuries, fables have been used in cultures across the world as means for entertainment, education and to convey political thought. The imaginative literary genre, featuring animal characters, often relays a deeper understanding about the world and humanity than its charming and clever protagonists immediately reveal. As author, literary and art critic Gilbert Keith Chesterton once wrote: “Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.”
Now a major exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi is dedicated to the lasting influence of fables on past and present art creation. Titled ‘From Kalila wa Dimna to La Fontaine: Travelling through Fables’, the -exhibition is being held in partnership with the National Library of France and France Museums alongside the support of Van Cleef & Arpels. Running until July 21th, it brings together over 130 artworks, comprising centuries-old manuscripts with intricately produced miniature paintings and recent works of contemporary art.
The show explores the genealogy of fables and their cultural and societal relevance alongside their simultaneous emergence in the eastern and western hemispheres through Greco-Roman literature such as via the works of Greek fabulist Aesop (620–564 BCE) and the 13th century oriental fable of Kalila wa Dimna or Kalila and Dimna, a collection of widely circulated oriental fables of Indian origin. The latter is believed to have been composed in Sanskrit as early as the third century BC and were translated in the eighth century by the Persian Ibn al-Muqaffa’, a greatly educated writer and influential courtier. The book contains 15 chapters comprising numerous fables where the heroes are animals. The title refers to two jackals, both who appear as narrators and as protagonists.
Through historical and contemporary artworks, the show traces the influence of these early fables on the later particularly 17th century French texts of French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine.
“The exhibition demonstrates how fable traditions rose in prominence simultaneously within both the Oriental and Western worlds and their influence on the works of French fabulist Jean de La Fontaine,” says Annie Vernay-Nouri, chief curator at the Oriental Manuscripts Department of the National Library of France. “Fables, she emphasises, have long been created to instruct a life of ethics and morality.”
“The exhibition is groundbreaking,” states Annie Vernay-Nouri. “For the first time, visitors have a unique opportunity to witness and compare rare and precious artworks representing three distinct traditions of fables,” she says in the opening statement.
A pivotal exhibition for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, director of Louvre Abu Dhabi Manuel Rabaté says the exhibition reflects the museum’s universal mission and emphasises on cross-cultural dialogue through art. The show is the result of years of planning.
“At Louvre Abu Dhabi, we are not just presenting art; we are weaving narratives as a universal museum, leading by storytelling,” notes Rabaté in the opening statement. “Fables,” he underlines, “have transcended linguistic and cultural boundaries, inspiring new creations in both the East and the West.”
The exhibition is divided into three main sections—Travelling Tales, Telling Stories, and The Fables Today—guiding the visitor throughout history to the present century through the contemporary artworks of several prominent artists from the Middle East, including Bady Dalloul and Katia Kameli who have adapted and reinvented ancient miniatures; Asma Bahmim from Jeddah has even revived the form of the manuscript, and Nabil Boutros, Melis Buyruk and Dubai-based trio Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Hesam Rahmanian who incorporate motifs from fables into their abstract expressionist paintings and sculptural installations.
For example, the trio are showing Madame Tussauds (Nothing Has Changed. Except The Run of The Rivers, The Shape of Forests, Shores, Deserts, and Glaciers) (2021), an expressionist abstract figurative painting made in acrylic, gesso, binder and collage on printed canvas. The work, which presents a darkened background with an expressionist rendering of a white fish painted on the sitter’s face and dress symbolising the tale of the three fish eluding capture—motifs from Kalila wa Dimna. On the carpet is an elephant that is being betrayed by a clever hare, portrayed on the lower shelf of the cabinet. To the right of the subject’s dress are two waterfowls and the sea spirit that recall a story of abduction and then reunion.
“The work,” says Vernay-Nouri, “shows how artists even today are incorporating elements from historical fables into their works. Various motifs from Kalila wa Dimna are hidden within the painting of Ramin, Rokni and Hesam so that it becomes a game to find them.” Then, she adds, “Even today, the fables of Kalila wa Dimna and La Fontaine resonate with contemporary issues in both the East and the West.”
From children’s books where animal characters both entertain and educate on the importance of moral dialogue to contemporary artworks that show revisit the political and ethical dimension of the fable, show how the literary genre is still very much with us today.
In the work of Turkish artist Melis Buyruk titled Habitat Kalila wa Dimna (2020) and made of porcelain, enhanced with 22-carat gold and placed within wooden lightbox the art of ceramics is revived. From her ‘In Habitat’ series of 2019, the piece presents a sea of hybrid plant and organic forms from which emerge the heads of two animal forms—their ears and tails slightly emerging from the mix of sculptural vegetation.
In Jeddah-based Asma Bahmin’s mixed media collage works, she seeks to revive the art of miniature painting by reinventing both its subject and form. In these delicate and intimate works, she crafts her own pigments and paper. Works such as these were shown in her latest exhibition in 2023 at Athr Gallery in Jeddah titled ‘Fantasia’ in which she repurposes iconographic elements taken from medieval Arabic and Persian manuscripts.
“Other contemporary artists from the Arab world incorporate elements from the fable Kalila wa Dimna, each within their own technique and artistic language,” adds Vernay-Nouri.
The works of Franco-Algerian Katia Kameli and Bady Dalloul, who was raised in France to Syrian parents, do exactly this by similarly seeking to adapt the elements from Kalila wa Dimna within their own contemporary art style.
In many ways, a revisitation of the fable is also a way for artists to revisit their own culture. Dalloul discovered the fables of Kalila wa Dimna as a child during a trip to Syria and in 2015, adapted the book into a new plot farther east in Japan around 1950. Dalloul imagines a book that was discovered by chance written by an unknown author who, while travelling in Japan during the 1950s, hears of the stories of Kalila wa Dimna in cafés in Tokyo. The author then rewrites and illustrates the tales and creates a series of 23 panels on display at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Made on time-yellowed paper, for the work titled The Greedy Dog and His Bone, Dalloul wrote parts of the fable by hand in English, accompanied by collages and drawings in a manner that is both intimate and poignant, inspired by both Persian miniatures from the 15th century and Japanese motifs.
Dalloul’s work emphasises the multicultural and universal reach of the fable and its ability serendipitously tie together the worlds of the East and the West.
Kameli’s work strives to do the same. Since 2015, the artist has worked to develop a multi-chapter project titled Stream of Stories that traces the history of the book Kalila wa Dimna and celebrates its universal dimension. The work is made through a mix of collages, animal masks, silkscreen prints, facsimiles, and videos and brings together diverse elements sourced from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts, as well as illustrations from the fables of La Fontaine by the great illustrators of the 18th and 19th centuries or the Indian painter Imam Bakhsh Lahori.
In Kameli’s work the fable of Kalila wa Dimna comes full circle and celebrates its timeless resonance through contemporary art.
As Vernay-Nouri notes, “The Eastern and Western traditions, rooted in a shared universal heritage, have evolved independently without direct contact, each charting its own course.”
In this exhibition, the Eastern and Western tradition of the fable reunite through art, presenting the similarities rather than the differences between the Eastern and Western traditions. All parts equal a whole and as Chesterton noted, the fable might give us more clues about reality than historical documentation. Some proof lies in works on view in the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
CAPTIONS
01 Illumination inspired by the fable The Fox and the Drum
02 View of the exhibition ‘From Kalila wa Dimna to La Fontaine: Travelling through Fables’ at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, 2024
