Dog of the General

Painted in 2014, Dog of the General is a monumental work of Serwan Baran’s grotesque expressionist oeuvre. Rendered in earthy tones using a contrasting combination of fluid and rough brushstrokes, the work explores the capacity of acrylic paint for varying levels of transparency. A striding general in a khaki greatcoat is gripping the collar of a slavering hound as if trained to unleash both its savagery and his own. Both canine and war are the central subject in Baran’s body of works. As Baran himself comments, the dog in the picture is both mythological and mundane: dogs are a symbol of transition to the afterlife or guardians of realms of death, but they were also deployed against Iraqi civilians as instruments of fear. Indeed, Dog of the General is a representative work in Baran’s oeuvre addressing the artist’s personal traumatic military experience as a soldier in the First Gulf War through grotesque and figural abstractions. The undefined hazy background levitates the subjects into an indefinite setting which could refer to the war that he himself lived through as well as all the other conflicts that are happening across the globe. Baran uses his art as a way of responding to war and the emotional consequences it has brought to him. In an interview he states: ‘My work is a reaction to war, not a chronicle. I am repeating the shock over and over again, to rid myself of the nightmare. I do it because I’m opening up.’ (‘Interview with Iraq Pavilion artist Serwan Baran’, in Ruya Foundation, 2 April 2019).

Born in 1968 in Baghdad, Iraq and graduating in 1992 from the University of Babylon, College of Fine Arts, Baran is considered one of the most influential contemporary Iraqi-Kurdish artists today. His artistic development was overseen by prominent artists of his time such as Marwan, whose influence can be spotted in his dynamic brushstrokes, and Faeq Hassan. He presented to the international audience his solo exhibition titled Fatherland at the Iraqi pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale which highlighted the conflict in Iraq and the surrounding region. His works have been featured in a number of exhibitions in Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, and Qatar as well as international Biennials, such as the Cairo Biennale in 1999, Al-Kharafi Biennial, Kuwait in 2011, and the fourth Marrakech Biennale in 2012. Baran currently lives and works in Beirut.