This Lebanese Artist Perfectly Addresses Lebanese Society Through His Eccentric Doodles
Last year around this time, I was scrolling through my Instagram homepage tediously looking at photos of people that are adamant at shoving nonsense in my face every day, and I came across this:
I pressed that follow button, and have been affixed ever since.
His aesthetic struck with me a Tim Burton vibe at first, which immediately drew me in. You’ll find no pop if color on his Instagram or website, but black, white, and an occasional red, smeared through like blood on the morbid faceless fictional stick figures he’s widely-known for.
Bernard Hage, commonly known as “The Art of Boo”, is a writer, musician, graphic designer and cartoonist. His work mainly focuses on critiquing issues that are prevalent in Lebanon but that can also echo around the world.
Having a rather exuberantly-violent approach to his self-expression, Hage’s work addresses concerns in quite a resonating way. There’s just something about the deliciously-inappropriate, risqué, and macabre content that is seductive in and of its nature. The hyperboles translated in the wickedly-humorous cartoons howl at you to make you hear, glare at you to make you see, and jab and prod at you to make you feel. That’s how I believe Hage’s work speaks to its audiences.
Leaving no man untouched.
And drawing on the poignant aspects of dark comedy in matters of our society.
One of our favorite works of art by Hage is “Undressed” which is a collection of large drawings, films and sounds, “reflecting the real mores of social beings, with the intent to influence them.” He critiques the products through an exaggerated visual effect; the minimal splash of the color red in the drawings is the emphasized factor that holds the major themes of his work.
Toy Inside
Animals
Hage also is a published author of “In The Dead Of Night – Bedtime Stories For Grownups”. This book contains poems, illustrations and a music soundtrack. The piece mirrors modern society and re-invents fairy-tales leaving behind the happy ending, and delving into a world of comedic monstrosity. The beguiling aspect of it – that isn’t so beguiling – is that the atrocity depicted in the book is conspicuously-familiar to our real world.
Finding humor in self-derogation: sarcastic reviews for “In The Dead Of Night”
A child putting her father to sleep by reading “bedtime stories for grownups”
The Art of Boo mastered an ingenious way of coming through to people, simply by thrusting the truth in our faces. The grotesque reality is alive and well, might not be going anywhere, and is as painful as what we see in his fictional world of art – and that’s what makes those faceless stick figures resonate. They are unreservedly and unapologetically genius, as they let out wretched wails at all the injustices we face, brought to you by Bernard Hage’s exceptionally brilliant pen.
Here’s one of his poems about a horror house we, as Lebanese people, know all too well. Let’s see if you’ll recognize it:
The Haunted House Down the Road
Amid the shadows and the sirens’ roar Down where all the lost roads meet Hides a house, peopled no more Made of lost dreams and concrete.
Doomsday clock points five past twelve In this house of mystery Where the voiceless come to delve Into their lost history.
Black dogs howling at the door They shelter the living dead Those cockroaches of war Whose red hands have never bled.
From the mines of despair To the wells of hopelessness Through the thick smoke in the air I watch them gather, motionless.
They cluster around their shrines Like fierce rapacious vultures And circle above the white lines Outlining the corps of culture.
The wind howls echoes in the halls Of this old house down the road And mirrors hang turned to its walls Till the whole vile truth erodes.
And no one speaks ill of the dead For stout and sharp is the butcher’s hook And all the words of truth unsaid Fill the sad pages in my book.
And I dwell here on the first page Where life was less traumatic I’m of thirty winters of age And I already feel nostalgic.
Soon I’ll be up amongst the clouds Waving from my window seat Away from all these little crowds Playing the song of my defeat:
Once upon a time an evil mouse With a hundred and twenty-eight clones Sneaked into one old house And gnawed away a million homes.
