‘Each time I shut myself up alone in my studio and start painting and creating, I am convinced that there are three people sitting behind me taking part in my adventure. The first person who is watching me looks at my canvas with a connoisseur’s eye, the eye of an artist like myself who notices the technical faults and bad drawing.
The second person looks at my work with a critical eye, placing it in regard to itself and to the artistic trends of the country and elsewhere. And the third person is a layman, glancing spontaneously at my work, judging it according to his sensitivity and taste.’
Noureddine Khayachi
Finally, Noureddine Khayachi throws off his disguise and gives us the key to help us understand his artistic world. First of all, the number three seems to be vital in the composition of his paintings, with their three-dimensional harmony of design. The number three occurs frequently in Khayachi’s life and work. Three persons of major importance guided him in his exploration of pictorial space: his absent mother, his father and Titian. He had three children: Taj El Molk, Dorsaf and Rafet. And he designed the emblem of the Republic with its reference to three virtues: liberty, order and justice.
Three people attended to the production of this book: Fatma Khayachi, Taj El Molk Khayachi-Ghorbel and Mohsen Ghorbel. Three sources of energy were involved in its design and completion: the Agence MIM, the Khayachi-Ghorbel family, and the writer. But to get back to Khayachi’s work and message, we can make out a kind of trilogy in their conception.
In “The Daggaz”, the fortuneteller sits near two veiled women. In “Go-carting in Our Childhood”, three primitive Tunisian skateboards are manoeuvered by three boys from the medina (ouled el houma), and in “The Three Graces” there are three princesses standing on a veranda decorated with three niches. In «The Trousseau» there are three types of slipper (one balgha and two sorts of kobkab). In “Fishermen and Nets”there are two fishermen and one boat in the foreground. In “The Necklace” there are three persons; in “The Barber of the Medina” the canvas is divided into three areas with the barber central, a customer reading the newspaper on the right and another admiring himself in a mirror on the left.
“The Tabbal El Bacha paintings” have three big windows. And the girl in “The Black Kitten” is getting ready to sleep, surrounded by a book, a kitten and a picture. These intuitive recognitions of threesomes can be applied by the reader to his other paintings. His threefold heritage, mentioned above, and his three first names Mahmoud, Ezzeddine and Noureddine, may have appealed to Khayachi and lent an enchanting rhythmic quality to his work.
Obviously, the triangular structure is not the only striking feature of Khayachi’s work. He uses many other symbols, codes and signs which are waiting to be deciphered. We may mention the frequent appearance of a veiled woman, her face covered by a black scarf (“the assaba”)
But Khayachi’s heritage does not belong to me, nor to his family or his children. His heritage is now part of our national culture and every Tunisian wishing to learn more of his roots must be concerned. And because Khayachi was profoundly Tunisian, his work can move and affect any lover of the arts who is interested in authentic art. Noureddine Khayachi really was the father of Tunisian painting, and his heritage is a collective one extending even outside the frontiers of his native land to please all those who love beauty and who look at things with love.
