Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.There are a few flower shops in my neighbourhood and throughout the year, whether I’m rushing to catch a train or heading to the grocery store, my walks are cheered by the uplifting view of hanging plants, buckets of flowers and the occasional young citrus tree. I can map the seasons by the types of flowers spilling their colourful radiance through the florists’ windows and on to the sidewalk. Recently I’ve been spotting bunches of tulips: pink, yellow, and orange flower heads waiting for the right conditions to open up. But even closed they are beautiful to behold, and have inspired feelings of delight and gratitude. I have found that these small moments help me catch my breath, so to speak, and remind me that even when things are as challenging as they are right now in the world, there are still opportunities to celebrate life. There is still joy to be claimed. And I think it might be more helpful and sustaining than we imagine to remember the value of this during hard times. I love the 1950s painting “Modernist Exhibition” by the Oklahoma-born Harlem Renaissance artist and educator Henry Wilmer Bannarn. This work depicts a young Black woman in an art gallery standing with her back to us and focusing her attention on an abstract modern work of art in front of her. She is poised with an air of casual confidence, her right leg extended and her weight balanced on her left hip. She holds a cigarette in one hand, and with her other arm she holds a newspaper close to her body, which suggests she is a cultured and knowledgeable woman fully engaged in life. Besides his own work as an artist, Bannarn was committed to mentoring younger generations, and in the mid 1930s he and fellow artists ran the Harlem Art Workshop, sometimes known as the 306 Workshop Group, a space for young African-American creatives to study art, engage with other cultural figures, and reflect on social and political issues of the times. I believe that art can be a way of training our eyes to perceive and to frame our dialogue with the world. But at times, engaging with the arts can also simply be a way of tapping into what gives us joy and lifts our spirits. That is part of what beauty does. Bannarn’s painting reminds me that it is possible to stay informed, and to take local and global events seriously, while also making time for activities that nourish and delight. I think that is part of the fabric of being fully alive. I cannot keep myself from smiling whenever I come across Vincent van Gogh’s 1883 painting “Bulb Fields”, also known as “Flower Beds in Holland”. Believed to be Van Gogh’s first painting of a garden, the artwork passed through several hands throughout the following century, before being donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 1983. The work depicts a figure walking through large beds of pastel-coloured blue, pink, yellow and white hyacinth flowers. The perspective of the painting gives the impression that we are right on the edge of the field. We too could walk right into it. And I love how the image is made more striking by the contrast of the background of barren trees and dark brown thatched roofed houses enveloped in grey clouds. I wonder what Van Gogh was feeling when he began this work, what motivated this painting. For me, its burst of colour makes me consider how beauty can still flourish and spread with determination in the midst of gloomy realities. I had already been meditating on this artwork for a few days when by chance I stepped into a taxi, and heard the deep croaking voice of Louis Armstrong spilling out of the radio: “I see trees of green/Red roses too/I see them bloom/For me and you/And I think to myself/What a wonderful world.” At that moment the work popped back into my mind. I am strangely comforted to imagine that no matter what is happening in our world, somewhere seeds are pushing through the darkness of the soil, and flowers are rising up with determination. I am always slightly humbled when I remember how much we can learn about how to live from the rest of the natural world. The persistence of flowers not only gives me joy but also inspires me to stay alert to new sources of joy. “Dancers” is a 1949 figurative and abstract painting by Charles Alston, a renowned multimedia artist with numerous accomplishments including creating album covers for musicians such as Duke Ellington and book covers for poet Langston Hughes. Alston was the first African-American to supervise a Federal Art Project for the Works Progress Administration, a public works programme created by the Franklin D Roosevelt Administration during the Great Depression to create jobs for artists. He also created the first image of a Black person to be showcased in the White House, a bust of Martin Luther King Jr completed in 1970 and loaned in 1990. In “Dancers”, four solid, angular figures contort their multicoloured bodies in movement against a vibrant and abstract background. There are two women and two men who dance with one another and yet are each a strong figure moving on their own. The bright colours and sharp angles of their body parts give the effect of radiant energy vibrating out of this painting. When we move our bodies in dance it can be beautifully symbolic of ways we are still free to exist in the world. There are numerous countries that have at one time or another made dancing a punishable act. To dance can be both a source of joy and an act of resistance. I love the fact that, although each figure in this painting has distinctly different features and body types, they are similarly multicoloured. This unites them while also allowing for their differences, physical and otherwise. It reminds me of a quote by Audre Lorde, the Black feminist theorist. I do not know how many times I have read her book of essays and speeches, Sister Outsider, but one of the many quotes I have underlined during those readings forms part of her reflection on the relationship between joy, community and power. She writes: “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” In other words, sharing joy can also be about recognising ways to be unified while respecting our differences. Joy is not a route to downplaying hardship or injustice. Nor is it a way to gloss over our differences. Rather it can be a means of reclaiming agency. Its effects can be contagious, passing from one person to the next and seeping into a communal sense of wellbeing. Joy can be subversive too. In the face of struggle or despair or fear, it goes against what is expected and, in this way, it can be a way to destabilise and redistribute a sense of power. Nobody can control whether or not you seek joy. Nobody can control where you choose to find it. Joy, hard as it may seem to come by, remains within our [email protected] out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
رائح الآن
rewrite this title in Arabic The subversive power of joy
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