402 Resisting Publics
was artistic innovation that expanded the boundaries of political discourse.
One of the most important literary phenomena was the development of
the Iraqi short story. The short story was especially well suited to being
published or serialized in daily newspapers, especially given the lack of
printing presses and the high cost of publishing a full-length novel. Iraqi
short story writers, such as Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid, ‘Abd al-Malik
Nuri, Gha’ib Tu‘ma Farman, Edmund Sabri, Shakir Khusbak, and oth-
ers, became famous not just in Iraq but throughout the Arab world from
the 1930s through the early 1960s. In chronicling, among other themes,
the socio-cultural and psychological disruption caused by the breakdown
of the rural economy, the migration of large numbers of Iraqis to urban
areas, and the political corruption of the Hashimite monarchy under
British colonial domination, short story writers were able to convey to the
populace at large a strong sense of what was wrong with Iraqi society and
the need for political action to bring about social justice and democratic
rule, along with independence from foreign rule.^35
erhaps the most impressive of the artistic developments of the pre-P
1963 era was the Free Verse Movement, which resulted in an innovative
and radical change in Arab poetry. Under the stimulus of the poetic inno-
vations of Nazik al-Mala’ika, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, and ‘Abd al-Wahhab
al-Bayati in particular, Iraqi poetry not only broke with the classic qas.ῑda
form in poetic expression, but used poetry to challenge tradition in dar-
ing ways. Drawing heavily on symbolism from Iraq’s ancient civilizations
and its Arabo-Islamic past, Iraqi poetry during the 1950s used tradition
both to reinterpret the past and push the boundaries of cultural and polit-
ical expression in radical directions. While much artistic expression of
the 1950s lacked an explicit political component, and frequently was very
pessimistic about the future, the sum total of work produced was radical
in nature in encouraging the Iraqi citizenry to challenge political and cul-
tural authority, rather than to uncritically subscribe to views fostered by
the state or traditional authority, e.g., religious authority.
n the plastic arts, the Baghdad Group for Modern Art, led by the I
Iraqi sculptor and painter Jawad Salim, combined an interest in Western
sculpture and painting with a strong interest in the artistic accomplish-
ments of Iraq’s ancient civilizations as well as in Islamic civilization. As
the artist Shakir Hasan noted at the time, the Baghdad Group sought