Jun 2–Sep 10, 2023

A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran

A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran features over one hundred drawings by the proliﬁc Lebanese-American artist, poet and essayist, and coincides with the 100th anniversary of Gibran’s world-renowned publication The Prophet. Though best known for his poetry and prose, Gibran viewed himself equally as a visual artist, producing paintings, watercolors, sketches, illustrations, book covers, and other material as a complement to his written work. A Greater Beauty presents an overview of Gibran’s drawings and sketches alongside manuscript pages, notebooks, correspondence, magazine illustrations and essays, and ﬁrst editions, providing a glimpse into the artist’s production in the context of his work as a whole.

In his writing, Gibran broke with the rigid conventions of traditional Arabic poetry and literary prose, and his non-sectarian approach, which combined elements of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Jungian psychology, was a revelation to Arabic-speaking and immigrant communities in the United States. Gibran took a similar approach in his subject matter, practicing an idiosyncratic fusion of symbolist pantheism and spiritual mysticism to create a uniquely egalitarian, universalist aesthetic that appealed to a broad, international audience. Although Gibran’s English-language writing is poetic in tone and, in contrast to his earlier writing in Arabic, not overtly political, his philosophy was guided by a deep opposition to Ottoman rule and his support of a Syrian brother and sister-hood beyond national borders. He called for freedom of spirit as the basis for political and material freedom and, along with his Arab Romantic cohort in New York, mobilized his own diasporic identity as a kind of rebellion.

Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran was born Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān in Ottoman-ruled Bsharri in 1883 to a Maronite Christian family. In 1895, Gibran’s mother moved him, his half-brother, and two younger sisters to Boston, where she worked as a pack peddler, leaving Gibran’s father in Lebanon. Displaying an aptitude for the arts at an early age, Kahlil Gibran was supported in his endeavors by key mentors throughout his life. As a teenager, Gibran met photographer, publisher, and philanthropist Fred Holland Day and poet Josephine Preston Peabody, both of whom provided Gibran with his entrance into Boston’s creative community. Day hosted the first solo exhibition of Gibran’s drawings in 1904 in his Boston photo studio shortly after Gibran returned from Beirut, where he attended college. At that event, Gibran met Mary Haskell, who would become a lifelong friend (there is speculation that the two were also romantically involved) and benefactor to Gibran, paying for him to attend the Academie Julian art school in Paris from 1908 to 1910. While in Paris, Gibran became involved with Syrian political dissidents, whose activities he continued to support upon his return to the United States. Gibran’s artwork was shown in 1914 at Montross Gallery and in 1917 at the galleries of M. Knoedler & Co, both in New York. In 1923, Gibran published his best-known written work The Prophet, an anthology of poems that captured the attention of the world and eventually made Gibran the best-selling American poet of the twentieth century. On April 10, 1931, at the age of forty-eight, Gibran died of liver disease in his home on West 10th Street in New York City. He was buried in Bsharri on the grounds of what is now the Gibran Museum.

A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran is organized by Claire Gilman, Chief Curator, with Isabella Kapur, Curatorial Associate, and Anneka Lenssen, Associate Professor of Global Modern Art, University of California, Berkeley.

Digital Guide

Explore this exhibition further online using our digital guide, available for free as part of the Bloomberg Connects app. By downloading the app on your mobile device, you can discover other exhibition guides, drawing activities, and educational resources.

Credits

Lead support for A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran is provided by Dominique Lévy. Generous funding is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Karim F. Tabet and Family, Sandra and Tony Tamer, the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, Zaza and Philippe Jabre, and Tony and Elham Salamé. Additional support is provided by Carla Chammas and Judi Roaman, Isabel Stainow Wilcox, Joumana Rizk, Sara and Hussein Khalifa, Frances Beatty Adler and Allen Adler, Dita Amory, Jane Dresner Sadaka and Ned Sadaka, the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Harry Tappan Heher and Jean-Edouard van Praet d'Amerloo, and Waqas Wajahat

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Jun 2–Sep 10, 2023

A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran

Digital Guide

Credits

Past Programs

Aug 6, 2023

ASL DrawNow! ONLINE with Nic Annette Miller and Joyce Hom on A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran

Jun 29, 2023

Poets and Performers on Kahlil Gibran

Jun 20, 2023

A Greater Beauty: Leeza Ahmady and Paul-Gordon Chandler on Spirituality, Art and the Legacy of Kahlil Gibran

Jun 13, 2023

In Conversation: Form and Innovation in the Art and Writing of Kahlil Gibran

Jun 1, 2023

Opening Reception: A Greater Beauty: The Drawings of Kahlil Gibran and Naudline Pierre: This Is Not All There Is

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