Integrating Art and Architecture: Decolonization, Speculation, and Modernism in the Aftershock of Morocco’s Agadir Earthquake (1960)
Seizing the opportunity presented by the 1960 Agadir earthquake to expand its powers and extend its reach into everyday life, the Moroccan state entered into an accelerated stage of nation-building several years after gaining independence in 1956. One of the overlooked aspects of this national development involved art production, particularly by a group of Moroccan modernist artists associated with the Casablanca School of Fine Arts. The three primary figures of this school, Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Melehi, and Mohamed Chebâa, had all been studying and working abroad in Europe when the earthquake struck, but in the following years, they all migrated back to Morocco to purportedly take part in Morocco’s nation-building efforts and create a newly decolonized art world within Morocco. They also collaborated on several occasions with the architects Abdeslam Faraoui and de Patrice de Mazières—who had worked extensively in Agadir—to design hotels across Morocco that were commissioned by the Moroccan government to promote tourism and open the country up to international capital and speculation. This paper connects the developments and achievements of the Casablanca School to the trauma of the Agadir earthquake and the paternalistic Moroccan state-planning that followed. Rereading these collaborations, or “integrations” as they called them, of the artists and architects through this lens renders visible the haunted aspects of this production and exemplifies the practice of a spectral art history that is attuned to the darker sides of colonial modernity.
Presented by Art History Graduate Students
Caitlin Kelley Burney
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