Alain Tasso


Alain Tasso is a French poet, painter and essayist. An autodidact, his prolific intense literary work is largely acclaimed by critics.

Biography

Tasso attended high school at the Grand [Lycée Franco-Libanais de Beyrouth], but refused to sit for his baccalaureate exam, and decided to study accounting instead. He remained in that field only for a few years.
Grandly interested in antiquities, art objects, classical music, especially sacred baroque music, Tasso, who had started playing the piano at five, opened in 1987 "L'insolite", an art gallery. He specialized in both Art Nouveau and Oriental art, and began drawing miniatures and calligraphy. Two years later, as the violent conflicts of the Lebanese civil war ravaged the country, he was forced to shut down gallery. He worked between 1992 and 2000 as a freelancer for numerous French and Arabic magazines and daily papers in Beirut, such as L'Orient Le Jour, and published in 1993 a youth poem collection featuring a preface written by the Lebanese poet Said Akl. In 1996, Tasso was promoted Chevalier de l'Ordre Patriarcal de la [Sainte Croix de Jérusalem], an eminent Oriental Catholic distinction. In 1998, he participated in a collective exhibition for the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and as of following year, started teaching the postgraduate "Aesthetics" course at the Institut d'études scéniques, audiovisuelles et cinématographiques of the Saint Joseph University in Beirut. Later on, he was asked to lecture in several departments of the Faculty of Humanities at the same university, and Egon Schiele. He is also the author of several essays on "ethics" as well as on "image and power" in a dehumanized contemporary society.
His poetry, mystic at its beginnings, started out as expressionism. Later it became denser, and developed a very pure and literary style which has made Tasso a Poet of the Presence and a much noticed figure of the French poetry.
In October 2010, the publishing firm "Les éditions de la Revue Phénicienne" released an anthology entitled Alain Tasso, preceded by eleven studies and critical texts.
He started teaching in 2011 at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. He is also the author of numerous artist books.

Talking about the [Arab Spring]

In the frame of the European Parliament in Brussels, Alex Taylor hosted Alain Tasso as the special guest of Euronews "I-Talk" program. Chosen from the Arab World, Tasso gave an interview on the Arab Spring. Recorded in French, and broadcast from July 14 to July 21, 2011 on Euronews international channels, the talk was also dubbed and translated in the ten languages of the channel, namely French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Arabic and Persian.

Works

in la Collection Les blés d'or

  • Les lampes d'écume, 1999
  • Fragments chaotiques, 2000
  • Le champ de l'hypostase, 2000
  • Retables pour des murs en papier, 2001
  • Sang des neiges et autres poèmes, 2002 with a CD entitled: L'exégèse du souffle
  • Intailles, Te deum pour un requiem du temps, 2004
  • De neige et de pierres, poèmes pour l'improbable, 2005
  • Assomption d'une autre saison, 2005
  • Paysages de Flot précédé de Sommeil des ancolies, 2009
  • Brisants comme dictame d'un monde trépassé, 2010

    in les éditions de Revue Phénicienne

  • Alain Tasso, 2010

    in les éditions Seghers

  • Poésies de langue française, 144 poètes de langue française autour du monde, 2008

    in les Éditions Gallimard

  • Les très riches heures du livre pauvre, 2011

    Essays

  • L'homme a le mal de l'homme, sur la peinture de Egon Schiele, Les blés d'or estetica, 2002
  • Au-delà du gestaltisme, Khalil Gibran un pinceau de larmes, in Gibran K. Gibran pionnier de la Renaissance à venir, Conference Report, 2006, Université Saint-Esprit de Kaslik, pages 143-149
  • Une eau dans ses braises, preface of the exhibition catalogue of Ayman Baalbaki, Agial Gallery, Beirut, 2008
  • Les fins de l'image, Les blés d'or estetica, 2009. Conference in the course of the "Images and Ethics" Symposium, IESAV, Saint Joseph University, December 2008
  • Encore ce peu d'images malgré tout, Les blés d'or estetica, Spring 2011