KABUL, AFGHANISTAN.- The reopening of the National Gallery in Kabul in February took place in the dark. The electricity was out again, a casualty of war, and yet the mood was hopeful, victorious, even joyful. Presiding over the ceremony, Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, spoke emotionally of the gallery as the locus of "great hope and brightness," where Afghan culture could emerge out of hiding. Then, with great delight, he watched Dr. Yousof Asefi perform an act of sweet triumph. Dr. Asefi is an artist who, at great personal risk, had disguised the figures of human beings in 80 oil paintings at the gallery by applying a veneer of watercolor paint over them. He had thus saved the pictures from destruction at the hands of the Taliban. Amid the bombed-out ruins of Kabul, an artistic community that was not only optimistic but exuberant rises up again. But the beginning of a renaissance is not taking place only among a small elite. The Union of Artists, closed by the Taliban, reopened three months ago and has already attracted more than 3,000 members countrywide, including 200 women.