ON THE RELEVANCE OF ART TO CONTEMPORARY EVENTS





The recent interest in the work of Pakistani artists with an attendant increase in prices is more than a step in the right direction. It is a leap of faith.


Why, some may ask, should a sale abroad of paintings by Pakistani artists have any relevance here other than to the artists themselves – at least to those of them who are still alive?


Open any newspaper, switch to any TV news channel. Adversities and traumas, crises and shortages growl and snarl at you. Prices have become string-less kites at Basant, flying higher and higher, ostensibly out of control. Food is in short supply and may well be rationed; energy is more precious than water and is being rationed.


We have two Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, sitting on opposite sides of the scales of justice. Unions long dormant have begun to agitate. Those who exercise power are not in government, and those who are in government appear to be powerless.


FATA is fast becoming a battleground in which we are both the Pandavas and the Kauravas in a Kurukhsetra being fought on home ground. We are a country that seems to have declared war on itself.


Why therefore should Art have any relevance?


The answer lies in a response made during the Second World War by Kenneth Clark, then Director of the National Gallery in London. He organised a series of Lunchtime Concerts, at which he invited distinguished performers – violinist, cellists, flutists – to come and play during the lunch hour in the National Gallery’s Rotunda every working day. Any member of the public who wanted to hear them was welcome, and many brought their packed lunches of war-time rations with them to eat while listening to the music.


When asked why he persisted when London was being inundated by V1 and V2 bombs and all too frequent air-raids, Clark replied: ‘Because I want to remind people that this is the civilization which we are fighting to protect.’


In as many words, the success of our Pakistani artists is significant because they represent the composite of all those values – Islamic, secular, ethnic, regional, individual – that we are struggling to defend. To lose that battle is to lose ourselves.


If one looks back, as one should do if one is to determine a path for the future, one can identify the milestones that have guided us to this stage of our development. To take the visual arts alone, A.R. Chughtai, Ustad Allah Buksh, Shakir Ali, Sadequain, Guljee, and Colin David each represented an aspect of our social identity. A writer like Bapsi Sidhwa is not a Parsee writer but a Pakistani writer who happens to be a Parsee. Guljee was an Ismaili, Colin David a Christian, but all were Pakistanis nonetheless.


An ideal showcase for our national artistic talent is of course the National Gallery, recently constructed in Islamabad. At the moment, in addition to its rather paltry permanent collection of the paintings, it has staged an exhibition of the works of three prominent Pakistani painters – Sheikh Ahmed, his wife but an artist in her own right Anna Molka Ahmed, and Miss Naseem Qazi. The output of their lifetimes is on display in three commodious galleries, and even then the building has wall-space to spare for other works.


Whatever may have been the merits and demerits of their work, each of them had a seminal influence on our modern generations for all three were revered (and in Anna Molka Ahmed’s case, feared) teachers of art. Each was responsible for moulding the minds of those who are achieving recognition today.


Had they been alive, they might have been envious of the sort of prices modern Pakistani painters can command, and that too in foreign exchange (which it seems after the run on our reserves, is the next commodity to be rationed).


Often though, these are reflective of other factors other than talent or rarity. For example, even before Guljee’s murderers had been caught, collectors in Hong Kong had begun sourcing his paintings in a macabre perversion of the law of limited supply and increasing demand.


Today, we are all standing too close to issues that buffet us in our daily lives to take a detached view of where we are and where we should be going. It is becoming increasing important for us to take pride in our past if we are to have any faith in the future.


To those who regard our nation as stricken Titanic, one would need to remind them (and ourselves) that there were survivors even on that vessel. It is not for nothing that children were the first to be put into lifeboats.


The recent General Elections have brought into the National Assembly persons who, whether many of us accept it or not, or even whether they themselves accept it or not, are saddled with the responsibility of governance. It is an authority kings are born into, presidents achieve, and our elected representatives have thrust upon them.


If this National Assembly should by any happen-stance last its full term like its predecessor did (not because that previous Assembly did anything but precisely because it did nothing), then the only chance of having a fresh infusion of ideas may be through the forthcoming elections to the Senate.


When considering nominations, would any of the political leaders who will be distributing electoral boons consider broadening the list to include persons of intellectual stature and not only simply political weight?


Most bicameral bodies foresee such a balance. The House of Lords in the UK is one example, the Rajya Sabha in New Delhi another. Among the nominated members of the Rajya Sabha are film actors like Hema Malini, avant garde directors as Shyam Benegal, and Dr Kapila Vatsyayan (an accomplished Bharat Natyam dancer, scholar and retired ICS officer).


Many who are concerned with the future of those generations that will succeed us here in Pakistan pray for sanity and maturity at the highest levels of governance. It should not be impossible for those holding the prism of governance to convert the rainbow spectrum of our individual identity and diversity back into a single pure light of national unity.





DAWN, 19.7.08