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Images Gallery
review Search it
out Within
the fold
In the second part of our
series on the enjoyment of different forms of art, an artist tells us about
what she sees in the works dear to her By Durriya Kazi A lot of the time I find
art really boring. It seems self-indulgent, repetitive, self important,
trivial. But then I come across some simple image or gesture or colour that
magically blows me away and Art, for me, is not just an art object. It is really a spirit and attitude to life. It's about noticing clouds tinged with pink at day's end in the middle of a traffic jam; Fibonacci patterns on shells and sunflower seeds; a florescent pink shalwar kameez in Lyari; mitochondria through a microscope. It is about noticing and celebrating, or noticing and hurting. In any case it's about noticing -- which makes many of us who don't pick up a brush artists. One who makes art merely concretises what we all feel and know.
Mona Hatoum's 'Light Sentence'. Mona Hatoum escaped the war in Beirut and lives and works in London now. Yet like many artists working in the diaspora, she carries her cultural concerns with her. I love this work. It has the reality of the war and injustice of the Middle East. The simple empty cages succinctly express the pain of imprisonment, the waiting and loss. It was such a wonderful
surprise to discover Andy Goldsworthy's work -- to know he is a contemporary,
in an art world with so much artifice. Goldsworthy works painstakingly, or
rather lovingly, with nature, when everyone seems to be making clever urban
images. His Qin Shihuang's 'Terracotta
Army' The buried standing army has Queen Nefertiti. I love the
way the heavy head dress sits on The sculpture of the cubist
period is often overshadowed by the many paintings that are so well known.
Lipchitz made some really amazing heads using the planes and forms of cubism.
This bust by Picasso opened a new world to me when I was an art student. I
understood the dynamics of form, the ability to see beyond the I love this portrait of a
Parisian prostitute by Toulouse Lautrec. He came from a wealthy family, but
because his body was deformed
I have always been drawn to
this painting by Mary Cassatt. It These Greek sculptures were obviously whole once, but in this fragmented form they take on another meaning. As a student I felt very inspired by these sculptures, taken out of the buildings where they belonged and brought into an elegant museum like some trophy -- stark, moving, yet still, a moment of a story frozen in time. I spent hours looking at these and the Elgin Marbles and the Winged Samothrace. Most people associate
Islamic mosques with the gorgeously intricate mosques of Cordoba or Granada. Kurt Schwitter's 'Merzbau'.
This doesn't exist any more, but like Tatlin's Tower which was never built,
this image has inspired many. I was no different and as a young art student;
it opened a whole new meaning to the word sculpture, and the way art can
occupy a living space not as an I would have loved to see this work by Walter de Maria. He placed a grid of lightening rods to capture lightening. It must have been an amazing sight! It is a constantly changing 'painting'. Nature, fierce yet captured, if only for a moment. Lightening inspired pagans to invent gods, and even today it is one of the most compelling and heart-stopping signs of nature's unleashed power. In this work, Maria had the intrepidity to trick nature into uneasy obedience, much as lion tamers surrounded by snarling beasts.
Bashir Mirza's 'Lonely
Girl' (main picture on the left). Bashir Mirza understood the modern
Pakistani woman of the sixties as no female painter has. He understood her
stillness and waiting, in a no man's land between tradition and emancipation.
I was swept over by his bold compositions, his understanding of colour and
the dark celebration in his themes. Truck mud flap. I have loved the lavish decoration of trucks and buses. But now I am noticing the worn out images more, which have their own aesthetics and unknowingly come closer to the language of mainstream art. The Art Guys are a crazy
artist duo from Houston, who make wonderful playful works that are so obvious
and yet take the viewer completely off guard. This is one of their works, in
which they collected 75 old suitcases that were each tapered to the same
degree and when placed next to each other naturally formed this circle. It is
difficult to know Art generally makes us think, become aware. I think it is the only way, especially today, that the world can regain any semblance of balance. I take art in its widest sense to include music, poetry, theatre and any eccentric actions that are not just about making money or colonising outer space. Art should be a part of everyone's life, as it was in the past in every church, mosque and temple; in every public building and town square; in every illustrated book and bespoke furniture; in the turn of a phrase. Today the only public art we see is in shrines, on public transport or on cinema hoardings (now a dying art). As Mrs Azra Jalal put it, we have "lost the grace of living" and have become ugly, intolerant and uncaring.
Gallery
review Art galleries are capable of
better things than dazzling the market with shows of pomp and magnitude By Quddus Mirza The most interesting aspect of the inaugural ceremony of the new Hamail Gallery (on 4th September) was that nobody -- except the participating artists themselves -- seemed sure of who was included in the display and who wasn't. It was difficult to form a clear idea of the contents of the show on its inaugural day. The new space of Hamail Art
Galleries is situated in a large building in a place in Lahore which may The first thing that overwhelms you, once you step into the new Hamail, is not the great Sadequain (which is hung at the beginning, but in really undesirable company!), or any other important names of Pakistani art -- but the magnificent area of the gallery and the number of works collected for the inaugural ceremony. A total of 252 paintings, prints, ceramics and sculptures are displayed, but with the magic of space and the urge to show everything, the actual number of works somehow seems more than what is on the walls or placed in the empty spaces (inside the gallery, at the entrance and outside as well). Pakistani artists of all sorts -- famous, established, unknown, struggling -- are represented here, as well as some Indian and Bangladeshi painters (those who have already exhibited at the Hamail Gallery's other space in Defence, Lahore).
However, the organisers at the gallery do not appear to be too concerned about quality of selection or sophistication in display. For them, and for many visitors, the scale of the venue and the quantity of the work were the mark of a great exhibition. The large space and number of works can be seen as the symbol of a great beginning, but this fascination with dimension and quantity hint at a certain tendency in our society -- the psyche that aspires to construct huge houses with humungous collections of kitsch and ornaments of all kinds. Thus one sees structures which cover a lot of area, and interiors with all kinds of decoration pieces to impress visitors with the wealth, taste, affluence and power of the owner. Houses in our posh urban
localities are not much different from the way our brides are made up in
marriage ceremonies -- adorned with gold pieces of every size, shape and
weight, along with heavy cosmetics and fully embroidered wedding dresses,
loaded with beads, stones, plastics and other A gallery with a lot of space and artworks is certainly a sign of the growing art market; but it is at the same time a reminder of the role being taken on by the art gallery as such. A role visibly reduced to pure business by the framer's shops, which have turned into elegant galleries or places that patronise the production of fake artworks. The gallery is primarily a means of selling art, but, like the spaces furnished by some other professions (education and medicine for instance) it also has a duty to perform: the social duty of enriching culture and supporting new ideas. Hence, many galleries of repute around the world are known for their active involvement in developing good taste and encouraging diverse voices, and not just for operating as selling joints for colourful canvases and carved wood. In this respect the Hamail Galleries -- despite having a huge space and collection of artworks -- has a choice to make. It can either follow the example of other galleries in the vicinity and function more like a shop, or take the risk of making art an activity that transcends the business of selling and buying.
We are not making much
progress with documentation of music in our region By Sarwat Ali Discussions or debates in our society on any issue related to music are always based on assumptions because the relevant data, which are a prerequisite of any intelligent analysis, have never been collected on a scientific basis. Usually music surveys are
conducted in order to know more, and with a degree of exactness, about the
music being sung and played in a certain region, which these days is a
sovereign state. The area, with Some years ago a Music Survey of Pakistan was initiated by Lok Virsa and a very small area identified for a pilot study. It was conducted without any major delays or hiccups, but the pilot project could not blossom into a full-fledged musical mapping of the country. One does not know the reason for the delay or postponement or cancellation of the project, but it can be easily surmised that it will turn out to be either lack of expertise, or shortage of funds, or an absence of will, or a combination of all three in varying degrees. The region which is Pakistan is very rich in music. Music is played and sung from the far-flung Northern Areas of the country to the farthest end of Balochistan, but it has only existed in practice and not in theory. The oral transmission from generation to generation has been the only means of documenting music in the past, and still remains the only method of preservation. The oral transmission of musical knowledge, which is more significant as a living tradition, is largely unreliable and not historically authentic. Only the grand tradition of music has been documented in written form, an effort that was made because of an awareness of its importance as well as the resources that were available. The two centres of musical patronage, the court and the temple, had preserved and documented music -- the former as a record of the proceedings of the court and the latter as a vital form of religious practice. What have really been neglected have been the folk forms. The patronage extended to these forms has generally been in the shape of minor institutions operating largely at the local and village level, while the practice of music was and is considered to be most important. In Pakistan, as the musical forms have developed since independence, folk genres have been more popular and in greater demand. The classical forms have suffered because of a the absence of an institutionlised system of patronage. The older system of patronage collapsed with the decline and disappearance of the princely states. The post colonial state did not move in to fill the vacuum. The folk forms have thrived through varying levels of patronage but, ironically, nothing has been done to preserve and document these popular forms in the country. Even something as popular as the qawwali furnishes a good example. The most popular verses sung both by the qawwals and lok gaiks are attributed to more than one poet. The further one goes back into history the more the problem is confounded, but even in recent times it does not offer itself to a simpler solution -- for example, the lyrics of popular numbers which Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan had sung have many claimants. Fixing the name of a poet to the lyrics is not a simple fait accompli. This has generally been the practice because, in singing, primacy was granted to what was sung and the magic rested in it being performed rather than in a critical examination of the text in the cold light of a studio. This strange combination of the note and the word has seen very mediocre poetry finding a comfortable niche in the hearts of the listeners. Even in the other popular genre, the films, in the early years of recording the singer announced his or her name at the end of the number, and on the records of film songs the names of actors on whom the song was picturised, rather than that of the singer, were mentioned. Lata Mangeshkar led the battle for affixing the name of the singer on the 78 rpm records in the late nineteen-forties. It then became standard practice to mention the name of the composer, the lyricist and the singer. But in the releases of radio recordings, the name of the singer and that of the lyricist were mentioned but seldom the name of the composer. Radio had many in-house composers, some of them extremely talented, but what they composed was never mentioned separately, rather it was accredited to the organisation. Some of the best compositions in the radio by Niaz Hussain Shami and Nazar Hussain are hardly ever credited to them. Perhaps on the records, especially the LP's, some detail was mentioned, but with the coming of the cassette these essential details were not considered important. Unfortunately no independent research has been conducted to give credit where it is due. But the classic case is that of Amir Khusro. It is an article of faith with many, particularly practising musicians, that he is the father of the music sung and played in the last eight hundred years in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. He is credited with the creation of all kinds of instruments and forms of music, but there is scant information in documented form about his contribution to music. Some dispute it, some reject it outright, while some salvage the situation by extrapolating from circumstantial evidence. This confusion is understandable because there was no way that sound could be documented other than in words, but now, with the technology available and quite handy, it is tragic that the documentation of music is still not on our lists of things to do. The Music Survey of Pakistan is absolutely essential and should be revived immediately.
The story of the Scottish schoolgirl Molly aka Misbah, who was reported missing 'feared abducted' by her mother, but who was actually happily living with her father and siblings in Pakistan, has caught the media here slightly off guard. After the family's initial press conference in Lahore, with the Scottish MP Mohammed Sarwar present, the papers here have adopted a rather detached view of the story, especially since the legal position of the case in Britain is still unclear. What I find especially unfortunate about the whole case is how the mother has emerged as the complete villain of the piece and how much is now being made of her 'unislamic behaviour'. According to her children she is unstable: she smokes pot and not only drinks alcohol but had even offered some to the 12 year old child Molly/Misbah. She is not as photogenic as her well-fed, robust daughters and ex-husband and certainly doesn't look as happy, clean or well-dressed as them. Photogenically she is a disaster. And she seems to have alienated every one of her four children as well. Reading the story of the family is very sad. Even though the breakup seems to have occurred five years ago, everything still seems very bitter and acrimonious. Though you have to admire the father, Mr Rana, for being able to provide a sense of security and belonging for the four children, you also feel pity for the mother, Mrs Campbell, who married into a completely different culture at the extremely young age of 16. She converted to Islam and lived the life prescribed by Islam and the Rana family for almost two decades. After the breakup, she seems to have gone off the straight and righteous path with a vengeance and lapsed into a rather amoral and directionless state. Getting married at such a young age is bad enough, but being a convert and an outsider in a close knit family community must have been really, really tough. Come to think of it, converting to a religion specifically to join a social (or sporting) group means that you are constantly in a position where others will assess and judge you. In such a situation you probably end up overcompensating (just look at cricketer Mohammad Yusuf's beard and mannerisms!), so that when you finally lapse, you lapse completely ( and feel that it is quite a relief to do so). Religious conversion for social purposes is always slightly shaky, but it is also immensely difficult. The unfortunate thing is that we are so convinced that it is us Muslims who are on the straight and righteous path that we never empathise with the plight of the social convert. It is not at all easy to reject your entire upbringing and everything that defined your early life. Just imagine yourself in a similar position but with the tables turned: imagine the pressures of being a Muslim in, for example, a predominantly pious Christian cricket team. And then imagine the pressures of being a convert in such a team: you would be expected to be more Christian than the Christians, and to simply forget or reject so many of the little things associated with your childhood, your culture and your religious upbringing. I am personally not greatly in favour of interfaith marriages, as one partner has to have some kind of conversion and inevitably there is conflict regarding how much one -- or both -- have had to give up in terms of family or belonging or language or food. But having said that, I do feel we should be kinder to people who make the effort to adapt to a culturally different set of inlaws. It is an effort and and effort that should be appreciated. I really hope the Molly/Misbah story doesn't turn into an all-out custody battle with Pakistani courts focusing on the 'un islamic behaviour of the mother'. This is a difficult call for everybody, but let's hope that the Rana children can mend their bridges with their mother and that the unfortunate woman will not continue to be demonised as wayward and unislamic. That sort of language we can do without. Best wishes Umber
Khairi |
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art seems to be the most heroic of human endeavours
These
are a selection of some artworks that have greatly impressed me.
works use the changing colours of leaves, the patterns of parched earth, and
the natural colours of rocks. Many land artists worked out in nature, but
none has been so respectful with nature, so patient, so humble. Yet his work
is not passive. He works and intervenes in the most sensitive way, as in this
work where he fashioned, patiently and with a heroic endurance in the bitter
cold of winter, a spiral icicle. It is ephemeral yet eternal, and has a great
spiritual presence.
always
fascinated me and filled me with wonder. Each of the figures is life sized
and made in terracotta. The effort is amazing, as anyone who has ever worked
with ceramics will tell you. Just firing one of these in a kiln would be an
achievement -- and there are 8,000 figures discovered so far. Many styles of
heads and hands were fired separately, a practical way which allowed for
creating variance. The fact that they were buried makes the effort more
breathtaking, just as the amazing artworks discovered in the hidden tombs of
the Egyptian Civilization.
Nefertiti's slender neck. The balance is so perfect, and so serene and
elegant. Her personality is conveyed just by this placing of the form and
needs no words or facial expression to convey her elegance and power.
surface.
It may appear that the artist has ignored the real appearance of the sitter,
yet it is in fact a deeper understanding and representation of the surface
movement of the forms of the head. I made a study of the model in the art
school, using the lessons I learnt from this work, and it became part of my
sensibility. As they say, to hear is to forget; 'to see is to remember', to
do is to understand.
during a protracted illness, he felt more at home with the 'outcasts' of
society, the music hall, than amongst his social peers. This portrait
captures the strength and fighting spirit of this woman with her drab clothes
and garish make up. It is difficult to dismiss her as a victim, a mere
entertainer. Lautrec showed us another way of seeing people who choose to
survive under difficult circumstances without the empty moral judgment of
those who look from 'above'.
Egon
Schiele is another artist who expresses with an uncomfortable but mesmerizing
directness, the mangled part of the spirit that we have all learnt to hide.
Unlike Toulouse Lautrec's subjects, Schiele's subjects (often himself) have
not survived life, but are caught in a terrible struggle that will never be
resolved. His works are full of adolescent pain and confusion, and very
definitely male. Danish Raza, a Karachi artist, far more 'elegantly' also
centres his work around issues of being a male -- a welcome voice in an art
world where the problems of being a woman generally takes precedence. Anwar
Saeed in the only other artist I am aware of in Pakistan who chooses to show
male vulnerability.
reminds me of my younger daughter and expresses the intimacy of motherhood
far more realistically than the usual mother with suckling child that male
artists think is 'motherhood'. It is also a strong, no nonsense composition
with the solid volumes and dominant stripes that are a homage to the
comforting strength rather than the perceived vulnerability of women.
Everyone
associates Michelangelo with the David, which I cannot stand. The Pieta on
the other hand is beautiful. I love that he has chosen this moment, when
Christ has been taken down from the cross and is lying like a child in his
young mother's lap. They always say that a mother's lap is never too small
for her child. Her face numbed, her left hand questioning what fate has
ordained, her last moments with her child, whose terrible suffering is
finally over, the heaviness of the body as she tries to hold him up with her
right arm conveys more pathos than tears would. I
spent a long time before this work in St Peter's Basilica in Rome and found
it really difficult to turn away from it.
Of
course I, too, love them and find them breathtaking. However, there is
something about the simple lines of the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq that
I find really impressive.
object on a pedestal or a painting safely in a frame, but integrated in our
daily lives.
This
work by the Chinese artist Xu Bing is truly fascinating. For the duration of
the exhibition, Chinese silkworms quietly weave their silk over laptops and a
host of other proud achievements of mankind. There is a subtle political
message either about the Chinese symbolised by the silkworm, or maybe about
nature that goes about its work trivialising man's illusion of control. I
never asked the artist what his message was, because I preferred to enjoy the
ambiguity and dwell on my own interpretation.
which
of their mad enterprises to select. I strongly recommend that you visit their
site on the internet. Humour and wit is a very appealing and disarming
strategy to make people think. The Court Jester got away with a lot in the
old days, but gave the King plenty of food for thought.
become the new hub of commercial galleries, since another commercial gallery
is also located there. It appears that Hamail Gallery is aiming to compete
with other establishments in this business, in having art of every kind under
one roof and making it saleable by virtue of the modern-looking space it's
exhibited in, the kind of interior you can also glimpse in the TV dramas of
private channels.
The
overall impact of the gallery is of a space filled with art from wall to
wall. Although one can detect an effort to place works of one kind in one
room -- like the portraits of young and beautiful girls installed together,
landscapes exhibited in another section of the gallery -- by and large the
display conveys a lack of care towards the layout of the show as well as an
absence of any criteria for the selection of artworks. Thus one comes across
canvases that look like copies of Ahmed Khan and Gulgee, or paintings and
sculptures which are not very convincing examples of their genres.
'pretty' pieces. The bride on her wedding day, huge houses with porticos,
columns and decoration pieces, and galleries filled to the brim, reveal a
peculiar taste in our society: the taste for excess. By a strange logic,
beauty is associated with assembling a multitude of objects, colours,
patterns and designs -- everything which suggests the hard work and struggle
involved in acquiring and manufacturing them.
all its details, significant and minor, is properly mapped (as the expression
firmly suggests) for the purposes of documentation.