"Occidents and Accidents"

  
  Ladies and gentlemen, let me start with a fond but fading memory. Fifteen years ago, I was invited to USA, and during my different meetings with artists, art critics and museum officials (curator was not a buzz word in 1994!), I was scheduled to visit the studio of a black painter from Cleveland, Ohio. Just to be politically correct, I asked my guide, When are we going to see the Afro American artist? She laughed and politely told me never to use this word, Afro American, in front of the painter. She said that the artist, an old man, refuses to be addressed by this term. He prefers to be called Black. He says that in the beginning he was named nigger, later changed into negro, and then replaced with black. He was labelled coloured afterwards, and now the fashionable phrase is Afro American. He says I am black. So please do not name me on the basis of your whims and verdicts. This little, rather insignificant incident was enough for me to know the intricacies of power, in terms of classifying and categorizing the Other. And the defying response from the Other. But regardless of which hemisphere we come from, we do describe the Other – all the time. The structure of language is such that, in one tongue, the simple portrayal of a person, place or event is not devoid of the inherent system of prejudices and biases. This aspect is heightened when the subject of description lies outside of one’s familiar world. We come up with all kinds of funny, embarrassing and derogatory definitions. Nigger was one, Under Developing and Developing Countries or the Third World, are a few other terms. However here I am not going to give an example from home, which is relevant to this land… as I believe that the meaning of word Kazakh is the same in my native language Urdu, what it is in Russian (the pirate!). So in any way one can not rid of or be freed from the shades of subjectivity, personal preferences, historical injustices and societal maliciousness, whenever one utters a word.

  This leads to Orientalism – Western, Eastern, Occidentalism and accidents of all sorts, but before going further one must remember that we live in a world, in which man not only speaks but makes images as well (and the two activities merge in the form of writing). But if language is a journey form real to abstract (the sounds or letters), than the art making is an attempt to trace Truth or reach Reality by fabricating illusions. These illusions or the images of the world – if on the one hand represent a single individual’s creative depth and artistic horizon, at the same instance these reveal a culture’s view of the world, which manifest in these artefacts – often transcribed without any plans or awareness on the part of a creator. Throughout history, man (I could have added woman in the same line, but after that encounter in 1994, I stopped being politically correct!) have been making visuals that reflect ideas, believes and – and aspiration of a culture. So if we take the case of miniature painting from the Indian subcontinent, one comes across a system of seeing the world in a specific scheme. Probably the pile up perspective and the multiple views found in the classical miniature paintings from the High Mughal period is an illustration – rather affirmation, of how the world was perceived during that age – as an illusion of reality: Maya – instead of being the Renaissance’s window in the space. This concept and reading of reality – was modified with the changed circumstances relating to the realm of politics. After the triumph of colonial rule in India, the practice of miniature painting faded, or even discontinued. Now the new favourite genre was the European academic art, introduced and enforced by the art educationist active in the newly conquered India. Institutions like Mayo School of Art – my Alma Metre – were established to train talented local youth in the Western pictorial tradition – which was taught as a superior mode of rendering the visible world. So the European academic art became the lingua franca amongst the local painters. Consequently most of the miniature painters – after enjoying the patronage of indigenous rulers, privileges and prestige, were doomed to rot in anonymity, disrespect and oblivion. It was not an isolated incident, because Persian, the court language also became a defunct medium of expression, Mughal costume turned outdated, and Indian customs were considered irrelevant indulgences. Hence miniature painting was treated as a useless, inadequate and redundant activity. This perception and reception of a genre, once admired and supported by Akbar, Jehangir and Shahjehan, the mighty Mughals, reduced it to a tourist item, and the samples of this genre were sold as souvenir for nominal prices on the streets of Lucknow, Lahore, Jaipur and Jehlum, our modern metropolises in India and Pakistan. Usually these artefacts were manufactured for a foreign visitor, in order to satisfy – complete and compensate his image of Orient, thus choice of imagery revolved around amorous encounters, depiction of dancing girls along with the lines of Persian or Arabic texts, usually written in a meaningless sequence. 

  The practice continued, in the bazaars of old cities and the chic shopping areas in the Subcontinent till the potential of miniature painting was discovered at the National College of Arts in Lahore. Here the miniature paining as a studio course was initiated in the mid Eighties, to end up being the most sought after and popular form of painting that have emerged from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. If the studies of miniature painting started as a humble and earnest search to locate the features of local aesthetics, soon it was transformed into a means to allure foreign curators, attract outside buyers and enter the international exhibitions. Obviously other kinds of work were also produced in Pakistan, but in its essence, miniature making was utilized as a bait to catch West’s attention. Actually the interest from the outside curators, collectors and critics soon turned the local miniaturists into collaborators. Now they believe in whatever is advised/prescribed by the ‘art tourist’ from Europe, USA, Australia, and even from Japan. They mend their ways, shift their imagery, change their technique, modify their mediums and transform their vision, perhaps in order to satisfy the outsider admirer, who values the miniature painting – due to its easily transportable scale and exotic ingredients – a suitable unique product to market across the globe.

  In my experience as an art critic and observer, I have often found that my perceptions, presumptions and judgements, most of the time have proven false, and this may happen today too – but I feel that the resurrection of miniature painting, in the ateliers of Lahore was not just a matter of formal choices. It coincided with the other revivalist tendencies. Link between the urge to re-establish miniature painting (particularly its predominant Mughal version) and the desire to recreate a model of medieval society in Pakistan – inspired from Iran and Afghanistan, needs to be explored and examined. However more than the religious sentiments or fundamentalist fascination, miniature painting was discovered and deployed to market one’s identity and ethnicity. Interestingly, the art form that in its own time was diverse, contradictory and evolved in various ways, was now reduced to a canon of closely defined conventions, mainly because it was convenient to pursue this faithfully. Besides that, the art of miniature was projected and presented as the only indigenous aesthetic expression to the foreign viewers – which consist of curators, critics, collectors, organizers of biennales and triennials – or for instance a King or the Queen. As soon as an outsider decides to adopt this strange art form from the past, most of the painters start seeing their own life, work, ideas and practices from the eyes of outsiders. Sometimes one comes across unusual arrangements – such as when the Queen of England toured Pakistan and India in 1997, and came to National College of Arts to witness its flourishing and famous miniature department. On that occasion, the miniature department, a part of normal course of studies at the institute, was projected as an exotic and attractive entity. It was installed like a tableau. Students wearing flowing garments (reminding of Mughal costumes) were made to sit on the white sheets supported with cushions. They were – shown – busy in painting while awaiting the British Royalty – as if they were still breathing the air of a medieval era or working in the Mughal court. The whole set up, was not only a picturesque presentation, but it aptly illustrated our mindsets. It surfaced how, when the need and occasion arise – a number of our intellectuals convert to their colonialist customs, anticipating the Royal approval. In fact this is the form of Eastern Orienatlism that is voluntarily and happily assumed by our artists and intelligentsia. We are pleased to view ourselves as we are seen by the others – preferably by the West. The West required from us, to produce small scale work, that is intricately drawn, meticulously rendered, with obvious links with the heritage, and subjects that can be understood and admired by the Western cliental. So majority of our miniature painters have happily adapted this prescribed role, and they are continuously fabricating an indigenous art for an international audiance.

  In its totality, the miniature painting not only caters to a cultural adventurer, it also provides clues to a couple of crucial concerns. These pictorial concoctions – often defined as ‘modern miniatures’ offer some sorts of solution to the issues of ‘Tradition and Modernity’, ‘East and West’, ‘indigenous and alien’, which reveal the inner dilemma for a person living in this age. But if probed deeply, the queries such as Tradition and Modernity, East and West, Indigenous and Foreign, are also the by-product of western gaze, guidance and gains. In a traditional set up, from the village near Silhat in Bangladesh, Sialkot in Pakistan and Saharanpur in India, the questions of these kinds are not relevant, appropriate or required. People who are part of a tradition are not bothered about the lack, revival or even preservation of it. As Octavio Paz pointed out that you only become aware of tradition once you are detached from it. So somehow the whole debate of Orientalism, whether Western or Eastern is essentially an Occidentalist preoccupation. For a man making a piece of pottery, weaving a basket,  drawing a pattern on the fabric or building a small house, the question of ‘tradition and modernity’, ‘local and borrowed’, ‘vernacular and foreign’ may seem as abstract as the sum of two hundred thousands US Dollars,  a holiday in Iceland or sleeping with Miss World. All abstract, impossible thus irrelevant concepts and fantasies. 

  In that sense, when we discuss the issue of Eastern Orientalism, or Orientalism in general, are we not caught up in the trap of an elitist setting? We condemn Orientlist approach and their habit of taking over the total domain of description, but we tend to forget that it is only a handful of intellectuals, who suffer from this academia’s disease. The majority of public, which, by no stretch of imagination or standard of intellect, is ignorant – is beyond this dispute. Perhaps if one steps down from the high horse of one’s preconceived concepts and consults the common people, one realizes that the general public (although, coming from my country, I am afraid to use this combination, general and public) is not too worried about the Western attention and intervention. Because, if one still insists that Orientalists occupied the space to define Others, one has to admit that that process (if it is not regarded as the only one and the potent position) had added into the narrative about certain people and practices. Not only the old Orientalists, but a several of others in the history of mankind have been defining others in the way they find it appropriate. Vedic Aryans mentioning Indigenous population of Indus Valley Civilization; Quran describing Jewish people, and chronicles of Columbus about the natives from the cost of Caribbean. All of these – true or false (as the meaning of Kazakh in my mother tongue!) enrich the actual body of knowledge, either as an insider or an outsider (since it takes a few hundred years for an outsider to become insider). But isn’t the essence of creativity is an act of describing others as the Other. A bored house wife in an illicit relationship, a student who kills his landlady, and a child who refuses to grow up during the Second World War in Germany: All these texts – and including many more – now classics of our literature, are attempts to imagine the other and construct – presumably a false narrative. But these help in expanding narrow or single interpretations. Perhaps Orientalist approach and its aftermath in today’s art of miniature painting also contribute to widen the notions of a genre and extend as well as examine the idea of ethnic purity. Endeavours, which are in harmony with the famous quote of Chairman Mao (who ruled not far from this soil), let the hundred flowers bloom. And as long as we embrace multiplicity – along with the politically incorrectness of discourse, regardless if these are from West, East, North, South and Central Asia, we are safe from accidents, both in art and in politics.

Quddus Mirza, Pakistan

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