KARACHI, June 1: The Foundation for Museum of Modern Art (Fomma) launched a monograph on the late Syed Ali Imam on Sunday evening.
The monograph, titled Ali Imam: man of the arts, has been written by Marjorie Husain.
The Fomma honorary secretary, Jalal Uddin Ahmed, said that Fomma itself owed so much to the vision and foresight of Ali Imam who had generously shared it with all of his friends and colleagues, relentlessly pursuing his crusade for a better understanding and critical evaluation of the art and artists of our time.
He said: “The whole idea of setting up a museum of modern art in our country was to provide access under one roof to the whole range of work being produced in the various fields of the visual arts today so as to sharpen our aesthetic perception by relating the contemporary to the classical, the innovative to the tradition, the seemingly new to the intrinsically timeless. He was keen to supplement the physical availability of original works of art with a strong and robust arts research and publishing presence for and in our part of the world.”
Mr Ahmed said that earlier this week, thanks to the increasingly arts-friendly institution, the Defence Housing Authority, Fomma had been enabled to set up a project office for the proposed Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art which had been formally approved by the president of the authority’s executive board and incorporated as part of the provincial capital’s most prestigious educational, leisure and cultural complex, the Race Course Gardens.
He spoke about other monographs that are in the pipeline. He said that Fomma would bring out monographs on Zubaida Agha, Shakir Ali, Laila Shehzad, Bashir Mirza and M.A. Ahed. He added that the monograph on Zubaida Agha was being written by Mussarat Hussain who already had to her credit an excellent book on contemporary Punjab paintings.
The author of the monograph, Marjorie Husain, said that when Syed Ali Imam had finally consented to be the subject of a monograph, he had planned it as a close collaboration between us. ”We were to meet over a period of time and map out the format of his varied lifetimes. Sadly it was not to be. After an initial meeting during which Imam enthusiastically brought out a pile of photographs and cuttings, we were unable to continue our sessions as Imam fell ill.”
She recalled that after Syed Ali Imam had died there were a sited Mr Khan at the archives he had built from his own research materials and finances and found a very professional setup. When I explained my predicament to Mr Khan he played the two-hour duration tape Imam had made and allowed me to take notes.”
The launch meeting was chaired by columnist Ardreshir Cowasjee, who also spoke on the occasion.
