THE lavishly decorated, with very rich artistic appeal, interiors of Parveen Rizvi speaks volumes of her past experience and the perfection she has achieved in the world of art. Terming as only the Numero Uno watercolourist of Pakistan would be unfair as she has brought about a revolution, in the process motivating the younger generation towards art scene of Pakistan. An artist and teacher par excellence, she shares her vast and rich interests regarding movies, music and books.
Everything that appeals to her has to have an artistic approach to it. She appreciates movies that portray life and other things related to it in a very arty way. “Art is not what you showcase. It’s about how you portray something dealing with each and every of its aspects in its totality.” This is the basic idea that she keeps in mind while appreciating or criticizing any form of art. She doesn’t watch many movies because of time constraint. Still, whenever she gets the time, she make it a point to watch it from start till the very end.
As an artist herself she feels that movies have a great impact on viewers that’s why she believes that themes that can transform a person into a good human being, should be shown. “Violence shown in the movies is so violent to a normal human and the amount of damage that it does to the viewers, especially younger ones, is enormous. Same goes to sex scenes; I agree they are part of life but so much is a part of life, why do you have to show every part of life? Who needs it? Why not show that part of life that helps a person in living life in a much better way?” she quizzes with her colourful style.
Among the very few of her favourite classics is Tom Hank’s Oscar winner Forrest Gump. The movie stars Tom as a polio patient and it starts at a point where he is sitting at a bus stop with a box of chocolates in hand, and is slightly, what we term as retarded. He talks to a woman sitting besides him, in a very unexpressive way because he doesn’t have the power of expression, because he is so pure and true in his heart that it is touching. To her his unbelievable sincerity is absolutely beautiful.
The same artistic approach in Gladiator seemed to her very crude. She appreciated the lavish sets of ancient heritages they made in the film. She terms Bollywood as a money making industry but there is another side to it that deals with emotions and all the family melodrama and that accounts for most the artistic pleasure that she derives out of Indian cinema.
My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music are simply the classics according to her. In these movies one, could see the courage and the joy of living and that’s what she likes in movies that portray life and how to make something when you have nothing.
She likes music which belongs to an era that is way back her time. Pankajh Malik who’s produced music in her parent’s time gives her the most musical pleasure. Soja Rajkuamri Soja, to her old classics are so beautiful and have a very fine approach in delivering a certain message that she simply loves them. She also adores Noor Jehan for her perfection in singing. “The way she sang when she was fifteen was awesome.” There are also some of the modern music that appeals to her like the song from the Indian flick 1942: A Love Story, Ek Ladki ko Dekha which has a lot of deeper meaning and the imagery used in the lyrics is so powerful that the visage of the girl he is adoring come alive as you listen to it. This is the kind of mature art pieces that she likes.
Her favourite book is Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. It is about his personal life. He was very sickly as a child and he had a very handsome brother who was working in London and then he got unwell and died suddenly. There is one chapter in which his body is brought back to his house and the whole chapter is dedicated to that scene and the description of how the body enters the home is very absorbing. The moment is described in a way as if it is the movement of his own emotions. Lawrence has expressed the relationship between the physical and the emotional movements in a very deeply captivating way.
Towards the eastern side she simply adores Allama Iqbal for his powerful poetry. In Tehran during the time of revolution when she was teaching at an art institute, many people used to come to her and tell her that ‘you have one of the greatest poets of the world’. Her students would recite to her Iqbal’s Persian poetry; that use to make her very proud of her country. Then she mentions Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Parveen Shakir as one of her favourites and concludes that we are very lucky to have such great names attached to our country, but our government doesn’t really honour them. We human beings recognize them and we as a nation have to bring a revolution.
FAVOURITE MOVIE: Forrest Gump and Gladiator
FAVOURITE MUSIC: Soja Rajkumari Soja by Pankajh Malik
THE lavishly decorated, with very rich artistic appeal, interiors of Parveen Rizvi speaks volumes of her past experience and the perfection she has achieved in the world of art. Terming as only the Numero Uno watercolourist of Pakistan would be unfair as she has brought about a revolution, in the process motivating the younger generation towards art scene of Pakistan. An artist and teacher par excellence, she shares her vast and rich interests regarding movies, music and books.
