October 25, 2003

...paint on. ‘Her calligraphic line vibrates with melodic rhythm and the empty space hums with amorphous shapes and cipher marks arranged in the manner of written text,’ writes Salwat Ali about the magical music inherent in Saba Husain’s work

Subscribing to the general view that artists are “strange beings” Saba Husain never envisioned a career in the arts. However, a childhood enriched by aesthetic influences inevitably drew her towards a formal art education. “Enrolling at the NCA was a liberating experience,” she enthuses for it was here that her casual, somewhat latent interest in fine arts, dance and music, flowered into an enduring passion.

“A lot was happening there at that time in textiles, designing, architecture, etc., and the excitement was infectious,” she fondly recalls. Initially her own preference was for oil painting, which became her major with a minor in printmaking. Citing her diverse academic experience as an example, Saba says that “good teachers are vital to laying a sound foundation.”

Her interaction with senior artists and educators like Colin David and Khalid Iqbal had a significant impact on her personal development as an artist. Today she proudly declares: “I am where I am because of my teachers.”

While still in college, Saba had decided that she would pursue advanced studies abroad. With time she began to feel that her chosen medium, oil painting, was a limiting experience as she felt that “once you have mastered a technique it is only the concept you are working on.” Preferring additive methods with scope for technical innovations Saba began to concentrate more on her printmaking. Encouragement came from Colin David who remarked, “Your line is very interesting, why don’t you develop it.”

In the early ’80s, the NCA had no etching press but Punjab University, across the road, did. Her qualms about going there were allayed when Colin assured her that he knew Mr Ghazanfar, who was teaching there, and that she would not have any problems. “I did my etching and aquatints across the road in enemy territory so to speak” Saba recalls with much amusement.

Her repertoire grew as she gained extensive experience in etching, aquatints, lithography, drypoint, linocut, etc. She had seen and was familiar with European prints but a chance encounter with a book on traditional Japanese wood blocks prints — Ukiyo-e, was a riveting experience for her.

She went through this book several times and was utterly fascinated by the highly skilled and refined art of Ukiyo-e (literally the floating world). Their use of handmade paper, water based printing, the way the colours merged into each other, their sophisticated sense of design, were some of the intricate technicalities that appealed to her developing sensibility.”

She also discovered that the art of woodblock printing originated in the subcontinent. Buddhist scriptures were carved on blocks, in one colour, and were used for religious propaganda. This method of printing, via China and Korea, arrived in Japan in the early 8th century with Buddhism. But it was only in the 16th century with the advent of popular literature in the Edo period that this style of printmaking was raised to the level of an art form.

Such revelations were not just a source of much interest to the young printmaker, they also helped in strengthening her resolve to head east for further studies unlike the general trend to gravitate westward for higher education.

Saba Husain singled out Japan as her ultimate destination thinking that as a first world nation some English would be spoken and understood there. However, reality was to prove otherwise and her transition to Japan was a cultural shock in more ways than one. She confesses that, “Khonichewa’ or ‘good day’ was all the Japanese I knew and settling in was a trying experience. Hardly any English was spoken or understood. Conducting basic activities like eating, communicating with people or even reading signs was an ordeal as everything was in Japanese.”

Enrolling at the Japan study Centre, Kyoto, to learn the language was how a determined Saba surmounted her initial hurdles, “and it took me one year to like Japanese food,” she quipped.

In Japan, to study under an eminent teacher is considered a mark of distinction. Saba learnt printmaking for two years at Tomikichiro’s Atelier while she was still a student at Kyoto Institute of Technology. This was an educating experience and an integral part of her development. Sufficiently acclimatized, she was ready to undertake her final period of study. Three years intensive work at the Kyoto City Arts College as a research student in her chosen field yielded a Masters in Fine Arts (1988) with a specialization in printmaking.

While away from home, Saba stemmed nostalgia by listening to her favourite CDs and cassettes of classical music. Her Rag Mala print series developed in these moments of loneliness and introspection and eventually became her thesis presentation. Several group participations and four solo exhibitions from 1986-88 in Japan related mainly to woodblock prints, were again a learning experience.

Launching and managing a show single handedly in an insular country like Japan was a confidence building exercise. She also learnt vital lessons in work ethics and self-sufficiency. Saba fended for herself in the early years of her education in Japan by teaching English. The last two years of her study were taken care of by a Rotary Scholarship. Along the way she bagged a Graduate School Award and a Murasaki Award from City College exhibitions at Kyoto Museum.

Her academic qualifications were enhanced by a paper making course at the Kochi Institute of Paper Making in Shikoku, Japan. In 1994, she participated in a study course on Preservation and Conservation of Works on paper at Camberwell College of Arts, London, England. The following year she was Artist in Residence in the Department of Indian and South East Asia Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.

With a varied and eventful academic background, Saba Husain’s plunge into practical life was also diverse and exploratory. She taught briefly at the NCA for six months after her return from Japan. In 1992, she became founder and director of Sunjaan, an organization which promotes visual and performing arts, and carried out many art related programmes for the younger generation in underprivileged areas.

A considerable amount of her time was devoted to conducting lectures and workshops on woodblock printing at home and abroad at such venues as Ruskin College of Arts, Bradford Museum, Camberwell College of Arts, London, England and Lalit Kala Academy, Kolkata, India. Some lectures and workshops on paper making also took her to Iran. In February 2000, as associate professor, she became visiting faculty at the NCA for the Masters Programme for Visual Arts and remains so to date.

From 1982 to 1999, Saba has had 17 solo exhibitions pertaining to graphics, woodblocks, paintings and paper-works at home and in Japan. Regarding her personal expression, Saba explains that her sojourn in Japan was a time when “everything went into a spin” and new forms began to emerge in her work.”

While conceiving and executing her artworks, she was heavily influenced by Japanese aesthetics, but strove to retain her identity by incorporating elements emanating from her own persona and using supportive, symbolic inferences to history and heritage.

Strains of classical Indian music, abstruse calligraphy, delineations suggesting figurative self-imaging were spaced out in a minimalist Japanese attitude in her woodblocks of 1986-87. In “Ambience” a soft palette of browns and greys is given a lilt with red graphics which double cleverly as Arabic syllables and fluted ends of a saxophone. The grazed, empty ground and floating, undulating organic shapes evoke the musical sensibility. Similarly, ‘Raag Darbari’ and ‘Composition No.10’ have a muted, introspective expression with traces of swaying rhythms and hints of recognizable forms.

From barely decipherable imagery, Saba moves towards over-simplification. “Music is a very abstract concept,” she comments, while examining some of her paper works of 1988. Working on handmade paper with acrylic and Sumi (Japanese ink), her oeuvre is reduced to bare mark-making on patches of colour. These effects can be variously interpreted as end of mid strokes of syllables, or sudden spurts of feeling. But, it is her endeavour to liberate line and colour from the imposing weight of representation that carries her expression forward.

Released from textual constraints, a calligraphic line aligns with the strains of classical music to orchestrate her ‘Raag Mala’ series. This woodblock and etching triptych of 1988 reenacts the raga as she has felt it. Her calligraphic line vibrates with melodic rhythm and the empty space hums with amorphous shapes and cipher marks arranged in the manner of written text. The artist appropriates only the form of calligraphy, not its legible content.

As with the scratched surfaces of the woodblocks, the textual nuances of handmade paper are an integral component of her artworks. Her paper making techniques of layering, mixing of various fibres and organic elements enabled her to achieve what she calls “the translucent living quality of paper”. This treatment of paper as a reactive medium is used as a formal device in her art to augment the subtlety of her expression. The outcome is a deeply felt but visibly understated form.

This interactive image-free art seems more a product of spirit than external vision. Her work shows that till the mid-’90s she was evoking her inner realities through this form of organic abstraction. But paintings executed as recently as 2002 record a change as Saba returns to the figurative and the pictorial.

Compared to her Spartan imagery of the ’80s and ’90s, ‘The Musician’ is rich in colour, form and strokework. Executed in acrylic on handmade paper, this painting can be read as a self-portrait of sorts. A coded narrative with a figure form and symbolic imagery of motifs, floral and foliated shapes cavorting and supine by turns in rich scarlets, blues, and ochres opens a new chapter in her oeuvre. It just might be a coming together of all her varied impressions.

Teaching in the Masters programme at the NCA, Saba takes her role as an educator seriously. Her advice to the younger generation is that they should learn to appreciate their own heritage, be it in music, fine or performing arts, and strive to cultivate the reading habit. “They should try reading Edward Said on orientalism, on culture and imperialism; they should compensate their lack of exposure to foreign exhibitions by gaining information through written text and visuals. They must learn to question things in order to understand and articulate. Indeed, they must develop the urge to know.”