May 22, 2004

Newness in art is a concept of western Modernist thought that was perhaps one of the by-products of existentialism. Moving to the very edge of that expression have been the more known examples of art that defy the past traditions of painting and two-dimensional picture-making; Barnett Newman’s famous painting, “Red, Yellow and Blue”, and Frank Stella’s ultimate unprimed, blank canvas, that was exhibited with it’s back to the viewer were gestures — although historically significant, these were a far cry for the death of painting.

They managed not to prevent the death of painting because there have been artistic traditions that lie beyond the domain of western influence, whose art is a by-product of the larger symbolic, ritualistic and religious context in which they function as art. In his essay, “Who’s afraid of red, yellow and blue?” Thierry De Duve theorizes about Newman’s gesture as a statement that signified the end of all ‘isms’, and the prediction and affirmation that art is based on the definitions of ‘isms’, and that modernism had reached the edge. Hence post-modernism, for the sake of a new name, but remaining a regurgitation of the old in a new way.

An art form, whether or not it has been approved to be in vogue by the limitations imposed on it by modernist or post-modernist cannons of ‘art’, does carry the dictates of an overwhelmingly theoretical and an often prejudiced viewpoint that has sought to exclude rather than to include. The far-reaching effect of the fixation with newness is undoubtedly due to new explorations in technology combined with the need to rely on shock tactics.

Why is it that Damien Hurst’s ‘Death in the mind of another” (dead whales soaked in formaldehyde, and shown in containers which viewers had to walk by to sense the scale) was able to win the coveted Turner Prize a few years ago in the UK? Could we imagine the outrage if a similar level of prize was given to an installation of this nature in Pakistan?

Perhaps there is a need to understand the distance in time that separates our experience of new technology and technology-based developments. A mindset that still wanders in a rural terrain and closer to the earth, under the shade of a keekar tree, is separated from the hi-tech world of digital technology. Even our roads in the poshest of residential areas are in a perpetual state of ‘development’ or of being dug up. Art that is naturally identifiable is usually that which stems from influences in the physical environment of the artist.

Even though the use of new material and media must be explored and encouraged, there is the risk of an element of an awkward contrive and an unnaturalness, as artists establish their relationship to new media and ‘foreign concepts’. A medium must transcend your surroundings, be filtered by your experience in order to gain strength from you as the arbitrator of new ideas.

There has never been the question of the return to painting, as in the West, for us, because we have been at it all along. Picture-making, whether it has been in the form of design for textiles such as the Sindhi Ajrak, or ceramic tiles from Hala, images on our transport trucks, landscape painting from Punjab, or even our calligraphy which carries a strong visual aesthetics, have grown in a continuity that shapes our definition of art.

An artist whose work brings you to raise the question of changing trends in art is Mohammad Ilyas, whose oils on canvas seem to present an honest and natural link to colour and the physical materiality of paint. Ilyas presents a substantial body of semi-realistic paintings of buildings in inner Lahore, Chiniot and Karachi.

Originally from Gojra, Toba Tok Singh, Ilyas spends most of his time on his land in Faisalabad. Although he was tutored by Ali Imam himself and also started his artistic career at Imam’s in an exhibition in 1986, the artist never sought the limelight that could have earned him recognition. There was also the absence of many years in which he did not exhibit a collective body of paintings, but continued to make a living from selling his work.

The recent paintings show at Indus, reveal a remarkable dexterity in the compositional division of space and an intellectual manipulation of form. Seemingly oblivious to the new type of work being done, Ilyas builds his imagery from photographs, but the end result passes through a process that builds upon hiss deep relationship with oil paint. Colours that are mixed to create a certain mood make the viewer revel in the sensitivity and depth of his palette.

The paintings, with a narrow vertical format, form a tightness in composition that lends focus to the spaces in between the buildings. The treatment to the edges becomes a stylistic feature that conveys an ease and even enjoyment of his material. Emphasis on the incidental and the treatment of light and dark become a point of celebration. Painting as a joy and colour explored for its own sake show in the work a pleasant surprise for those who are tired of seeing work that needs to be explained. It is also how far the viewer would like to appreciate the work of an artist and not that of a known name.