November 20, 2004

Painter of dreamy landscapes, A.Q. Arif remained true to his chosen theme for his third solo exhibition, which took place recently at Karachi’s Clifton Art Gallery. As before, famous buildings from the subcontinent’s Mughal and colonial past emerged from the mist (actually horizontal drips and washes of turpentine-diluted oil paint) to preside over picturesque surroundings filled with pools of water and verdant foliage in this Karachi School of Art (KSA) graduate’s latest work.

Although Arif’s depictions of such national treasures as the Mohatta Palace, Karachi, and Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque and Naulakha Pavilion help promote and preserve the indigenous art and culture of Pakistan, his paintings are highly commercial, aiming to visually please rather than to stir the imagination. His designs for Eid cards drive home the fact that sale of his work, not a thought-provoking social or personal message, is the motivating force behind his art.

Dissociating itself from 20th century art (which for the most part has eluded public appreciation and comprehension) in general, Arif’s oeuvre, stylistically and thematically, harks back to the Romantic movement in western art. During a hundred-year-long period that began in the mid-18th century, western painting was distinguished by an interest in the remote past and dramatic effects, as well as sensitivity to nature’s beauty, all qualities that are evident in Arif’s work.

His art calls to mind in particular the work of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), one of the most important artists of the Romantic movement, who also focused on buildings, some of them situated in exotic locales like Venice, and the atmospheric effects of light and colour. Turner’s The Grand Canal, Venice of 1835 combines the hard, straight lines of architectural and man-made forms (i.e. boats) with the softness of the canal’s flowing water and the amorphous shapes of the cirrus clouds.

Similarly, trees and water complement Arif’s chhatris (domed kiosks) and minarets, which seem to meld into their natural, organic surroundings. Like Arif, Turner was skilled in the use of watercolour, a medium that lends itself to capturing the fleeting nature of light and changes in the appearance of the sky, and that influenced both artists to the degree that the scenes they portray in oils also have a transient quality.

In contrast to Turner’s paintings, which celebrate modernity in the form of trains, as well as the violence of calamitous nature, Arif’s work is heavy with sentiment and quite divorced from presentday life, showing buildings of historical value as uninhabited and deserted, although that may not be the case in reality. These ghostly emblems of a distant past seem to be no more real than their reflections in water; in some paintings they rise like a mirage above a row of trees.

All signs of human existence — people, cars, billboards, litter — are missing from his paintings; this remarkable omission, combined with the unbelievably brilliant greens and blues of plants and water, respectively, celebrates the triumph of nature and all that is aesthetically pleasing over that which is ugly and disturbing. Idealizing the past and accentuating the colours of nature, Arif’s paintings are a fantasy that caters to the prospective buyer who is reluctant to revise his definitions of what is beautiful and what is not, reinforcing rather than challenging the latter’s outlook on life.

Arif is not alone among the 21st century post-modern artists in his preoccupation with the grandeur of the Mughal-style architecture; Hanif Shahzad, another former KSA student, has a similar penchant. Shahzad, however, derives his subject material from Karachi alone, and his paintings record splendid architectural specimens (the Hindu Gymkhana, Denso Hall, and the D.J. Science College, to name a few) that are a part of the city’s multi-ethnic, multi-cultural past as well as a testimonial to its contributions as a major centre of academics, politics, and industry in colonial India.

Therefore, although Shahzad’s focus is limited, his paintings document a variety of building styles, whether local or foreign, as well as the many different functions of the structures themselves. While both Shahzad and Arif celebrate the subcontinent’s rich history in their work, the former’s paintings do so more effectively, for they are replete with architectural details rather than artistic flourishes like drips and washes that distract the viewer’s attention away from the monuments portrayed.