‘Urdu Digest Art’, viewed more as a slice of popular culture from a bygone era than for the aesthetics it purports, was up for a revisit and rethink in the current exhibition, “Original Digest Art” at Spaces Gallery, Karachi. Essentially pen and ink drawings illustrating escapist fiction written for the general entertainment of mass audiences, these digest artworks had no stand alone stature until recently when art galleries began to exhibit them as independent entities.

The 23 drawings that the gallery had displayed were typical Urdu digest fare comprising heroes, heroines and villains. The gallery curator, Zainab Jafri, explains, “These are the original works of artists who contributed to various Urdu digests,” and further added, “These authentic pieces were done according to the series running in the magazines and digests in the ’70s. The works have been obtained from the publishers of these digests.”

Widely viewed by the digest readership only as story allied visuals, the drawings’ current independent spotlight as gallery exhibits invites speculation on the status of this particular aspect of illustrative art. After truck art, local cinema billboard and film poster art is Urdu Digest Art another face of populist Pakistani art?

Could Urdu Digest Art be the new Truck art?

Printed on cheap ‘pulp’ paper the digest publications proliferated in the ’70s and ’80s. Other than the original and seriously inclined Urdu Digest published since the ’60s, the remaining digests such as Jasoosi, Suspense, Subrang, Khawateen, Pakeeza, Aanchal, Shuaa and Kiran, etc, were largely pulp fiction.

Photos by Fahim Siddiqi / White Star

Centralising on romance, crime and fantasy literature of the jinnati, tilsimati and jasoosi type, often by authors using pseudonyms, the publications specialised in delivering cheap thrills as fast as readers could swallow them. The visuals that accompanied them prescribed to the same sensibility.

A breeding ground for creative talent the pulp fiction era gave birth to pulp illustrators. Often learning on the job or through affiliation to local (desi) art studios these artists working in dingy publishing offices were diligent and passionate about their work but lacked the veneer and knowledge of academic art education. Regardless of this shortfall, courtesy their talent bigger-than-life heroes, pretty girls, exotic places, strange and mysterious villains all stalked the pages of the many issues available to the general public on the roadside magazine stands.

By under-paying writers / artists and publishing on inexpensive media, pulp publishers were able to produce low-cost publications accessed by a large Urdu literate readership looking for entertaining non-serious fiction. Populist by nature, fine art was not a requirement for these publications.

Lifting figurative imagery from local and international film and fashion magazines the artists composed illustrations by creating line drawings in pen and ink. Shading was by cross-hatching or pointillism. This was their area of expertise, to create new compositions / illustrations by copying, converting or improvising borrowed, coloured photographic imagery, in the laborious (monochrome) pen and ink technique.

A considerable amount of patience, hand control and familiarity with the working tool, be it a map drawing crow quill nib or a technical Rotring pen or just a plain pointer is a prerequisite for such works. In the current push button, tech savvy, digitally manipulated art world such hand skill capacity stands out.

Today when the lines are being blurred between art disciplines and commercial arts like fashion and design media are mixing freely with fine art, how does digest art fare on the anvil? Flawed and inadequate if viewed through the lens of high art the works gain a new life if seen through the prism of populist art. In this perspective it is pulp fiction art that will never be pulped because it has left its mark on the history of Pakistani mass market magazine / digest fiction. The concerned artists deserve acknowledgement for their handiwork and its representative value. As art the illustrations can be viewed or brought as collectible pieces.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, October 12th, 2014