KARACHI, April 27: The Contemporary Arts Resource Centre launched the 2003 reprint edition of the first issue of Artasia which had first come out in the winter of 1965.

Speaking at Suman House on Sunday morning, the director of the Contemporary Arts Resource Centre, Jalal Uddin Ahmed, said that the 1965 volume of Artasia might serve to underscore Pakistan’s own historic initiative in producing what was arguably Asia’s first “inter-Asian” art magazine, as distinct from the avowedly “national” art journals like those coming out at the time from some of the Asian countries, in Japan, India and the Philippines.

He said: “I remember very well how the idea to initiate such an inter-Asian art publication came up for discussion rather casually in early 1962 at a luncheon in Tokyo when six of us, as members of an International Jury for the award of prizes at the Tokyo Prints Bienneial, looked at the question: how is anyone in Europe or America to know about what is happening today in the art world of Asia?

“Indeed how was anyone in Asia itself to know about what was happening in the art world of the rest of Asia? The jury was headed by the distinguished French art critic Prof G.C. Argon, who was subsequently elected president of AICA; and in October 1974 the

AICA general assembly, at its meeting in Mexico, decided to create a regional secretariat for South Asia and the Far East. Pakistan was elected as the seat of this secretariat, establishing contacts with art critics in the region. With Pakistani initiative, National Chapters of AICA were set up in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and Artasia began taking shape.”

He added that in the speech of the chairman of the Contemporary Arts Resource Centre, Anwar Rammal, read out by Ejaz Ahed, he only referred to Artasia as it was. “He has left it to us as members of the arts community to deliberate and decide whether there will be a new Artasia magazine; and if so, what would be mechanics of editing, producing and marketing it.”