aesthetic modernism in the post-colony: the making of a national college of art, lahore

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Aesthetic Modernism in thePost-Colony: The Making of

a National College of Art inPakistan (1950–1960s)Nadeem Omar

Xxxxxx

Abstract

330

JADE 27.3 (2008)

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd



Nadeem Omar

331With the emergence of India and Pakistan as new

post-colonial states, the decades of the 1950s

and 1960s acquired unique importance in the

history of South Asia. It was a period of the

dismantling of colonial structures and institutions

and a gestation for a whole new set of impulses

that owe their life to the birth of modern nations

on the cultural and political map of South Asia

(Jalal 2001). The nascent Pakistani state in its

early decades struggled to forge a hegemonic

cultural identity over a multicultural and multi-

ethnic map to replicate an official version of the

‘imagined community’ of a modern Islamic nation

[1]. The emancipatory discourses of the post-

colonial state were immersed in the paradigm of

modernisation and development, which

prescribed the policies for the growth and devel-

opment of the national economy through trade,industry and technical education (Noman 1988).

In the modernisation discourses of the Paki-

stani state, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ became

emblems of transitional stages of national cultural

development. The project of modernity spurred

the national imagination as colonialism was

recast as an unfinished project of modernity, leav-

ing room for a renewed agenda for the progress

and development of a modern nation. The central

tenets of economic policy and planning in Paki-

stan in the 1950s and 1960s came to be definedin terms of the theories of modernisation and

development, which were at the forefront of

social sciences research in the post-world-war

period (Eisenstadt 1974). Borrowing from the

classical sociology of Durkheim and Weber, post-

world-war development discourses viewed non-

Western societies as ‘traditional’ ones, experienc-

ing the same transitory period of evolutionary

development, from ‘pre-modern’ to ‘modern’,

which Western societies had long ago passed

through. Operative from the literal beginning ofthe European Renaissance, the opposition

between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ society formed

an important link in the genealogy of nineteenth-

and twentieth-century modern thought and

continues to provide substance to the theories of

modernisation circulating since the 1950s (Hall &

Gieben 1992).

The advocates of modernisation theories focused

upon the socio-economic conditions of Western

and non-Western societies with particular refer-

ence to the notion of ‘development’, and drew

parallels between them to highlight the contrast-

ing features of their prototypes (Hobart 1993). A

tangled web of discourses, in diverse genres

including economics, political sciences and soci-

ology, similar to discourses of Orientalism but

with North America as the primary referent repre-

sented the former colonies in continuing need of

education from the Western world (Escobar

1995). Western societies, viewed as constituting

the pinnacle of progress, had abandoned more

traditional forms of community and tradition, and

this ‘passing of traditional society’ became the

guiding canon for a wide range of studies analys-

ing the worldwide transition to modern societies(Lerner 1958). From Parsons-inspired typologies

of economic modernization to Lerner’s studies of

social-psychological contrasts, and Rostow’s

‘stage’ model, the Western-dominated scholar-

ship on development, generated various models

for isolating essential features of tradition and

modern societies (Webster 1984). In their deter-

ministic worldviews, various trajectories of transi-

tion from tradition to modern societies were

projected on the world map, dividing the socio-

geography of the world into the ‘traditional’ and‘modern’ (Shiner 1975).

Framings of traditions: the Mayo School of

Art and modern art education in Pakistan

The Mayo School of Arts (MSA) Lahore, which

was established as a school of industrial art and

design in 1875, was restructured and upgraded

as the National College of Arts (NCA) in 1958 to

provide art and design education to the modern

artists of a newly independent nation [2]. By the

early 1960s, the craft section of the MSA wasrestructured and curtailed in fundamental ways in

the process of the formation and development of

the NCA as a premier art institution which was to

be integrated with the emerging urban-industrial

economy of Pakistan. Like its predecessor, the

NCA was located at the apex of the provincial

(and later federal) system of art instruction, for

which the sphere of influence went far beyond

JADE 27.3 (2008)




332

Nadeem Omar

the confines of the college. Being the only art

institution in the country for several decades, the

NCA became the arbitrator of a public aesthetic

sphere, anchored in the canon of modern West-

ern art (Farrukh 1997).

In the nationalist discourses on art education

in South Asia, the shift from ‘craft’ education to

‘fine art’ instruction was understood to be symp-

tomatic of a cultural transition from traditional to

modern society [3]. However, the cultural proc-

esses for the construction of national identity

were rooted in the fundamental postulates of

colonial modernity that considered ‘arts’ and

‘crafts’ as binary opposites made to appear as

separate and almost unrelated constituencies.

The exclusive claims of painting, sculpture and

architecture to the status of ‘fine art’ and the

marginalisation of undifferentiated ‘crafts’ to a salon de refuse is part of the discourse that consti-

tuted fine art as a sign of the modernity of the

nation, and craft as the emblem of timeless folk

traditions [4]. Tradition and modernity became

the axes around which debates on the construc-

tion of cultural identities of modern nations in

South Asia would continue to generate [5]. For

the rising generations of Pakistani artists in the

1950s, the formation of NCA heralds the begin-

ning of modern art in Pakistan, the spirit and prac-

tice of which was allegedly discouraged in colo-nial art schools, intended to produce low-order

craftsmen for the service of the colonial economy

(Hashmi forthcoming).

To be sure, for modern artists and the national-

ist elite, the MSA was always configured as a

craft school, which was narrowly concerned with

continuing and encouraging artisanal products.

Its links with the rural development and cottage

industries of the province were over-emphasised

in contemporary literature at the expense of the

much wider influence the school has exertedunder the sway of the Arts and Crafts movement

over the construction of the Oriental canon in

Northern India. Specifically, the contributions of

the MSA and its large number of Indian teachers

and alumni to the Indo-Saracenic architecture

and industrial arts of the Punjab through instruc-

tion, commissions and exhibitions for more than

half a century, are passed over in silence [6]. Most

importantly, the transformation of the school in

the early decades of the twentieth century, under

the pedagogic influence of the Bauhaus and its

sustained engagement to negotiate craftsman-

ship with modern industry is conveniently

ignored. Routinely represented as the ‘childhood’

of institution, under the imperial tutelage of the

venerated first Principal Lockwood Kipling, the

static image of the MSA as a craft school, trying

in vain to revive the decaying folk industries, was

invented and retained [7]. Even Shakir Ali, the

renowned modern painter and the first Pakistani

principal of the NCA recalled the objectives of the

MSA as imparting ‘instruction in various forms of

crafts-work in order to help the indigenous handi-

crafts and art industries of the Province by main-

taining ancient traditions’ (emphasis added) [8].

Without a qualified critical appreciation of colonialeducation, Shakir Ali subscribed to the static

image of the MSA surviving in isolation from the

national and international art world. It was rein-

forced through anecdotal publications as traces

of its archive and the institutional existence as the

school of industrial art and design for more than

half a century in colonial Punjab were erased from

public memory [9].

Prior to the discovery of the administrative

records of the MSA, which led to the formation of

National College of Arts Archive (NCAA) in 2000,the received wisdom of modern artists and art

historians was never challenged. It never

surprised art historians that the administrative

records of the MSA had such a varied existence:

from carefully kept active records to scraps of old

files and papers left unattended for more than

half a century. The history of contingency of

forgetfulness stems not from a gap as it were,

but from the specific rationalities of the post-colo-

nial state. The forgetfulness gestures towards

the art and educational discourses of the post-colonial state, which privileged a system of arts

education hinged on the binary opposition of art

and craft. Such formulations in current art histori-

cal scholarship relocated the national cultural

development on the scale of post-world-war

economic theories of progress and modernisa-

tion as well as synchronised with the ideological

discourses of the post-colonial state and national-

JADE 27.3 (2008)




ist intelligentsia (Ali 1997). Given the absolute

dearth of primary sources for the history of the

MSA, prior to NCAA, such a conservative view of

the school came to be established. It appears as

if a backward view of the MSA was based on a

colonial sociology that had constructed Indian

crafts as the historical residue of static, pre-indus-

trial India and was constantly invoked to exagger-

ate the post-colonial career of the NCA as a

national art institution.

From MSA to NCA: the forward-looking years

The independence of Pakistan, the imperatives of

economic planning coupled with the obligations

for nation building, dictated concerns for the reor-

ganisation of the MSA as part of the national tran-

sition from a traditional craft-oriented approach to

a modern design-oriented philosophy [10].Though officially inaugurated in October 1958 as

a national institution, with three main depart-

ments in Fine Arts, Design and Architecture, the

NCA remained in gestation for several years as

attempts to restructure and upgrade the MSA

began in the years after partition [11]. Sidney

Speeding, the last British Principal of the MSA,

submitted a proposal to the Economic Planning

Commission in 1954, ‘to develop Mayo School of

Art into a National College of Art on the basis of

an institute of Industrial Design comparable instandards with European Institutions’ to be affili-

ated with the Punjab University. According to his

initial planning, it included training in architecture

to a qualified professional status, textile design

and printing, pottery design and manufacture,

commercial art, industrial design, general design

including interior decoration, and general design

[12]. The location of the school in proximity to

Lahore Museum, Punjab Public Library, the Paki-

stan Arts Council, the Fine Art Society and Punjab

University, equipped with a rich library where aFine Arts department set up to teach women

since 1941 was seen to provide ‘a balanced

educational background necessary for students’

development’ [13]. The entrance qualification for

the students was raised from higher secondary

to matriculation at a minimum age of 16 years.

Three-year courses on Architectural draughts-

manship were revised to suit the standards of the

Royal Institute of British Architects. The

programme modules for BA and MA Fine Arts

degree programmes in affiliation with Punjab

University were also developed to strengthen

fine art education [14].

Commitments to technical assistance from

the United States were sought for the infrastruc-

tural development of the MSA. Spedding hoped

to stimulate production in textile and metal indus-

tries with improved research in indigenous

designs, in addition to architecture at the School,

which would explore ‘research into tropical

domestic architecture ... leading to possibilities

of new industries’. The instruction for commer-

cial artists to work in the advertising industry was

justified on economic grounds. A publicity art

studio was to be developed to give students

commercial and production experience beforejoining industry. Three teaching posts were sanc-

tioned for professors in Architecture, Industrial

and Commercial Designing and Handicrafts

along with the post of Principal, to form the

educational nucleus to streamline instruction at

the MSA. As a result, three years before it was

renamed the National College of Arts (which in

popular lore is still called Mayo college), Sydney

Spedding declared it in a press article ‘as the only

one which has the making of a National College

of Art for the country as a whole’ [15].The transition of the MSA to the NCA in the

1950s and 1960s also offers a parallel reading of

the making of the Pakistani state and society. The

partition of India left deep scars on the social body

of the MSA. More than half of the school popula-

tion, from faculty, students and staff, belonging to

the Hindu and Sikh religions left Lahore in 1947

and were scattered throughout India [16].

Reduced to a shambles in the aftermath of the

partition of India, the MSA made a new beginning

as a national college of art to train young design-ers in ways similar to the attempts of the nascent

Pakistani state to develop its infrastructure and to

train citizens for a modern Islamic nation. The

intersection of state discourse in the educational

policy and planning of the NCA offers concen-

trated readings of the ideologies of modernisation

and development that had taken root in the devel-

oping world. The first convocation report of the

Nadeem Omar

333

JADE 27.3 (2008)




334

Nadeem Omar

NCA on 15 June 15 1959 delivered by its first

(American) principal, Mark Sponenburgh [17],

draws on this parallel more explicitly:

It is an interesting fact that the new National

College of Arts began its formal instruction on the

6th of October 1958, and that a significant change

in the Government of Pakistan took place on the

following day on the October 7th. We are born in

the climate of constructive change, and we pray

that we may contribute in this progressive and

refreshing spirit. I hasten to add however that

there have been moments during the past

academic year when problems that the new

regime of this college faced seemed surprisingly

similar to those embodied in the national frame of

reference [18].

The priorities of the first military regime of General

Ayub Khan, to whom Sponenburgh alluded, were

set squarely within the paradigm of modernisa-

tion and development of a new nation-state.

Along with the formation of the NCA, the closing

decade of the 1950s saw the large-scale restruc-

turing of educational institutions under the new

foreign assistance programmes sought out by the

military regime. Three months after the capture of

power, President Ayub Khan inaugurated a

National Commission on Education to develop aplan for ‘a re-organization and re-orientation of

existing educational system so as to evolve a

national system, which would better reflect our

spiritual, moral and cultural values’ [19]. The

Harvard Advisory Group at the Central Planning

Commission of Pakistan developed the second

five-year plan in which technical education formed

the human core of the large-scale industrialisation

and did receive strong financial backup [20]. The

presence of Walter Gropius at the Institute of

Design at Harvard in the post-war years mightexplain the proposals of the Harvard Advisory

Group, and the consequent national policy empha-

sis to render architecture and consumer goods as

functional, cheap and consistent with mass

production [21]. To this end, Gropius and his asso-

ciates at the Bauhaus in the years between 1919

and the 1930s had attempted to reunite art and

craft to bring together functional products and

aesthetic form. Influenced by the reformative

impulses of the German art movement, the Plan-

ning Commission aimed to increase the profi-

ciency of the skilled labour force to increase inno-

vatively designed consumer goods for local

consumption as well as for export.

In this vision of technical education for Paki-

stan, the NCA played a leading role in developing

the technical resources of the country for urban

industrial development. From concerns with

physical infrastructure to the appointment and

termination of services of the technical staff, the

Central Planning Commission monitored and

reviewed all new projects for the conversion of

the old MSA that were not in line with new polices

being created at the centre. One of the ways to

strengthen the national college was to seek

foreign expert assistance as well as foreign quali-fied Pakistanis. Consequently, in the initial years,

NCA had a fair number of technical experts who

were brought in to design the curriculum, contrib-

ute to teaching and link it up with diploma and

degree level technical education to serve the

emerging urban-industrial economy.

The NCA received generous assistance from

the Asia Foundation in terms of foreign faculty,

visiting fellowships, scholarships for students,

and visual materials sometimes laden with an

explicit ideological agenda [22]. A large numberof books, journals, magazines and visual aid

material donated by the German Cultural Centre

and the United States Educational Foundation

(USEF) made up the initial collection of the NCA

library. For more than a decade, the USEF steered

the development of the NCA by coordinating and

supporting the visits of American and European

teachers on short contracts. Kochi Takita (1960–

61) a Japanese artist, Professor Warren Barringer

(1960–62) a Canadian designer, and Dr Wallace

Spencer Baldinger (1960–61) a Professor, Schoolof Architecture and Allied Arts at Oregon Univer-

sity and Director of Museum of Art were respon-

sible for the reorganization of the ceramics,

design and architecture departments at the NCA

respectively. Professor J. Palmer Boggs (1960–

62), head of architecture at Oklahoma University,

taught courses in structural design and formed

the nucleus of the architecture department [23].

JADE 27.3 (2008)




Mary Lewis (1958–60), a Fulbright lecturer in

sculpture, contributed to the teaching at the fine

arts department at the NCA. Abbassi Akhtar, a

lecturer in design who was the first Pakistani

woman-artist at the NCA, took charge of the

fundamental programme [24].

In its founding years, the NCA kept the policy

of retaining teachers from the MSA who were

considered practising architects artists and

craftsmen in their respective specialised fields.

However, a foreign qualification was invariably

preferred over a local degree in the recruitment of

staff. For instance, out of three qualifying condi-

tions for the post of the principal of NCA, Lahore

in 1962, the very first clause demanded a diploma

in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London,

or from other leading British or French universi-

ties [25]. The diploma holders of the MSA wereranked lower in the official scale and placed in a

separate cadre to foreign-qualified persons. A

new category of gazetted teaching staff,

educated artists and critics, was added to the

establishment as lecturers and professors. A

crop of craftsmen from the MSA were retained as

instructors, masters (and demonstrators) on a

temporary basis. Among them only good, effi-

cient and qualified hands were to be absorbed

into the professional cadres. Ironically, even the

widely celebrated miniature painter Haji Muham-mad Sharif, who joined the MSA in 1951, at the

age of 60, was not granted status equal to that of

a lecturer (with consequent low salary) during his

entire career at NCA, on the basis that as a tradi-

tional practitioner he held no formal qualifica-

tions. His lifetime experience could not earn him

professional status equal to an art school

educated artist, in a field in which he was cele-

brated over three generations of known ‘heredi-

tary’ miniature painters [26].

In the canons of nationalist art history in Paki-stan, the birth of modern art was signalled by the

break with the traditional style of painting, which

had a strong public appeal. The works of A. R.

Chughtai, a student of MSA, who painted themes

from Urdu and Persian poetry, and Ustad Allah

Baksh, a self-taught artist-craftsman of mytho-

logical themes and village landscapes were

condemned by a new generation of artists as ‘old

fashioned’ and ‘lagging behind the spirit of times’

(Ali 1989, 222). Although Western styles of paint-

ing had always formed the centre of gravity for

generations of painters in colonial India, the

source of inspiration of Pakistani artists markedly

shifted from regional genres of art and literature

to predominantly Western visual arts movements

such as expressionism, cubism, abstraction and

impressionism which tapped a rich vein among

art-school-educated artists in urban and educa-

tional centres like Lahore and Karachi. Together

with Zubaida Agha, Shakir Ali, Sadequain Naqvi

and Ahmed Pervaiz, the new generation of

modern artists, created what Akbar Naqvi follow-

ing Harold Roseberg has called the ‘tradition of

the modern’ (Naqvi 1997). At Lahore, a British

landscape painter, Anna Molka Ahmad, painted

and taught a generation of Pakistani modernartists. The modernity of the Pakistani artists

stemmed as much from their subjects and

themes as much from the institutional location

they belonged to. Any work which existed outside

the institutional framework of gallery, exhibitions

and art schools did not survive in the ‘tradition of

modern’ [27].

Along with a national art college, the infrastruc-

ture for creating a modern art, distinct from ‘tradi-

tional’ crafts in Pakistan was scantly provided by

the federal government, by setting up the KarachiFine Art Society in 1949, backed up by foreign

diplomats. A nascent system of art schools,

formal associations, art galleries and exhibitions

was put together to advertise the advent of the

contemporary art of Pakistan as the symbol of

modernity of the nation. The Karachi Fine Art Soci-

ety hosted the first solo exhibition of Zubaida

Agha, the much acclaimed founder of the modern

art movement in Pakistan and continued to exhibit

and promote modern artists such as Shakir Ali, a

‘radical manifestation of European modernism’ inPakistan in the 1950s [28]. In addition to the Paki-

stan Art Council at the federal capital Karachi,

regional chapters of art associations were opened

in Lahore and Decca to promote ‘contemporary

art’ and art-school-educated artists [29]. From its

very inception, modern Pakistani art tended to

draw its practitioners from a relatively privileged,

literate and upwardly mobile class of citizens who

Nadeem Omar

335

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336

Nadeem Omar

looked towards the West for inspiration and affili-

ations. A much hyped event hosted by the Art

Council was the Asian Art Critics Seminar , proudly

announced to be the first of its kind to be held in

an Asian country, under the stewardship of Altaf

Gauhar, the literary spin doctor of Ayub Khan’s

regime. To be held between 28 November and 1

December 1963 at Lahore, it was aimed at

enabling Pakistani artists to forge professional as

well as institutional links with the International

Association of Art Critics, which sponsored the

event. Moreover, the Seminar was intended to

train the participants in ‘the systems of commer-

cial gallery systems, possibilities of organizing

composite Asian as well as national exhibitions

and projections of Asian Art within Asia’ [30]. As a

logical outcome of looking to the West, the paint-

ers of a newly independent Pakistan ‘chose Amer-ican history to launch themselves into their orbits’,

a chapter in the history of Pakistan art whose

trajectories are well charted (Naqvi 2001, 10).

Post-Bauhaus influences at NCA: an aborted

agenda

In the 1950s, when Shakir Ali began spreading

the gospel of modernism among educated artists

of Lahore, Mark Sponenburgh, to use Akbar

Naqvi’s words, was ‘preaching Bauhaus philoso-

phy’ among the teachers and students of theNCA (Naqvi 2001, 35). The Bauhaus school, as it

is known, had a strong mandate to dissolve

certain artificial barriers, considered as an

unwanted residue of the earlier beaux-arts tradi-

tions, hindering the integration of visual arts. The

distinction between art and craft premised by

utilitarian ideologies, which inhibits the integra-

tion of artefacts within a unified aesthetic space,

was strongly contested by the proponents of the

Bauhaus school. Sponenburgh turned out to be a

reformer administrator who raised the NCA onthe model of the Bauhaus school, with teaching

in three main departments of art, design and

architecture – integrated in arts and crafts.

In the first progress report of the NCA in 1958–

59, Sponenburgh described the objectives of

education at the NCA in the field of art, architec-

ture and design education in phrases echoing the

Arts and Crafts movement and Kipling at MSA.

‘The completeness of every society must consist

of a capacity to recognize and utilize its native

artistic potentials.’ Against this background, he

brought out the educational philosophy of the

NCA, organized along ‘modern lines … in order

that it can meet the challenge of our economically

and industrially expanding society’. he went on:

This institution seeks to go beyond technical instruc-

tion by placing emphasis on creative thought and

action and to develop in students an awareness of

this essential unity of the visual arts both traditional

and contemporary. In this respect, the National

College of Arts is similar to the Bauhaus school

where effort was made to integrate industry and

visual arts in a harmonious whole [31].

With explicit reference to the Bauhaus as a modelfor developing the NCA, Sponenburgh inspired

students and teachers ‘to preserve folk arts which

are in danger of being lost amid economic devel-

opment and social change’. In this task, the NCA

had to play a crucial role, to act as a centre of

enlightened criticism and advice for craftpeople,

as well as learn from the techniques and materi-

als used by craftspeople to create a contempo-

rary Pakistani art. ‘It calls for not only sifting and

preserving what is best in our tradition but also

for revitalizing in harmony with the trends in thecontemporary world’ [32]. He further stressed

efforts being taken ‘to cultivate reputable stand-

ards of taste and to give the students an apprecia-

tion of indigenous traditions, and understanding

of the forms and functions of all the components

of the traditional Design’. In his vision, the artists

were to receive practical and professional studio

training and designers were trained to assess

consumer needs and translate them into satisfy-

ing products. Above all, he wanted architects

who could stimulate greater use of indigenousmaterial and could become by experience fully

qualified for professional practice [33]. In the

modernisation of art education at NCA, tradition

was not to be ignored; in fact it was to be consti-

tuted as one of the central coordinates for the

construction of modern national identity:

JADE 27.3 (2008)




It should be pointed out that although many of the

recommendations appearing in this report would

point the college more in the direction of design

than of arts and crafts per se, every effort should

be made to preserve traditional indigenous arts

and skills. Indeed the college should be a citadel

for defending and encouraging such traditional

disciplines as miniature painting and calligraphy

for these might otherwise pass out of existence

[34].

The revivalist and preservationist concerns of

national art were achieved by Sponenburgh by

scouting the industrial centres set up by the

Department of Industries, but also by accompany-

ing students on field surveys and study trips to

centres of artisanal productions and factories for

research and instruction. One of the very first field-works in Northern Pakistan in the summer of 1960

led to an ethnographic exhibition of Folk Arts of

Swat held at the NCA gallery a year later in Febru-

ary. The students made measured drawings,

photographic surveys, rubbings and paintings as

well as collecting samples of woodcrafts, jewel-

lery, textiles, basketry and paintings. The exhibi-

tion also travelled to Karachi where it was hosted

by the Pakistan American Cultural Center. Later

the entire collection of artefacts became part of

the ethnological gallery of the Lahore Museum.Sponsored by the Asia Foundation, the fieldwork

was deemedthe ‘first step to compile an index of

Pakistani Design similar to the American Index of

Design’. The Swat valley fieldwork was followed

by research on Sindh, especially Cholistan in

1961–62 and formed a unique craft collection of

the region. Both exhibitions travelled to London in

1956 as part of the Pakistan pavilion at the inaugu-

ration of the Commonwealth Institute [35].

The department of design built on the legacy

of the Bauhaus which made its frequent appear-ance in industrial art discourses as part of a pack-

age to develop indigenous design industries

through professional training and supervision of

the craftsmen. James Warren, Visiting professor

of Design at NCA, phrased the objectives of the

design department in the light of the second five

year plan’s emphasis to conserve precious

foreign exchange by increasing the sale of

domestic production through improved designs.

He placed a strong emphasis on learning to work

with indigenous raw material and techniques ‘to

appreciate both the possibilities and their limita-

tions’. Students were encouraged ‘to learn about

and actually use the tools and processes that are

employed by the craftsmen in this country’ [36].

In his speech to the first World Congress of

Craftsmen 1961, Sponenburgh reiterated one of

his commitments to define the objectives and

function of the NCA as a safe haven for handi-

crafts, which needed to be salvaged from the

impending industrialisation. The fascination for

industrial goods drove craftsmen to adapt to

machine aesthetics for making their product

appears ‘modern’. As a result, he argued that

‘even the traditional producers of excellent hand-

made objects prefer cheap machine-madedesigns in their flair to be modern’. He deplored

the cultural domination of British rule, which had

marginalised the popular pride on handicrafts

that were the products of the symbiotic relation

of ‘the craftsman and the public’. In his view, the

craftsperson as the living embodiment of art and

culture had been isolated from public patronage,

causing stagnation in the tradition: ‘Experimenta-

tion and research cease to be part of their crea-

tive program.’ To rejuvenate the tradition, Sponen-

burgh argued, educational philosophy had to bedeveloped to create a genuine appreciation and

acceptance of the handicrafts in the country. Mili-

tating against older traditions of social and

aesthetic stratification, education at the NCA

aimed to free students from the psychology of

individual genius and help them attain status

satisfaction through their contribution to the over-

all process of production.

The first Pakistani principal of the NCA was

Shakir Ali (1962–75), who by virtue of his location,

age and body of art work served as a paradigmfor modern art and individual artist in the country

[37]. In the eyes of critics, he inspired cubism

among students and colleagues in the early

1950s and as a result, ‘in less than year, nearly

every painter in Lahore, including many of the

older ones, were using a cubist style introduced

by Shakir Ali’ (Sirhindi 1997). Offering a visual

reference to the development of modern art in

Nadeem Omar

337

JADE 27.3 (2008)




338

Nadeem Omar

Pakistan, his oeuvre of paintings lends itself to a

national cultural identity, as the national art estab-

lishment combines a version of modern art,

comprising of traditional and avant-garde. To lay

claim to an unbroken lineage of national art

production, for the first National Art Exhibition in

Dhaka (presently Bangladesh) in 1954, the then

West Pakistan government selected the works of

Shakir Ali and Zubaida Agha as torchbearers of

Western styles of painting complemented by

Chughtai and Allah Buksh as insignia of ‘tradi-

tional’ art. The signs of Western styles of painting,

amid more local styles rooted in the folk and the

past, were emblematic of the growth and matu-

rity of a new nation. One of the unintended conse-

quences of concerns with modern fine art move-

ments in Pakistan was that the Bauhaus

philosophy of the college, with its explicit social-ist orientations, was submerged and curtailed in

fundamental ways in the process of the develop-

ment of the NCA as a premier fine art institution.

Occasionally individuals mourned the loss of

the Bauhaus spirit which enabled the artists and

craftsperson-designers to draw on indigenous

design traditions and skills for inspiration, innova-

tion and adoption. In November 1964, J. A. Rahim,

then Pakistani Ambassador in France, drew the

attention of the Vice Chancellor Export Promotion

Bureau to the ‘complete lack of elementary artis-tic training both among workmen and those

responsible for our designing’ leading to a decline

in exports of handicrafts [38]. In contrast to fine

art colleges in Europe, which served as the real

suppliers of design ideas for industry, Rahim

castigated the NCA for not doing enough to

educate the workpeople. This veteran Bengali

civil servant, who later wrote the socialist mani-

festo of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the

late 1960s, echoed the Bauhaus ideology of the

integration of visual arts when he suggested that‘Art schools or colleges will have to be organized

to take care of artists and the education of handi-

craft workmen’ [39].

The letter was sent to Shakir Ali, who in

response drew sharp distinctions between hand-

icraft, industrial art and fine arts, thereby rejecting

the concerns expressed by the ambassador.

Contrary to the ideals of the Bauhaus set forth in

the curriculum of the NCA which aimed to bring

artists and craftspeople into an environment of

mutual learning, Shakir Ali considered the devel-

opment of handicrafts a digression from the

concerns of the NCA. He asserted that the NCA

was primarily an educational institution and was

engaged in training students in Fine Art, Architec-

ture and Industrial Design. In his view, handicrafts

were the historical residue of pre-industrial India,

from which there was little to learn [40].

Contrary to the NCA, the National Institute of

Design, Ahmadabad, in India successfully turned

the principles of the Bauhaus to the service of the

Indian economy. Indian Industrial designers drew

on the skills and knowledge of self-taught artisans

to make hand manufacturing co-exist in a creative

relationship with mass production. From product

diversification to the revival of traditional designs innew applications, from improvising artisan’s tools

to redesigning tools and workplaces, generations

of Bauhaus designers in India gave hand manufac-

ture a new lease of life (Chatterjee 1988).

In trying to duplicate its principles for reviving

and reinventing craft industries into modern

manufacture, the Bauhaus philosophy had a

short-lived career at the NCA. Sponenburgh’s

strong inclination towards serving industry

through art and design education disappeared in

the context of the post-colonial identity politics ofnationalism and modernisation in a postmodern

economic world. Its founding objectives based on

the principles of the Bauhaus, intending it to serve

the purpose of learning and educating the rural

and urban worker were passed over, as by the

middle of 1960s, modern artists, largely comprised

of the first generation of NCA graduates began to

look elsewhere for inspiration and critique.

Postscript

The National College of Arts has grown substan-tially from a provincial art college under the Depart-

ment of Industries to an autonomous federal insti-

tution with its own Board of Governors with liberal

credentials. While enjoying relative freedom from

the strictures of the state, it has emerged as

centre of excellence in visual arts, which is pres-

ently offering advanced training in a wide range of

creative arts. From its original areas of concentra-

JADE 27.3 (2008)




tion in visual arts such as fine art, design and archi-

tecture, the NCA has initiated programmes in

performing arts such as musicology as well as

technology-based courses in multi-media arts and

film and television. Though not yet a university, it

has earned an unofficial status of a university of

the arts with its geographical as well as thematic

expansion. Spread over two campuses in two

major cities of Pakistan, the NCA continues to

expand into higher education by offering doctoral

programmes in cultural studies and art history. A

large number of its students have fed into govern-

ment service as well as private business. Invaria-

bly most of the contemporary artists, designers

and architects of Pakistan were trained at the

NCA. In the last two decades the artists of NCA

have gained an international acclaim and world-

wide exhibitions, by reworking the traditionalpractice of miniature painting into a contemporary

art form that confounds the distinction between

traditional and avant-garde (Bhabha 1999).

Whilst in the early years of the NCA craft was

being reformulated to marry with industry, in the

later decades it was expelled from the registers

of art education, notwithstanding the fact that the

NCA continues to resonate with the older debates

between tradition and modernity, art and craft,

and skills and creativity. This was signalled by the

fact that miniature painting, rejected as a tradi-tional craft for more than forty years, due to its

emphasis on copying and craftsmanship, had to

be re-invented before it could be accepted as

equal to the status of fine art. With a deeply

entrenched system of modern galleries and exhi-

bitions in a globalised world which privileges art

school artists, the connoisseurship of modern art

in Pakistan has closed the doors on the traditional

arts and unqualified artists of the country. Perhaps

it is only a resurgence of the Bauhaus spirit at the

NCA that can bring traditional crafts and fine artstogether with industry to strengthen the econ-

omy and rejuvenate national culture.

Notes

1. See Anderson (1991), for a standard reference

on the formation of modern national and cultural

identity. See also Maniruzzaman (1967).

2. For a historical study of the Mayo School of

Arts, see Omar Tarar (2007). See also At-aullah(1997).

3. For a historical overview of modern South

Asian art history, see Mitter (1994).

4. For examples of such constructions, see

Hashmi & Mirza (1997); Mumtaz (1985); Wilcox

(2000).

5. See Jain (forthcoming) for a contrasting

perspectives on the shared history of visual arts

in South Asia.

6. For an early example of South Kensington

inspired colonial art education in late-nineteenth-

century Punjab, see ‘Historical Introduction’,

Choonara & Tarar (2003).

7. Satish Gujrl, a living legend of the Indian

contemporary art world, and a student of the

Mayo School of Arts in the early 1940s

perpetuated a backward looking view of the

school. See, Gujral (1997).

8. From Shakir Ali, Principal NCA to Naheed Khan,

the United States Education Foundation (USEF)

in Pakistan, Karachi for a booklet ‘10 years of

Academic Achievements in Pakistan’ which was

to be published by USEF. See NCAA, Box File No.

209-E, Directorate of Industries, West Pakistan

(1959–60).

9. One of the renowned graduate and teacher of

the NCA, Salima Hashmi, who also served as the

artist principal of the college, could assume in a

review essay on 50 years of visual arts in Pakistan

the loss of Mayo school records withoutadequate search. ‘The archives and books of the

Mayo School of Arts were destroyed or lost in

the riots of 1947’ (Hashmi 1997, 70).

10. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the

Mayo School of Arts into the National College of

Arts, Lahore (1958–59). ‘National College of Arts,

Information Bulletin No. 1’.

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339

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340

Nadeem Omar

11. NCAA, Box File No. 195-E, Scheme for the

Expansion in the Mayo School of Arts (1943–48).

12. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the

Mayo School of Arts into the National College of

Arts, Lahore (1958–59).

13. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E.

14. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E. The classes for

fine arts were initiated in 1956 with the help of

graduates from Punjab University, which had set

up a department of fine art in 1941, which ran

courses exclusive to women until then.

15. NCAA, Box File No. 202-E, Miscellaneous

Reports on the Mayo School (1957–59).

16. A small number, however, rallied around S. L.

Prasher, then Assistant Principal of the MSA, torelocate the school after partition in the Indian

soil. Such was the affiliation with the school that

the Government College of Art, Chandigarh

(India) traced its origin from the MSA in 1875 and

included all the faculty of the school until 1947 as

part of their institutional heritage. For a brief

overview of the College, see www.

artcollegechandigarh.org/history.html.

17. A Scot by descent, Sponenburgh (b. 1916),

graduated from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in

1940 and then began working as a sculptor. Afterhis distinguished military services during Second

World War, he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts

in Paris. He later received an AM from the

University of Cairo in 1952 and his Master’s from

the University of London in 1957. He received an

honorary doctorate from the National College of

Arts in 1970s. Dr Sponenburgh taught at the

University of Oregon from 1946 to 1956 and then

spent a year as a visiting professor at the Royal

College of Arts in London in 1957. In 1958,

Sponenburgh received a Fulbright researchfellowship and taught in Egypt before being

appointed as Principal of the NCA a year later. He

returned to Oregon in 1961 and embarked on a

lengthy career at Oregon State University, where

he was named Professor Emeritus in 1984.

Today, the university maintains the Sponenburgh

Travel Award, which is awarded to a graduate

student every year and endowed by

Dr Sponenburgh. He currently resides in Seal

Rock, Oregon. For details of his early career at

NCA, see NCAA, Box File No. 293-E, Personal File

of Mark Sponenburgh, Part I–III (1957–61). Also

see the following for details on his services in the

USA: www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/

monumentsMen/bio.aspx?personID=282&PDFn

18. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File

(1958–66).

19. NCAA, Box File No. 54-E, Report of the

Commission on National Education (1958–59),

p. 5. The commission was chaired by S. M.

Sharif, Vice Chancellor of Punjab University

assisted by two American advisors, and two

renowned Pakistani academics, namely historian

I. H. Qureshi, the ideologue of Two-Nation theory

and scientist Dr Abdul Salam, the Nobel laureate.

20. In collaboration with Harvard University, the

Ford Foundation financed mainly American

advisors on the newly created Planning Board of

Pakistan, which was entrusted with the task of

preparing Pakistan’s second five-year plan for

economic development. See Noman (1988).

21. Bauhaus had major impact on art and

architecture trends in Western Europe and the

United States, the latter received the full crop of

Bauhaus graduates as most of the advocates ofBauhaus including Gropius were driven out by

the Nazi regime. Gropius taught at Harvard

Graduate School of Design in the post-world-war

period, and from there the influence of Bauhaus

spread further in the third world. See Benevolo

(1984).

22. NCAA, Box File No. 288-E, Free Cinema

Shows to Educational Institutions (1949–72). In a

leaflet announcing new film titles by USEF to be

shown to students at NCA including Anatomy of

Aggression, which describes ‘the techniques

and tactics used by the Communists to gain

control and enslave the people of free counties

since the end of Second World War. The same

techniques are being used to enslave the people

of Berlin.’.


(1959–66).

JADE 27.3 (2008)




24. NCAA, Box File No. 14-E, Visiting Lecturers at

National College of Arts (1958–62).

25. NCAA, Box File No. 29-E, Report of the

Proceedings of the Principal Office (1955–69).

26. NCAA, Box File No. 133-E, Personal File of

Haji Muhammad Sharif (1944–89).

27. Sadequain, a truly eccentric genius who is

counted in among the pioneers of modern art in

Pakistan, was also among the last of those self-

taught artists who had enormous potential to

grow outside the institutional locations of art

production. Without any affiliations with art

institutions, he suddenly shot to fame in 1955,

when Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, then

Minister for Foreign Affairs and known patron of

paintings, exhibited a large number of paintingsby Sadequain at his residence titled Exhibition of

an Unknown Artist. For the next 32 years

Sadequain produced more paintings than other

Pakistani artist, while maintaining his distance

from the art schools.

28. Shakir Ali joined the Mayo School of Arts in

1954 as Lecturer in Art. Apart from being the only

‘foreign qualified’ gazetted officer at Mayo

School, he officiated as the principal of the NCA

in its early transitional years before being

confirmed on the job in 1962. See NCAA, BoxFile No. 80-E, Personal File of Shakir Ali, Part I–IV

(1954–76).

29. In response to an official enquiry, Mark

Sponenburgh, principal of the NCA, named the

following art school educated artists as the only

known ‘individual artists’ in the whole of

Pakistan: Abdul Rehman Chughtai, Khalid Iqbal,

Moin Najmi, Safdar Ali, Zainul Abedin, Shakir Ali

and Aminul Islam. See NCAA, Box File No. 158-E,

Lists of Artists, Art Associations and Seminars on

Art Education in 1958–69.

30. NCAA, Box File No. 229-F, Meeting of the

Pakistan National Commission.


(1959–66).

32. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 278.



35. NCAA, Box File No. 175-E, Reports of the

National College of Arts (1959–62).

36. NCAA, Box File No. 175-E.

37. For his lasting contribution to the

development of modern art in Pakistan, see Butt

et al . (1982). See also Majeed (1987).

38. J. A. Rahim spelled out the need to earn

foreign exchange by promoting exports in

handmade artefacts. Carpets, embroidery,

ceramics, brass and copper work were

recommended for exports. He questioned the

use of child labour in the carpet industry and

expressed a need to improve the workingconditions of the workers. He recommended an

organisation be set up by the government for

human welfare as well as rationalising the tools,

methods and working conditions of the workers.

J. A. Rahim, Ambassador to France, to Wazir Ali,

Vice Chancellor, Export Promotion Bureau, 1964.

NCAA, Box File No. 21-F, Correspondence with

the Principal Office (1955–69).

39. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F.

40. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F.

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aesthetic modernism in the post-colony: the making of a national college of art, lahore

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