Ustad of NCA….Sadia Pasha Kamran
Dear Amin Rehman Sb,
Just received the catalog, The Drawings of Ustad Bashir ud Din – A Restrained Grace. It is a tribute to your father, the young drawing instructor of Mayo School of Art who was rightfully acknowledged as an Ustad of the National College of Arts later on.
He dedicated his life to empowering his students and enlightening their paths without worrying much about promoting his own practice and name. I wonder if he was an introvert like many artists and unsung heroes or had fallen prey to the usual bias found among historians.
But then I found that he was duly mentioned in available early accounts only to be skipped by the research guru of our times; Wikipedia. In such instances, this compilation of his drawings carrying articles by Marcella Sirhindi, Salima Hashmi, Asim Akhtar and Zohreen Murtaza brings sufficient attention to the need to probe a little more into the history of artistic trends in Pakistan to establish an all-inclusive narrative.
In the most popular historical discourse, it was AR Chughtai and Ustad Allah Bux who set the course of painting in Pakistan. Firstly, adopting, or should we say adapting, the Punjab Hills style painting, sieving the typical vivid Indian palette and re-institutionalising Persian elements; stylisation of form, mystic expression leading towards spiritual apprehension with strong hints of poetic truths that can be beyond the intellect.
In Allah Bux’s case, it’s replacing the more Hindu themes and religious iconography with folklore from the newly Indianised European oil painting. One argument the discourse in the catalog supports is that Ustad Bashir ud Din is a link, an ‘intermediary generation’ between Chughtai, Allah Bux and the Lahore Art Circle of the 60s.
It also highlights his contribution as a teacher of many who led post-partition Pakistani art into diverse streams of modernity. The critique also prompts the question of the pedagogical transition of art and design education as the school upgraded into a college around 1959.
The development in terms of pedagogy is addressed by Hashmi but perhaps not analysed enough as per the contemporary ideals of decolonisation. The shifting focus from Industrial art to Fine arts and Design or institutionalising of a binary division between the two streams of knowledge, strips art of its utilitarian value and instigates a glitch of separating craft from art.
Craft is a vehicle that is used to demonstrate concrete, complex ideologies. If it is a skill learnt through experience, apprenticeship or formal education, it is very much a way to ‘conceptual art’ that prioritises the idea or concept behind a work over the finished product. In such a scenario, craft serves as an essential tool, an app, that documents the covert experience and exploration.
Students tutored by the tradition bearers, in practice and pedagogy of art alike, naming Haji Sharif, Shiekh Shuja and Bashir ud Din who believed in practising, imitating and replicating to achieve perfection gave way to the “Cubist movement that swept the country in the late 50s” as Sirhandi points out.
Is it the moment of re-colonisation of art in the newly independent land of the pure? Or is it merely the romance with something new and novel that engulfed the young generation to look West for inspiration and approval? After all, Europe was the centre of all excellence in the 20th century modern world leading upfront in different fields of knowledge – be it Physics, Mathematics, Law, Philosophy or Art. Had it not been through the colonial occupation the change was inevitable.
The publication – the essays and reproductions of surviving drawings of Ustad Bashir ud Din – is timely and significant. It fulfills the newly introduced academic fervor to decolonise the art history canon by including localised perspectives. Such voices are essential integers in making scholarship relevant to the global audience. Thank you for carrying forward the legacy of Ustad Bashir ud Din.
COURTESY 