330

Aesthetic Modernism in the Post-Colony: The Making of a National College of Art in Pakistan (19501960s)
Nadeem Omar

Abstract
Xxxxxx

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

With 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 multiethnic map to replicate an ofcial version of the imagined community of a modern Islamic nation [1]. The emancipatory discourses of the postcolonial state were immersed in the paradigm of modernisation and development, which prescribed the policies for the growth and development of the national economy through trade, industry and technical education (Noman 1988). In the modernisation discourses of the Pakistani 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 unnished project of modernity, leaving room for a renewed agenda for the progress and development of a modern nation. The central tenets of economic policy and planning in Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s came to be dened in 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, postworld-war development discourses viewed nonWestern societies as traditional ones, experiencing 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 of the European Renaissance, the opposition between traditional and modern society formed an important link in the genealogy of nineteenthand 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 reference to the notion of development, and drew parallels between them to highlight the contrasting features of their prototypes (Hobart 1993). A tangled web of discourses, in diverse genres including economics, political sciences and sociology, similar to discourses of Orientalism but with North America as the primary referent represented 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 analysing the worldwide transition to modern societies (Lerner 1958). From Parsons-inspired typologies of economic modernization to Lerners studies of social-psychological contrasts, and Rostows stage model, the Western-dominated scholarship on development, generated various models for isolating essential features of tradition and modern societies (Webster 1984). In their deterministic worldviews, various trajectories of transition from tradition to modern societies were projected on the world map, dividing the sociogeography 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 was restructured 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 inuence went far beyond

331 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

332 Nadeem Omar

the connes 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 Western art (Farrukh 1997). In the nationalist discourses on art education in South Asia, the shift from craft education to ne art instruction was understood to be symptomatic of a cultural transition from traditional to modern society [3]. However, the cultural processes 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 ne art and the marginalisation of undifferentiated crafts to a salon de refuse is part of the discourse that constituted ne 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 construction 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 beginning of modern art in Pakistan, the spirit and practice of which was allegedly discouraged in colonial 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 nationalist elite, the MSA was always congured 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 inuence the school has exerted under the sway of the Arts and Crafts movement over the construction of the Oriental canon in Northern India. Specically, 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 instruction, 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 inuence of the Bauhaus and its sustained engagement to negotiate craftsmanship with modern industry is conveniently ignored. Routinely represented as the childhood of institution, under the imperial tutelage of the venerated rst 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 rst 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 handicrafts and art industries of the Province by maintaining ancient traditions (emphasis added) [8]. Without a qualied critical appreciation of colonial education, Shakir Ali subscribed to the static image of the MSA surviving in isolation from the national and international art world. It was reinforced 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 les 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 specic rationalities of the post-colonial state. The forgetfulness gestures towards the art and educational discourses of the postcolonial state, which privileged a system of arts education hinged on the binary opposition of art and craft. Such formulations in current art historical scholarship relocated the national cultural development on the scale of post-world-war economic theories of progress and modernisation as well as synchronised with the ideological discourses of the post-colonial state and national-

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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-industrial India and was constantly invoked to exaggerate 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 reorganisation of the MSA as part of the national transition from a traditional craft-oriented approach to a modern design-oriented philosophy [10]. Though ofcially inaugurated in October 1958 as a national institution, with three main departments 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 in standards with European Institutions to be afliated with the Punjab University. According to his initial planning, it included training in architecture to a qualied 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 Pakistan Arts Council, the Fine Art Society and Punjab University, equipped with a rich library where a Fine Arts department set up to teach women since 1941 was seen to provide a balanced educational background necessary for students development [13]. The entrance qualication for the students was raised from higher secondary to matriculation at a minimum age of 16 years. Three-year courses on Architectural draughtsmanship 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 ne art education [14]. Commitments to technical assistance from the United States were sought for the infrastructural development of the MSA. Spedding hoped to stimulate production in textile and metal industries 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 commercial artists to work in the advertising industry was justied on economic grounds. A publicity art studio was to be developed to give students commercial and production experience before joining industry. Three teaching posts were sanctioned 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 population, 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 designers 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 concentrated readings of the ideologies of modernisation and development that had taken root in the developing world. The rst convocation report of the

333 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

334 Nadeem Omar

NCA on 15 June 15 1959 delivered by its rst (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 signicant 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 rst military regime of General Ayub Khan, to whom Sponenburgh alluded, were set squarely within the paradigm of modernisation and development of a new nation-state. Along with the formation of the NCA, the closing decade of the 1950s saw the large-scale restructuring 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 a plan for a re-organization and re-orientation of existing educational system so as to evolve a national system, which would better reect our spiritual, moral and cultural values [19]. The Harvard Advisory Group at the Central Planning Commission of Pakistan developed the second ve-year plan in which technical education formed the human core of the large-scale industrialisation and did receive strong nancial backup [20]. The presence of Walter Gropius at the Institute of Design at Harvard in the post-war years might explain the proposals of the Harvard Advisory Group, and the consequent national policy emphasis to render architecture and consumer goods as functional, cheap and consistent with mass production [21]. To this end, Gropius and his associates 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 Planning Commission aimed to increase the prociency of the skilled labour force to increase innovatively designed consumer goods for local consumption as well as for export. In this vision of technical education for Pakistan, 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 qualied Pakistanis. Consequently, in the initial years, NCA had a fair number of technical experts who were brought in to design the curriculum, contribute 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 number of 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 (196062) a Canadian designer, and Dr Wallace Spencer Baldinger (196061) a Professor, School of Architecture and Allied Arts at Oregon University and Director of Museum of Art were responsible 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) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Mary Lewis (195860), a Fulbright lecturer in sculpture, contributed to the teaching at the ne 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 elds. However, a foreign qualication was invariably preferred over a local degree in the recruitment of staff. For instance, out of three qualifying conditions for the post of the principal of NCA, Lahore in 1962, the very rst clause demanded a diploma in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London, or from other leading British or French universities [25]. The diploma holders of the MSA were ranked lower in the ofcial scale and placed in a separate cadre to foreign-qualied 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, efcient and qualied hands were to be absorbed into the professional cadres. Ironically, even the widely celebrated miniature painter Haji Muhammad 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 traditional practitioner he held no formal qualications. His lifetime experience could not earn him professional status equal to an art school educated artist, in a eld in which he was celebrated over three generations of known hereditary miniature painters [26]. In the canons of nationalist art history in Pakistan, 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 mythological 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 painting 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 educational 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 following 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 modern artists. 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 infrastructure for creating a modern art, distinct from traditional crafts in Pakistan was scantly provided by the federal government, by setting up the Karachi Fine 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 Society 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 in Pakistan in the 1950s [28]. In addition to the Pakistan 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

335 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

336 Nadeem Omar

looked towards the West for inspiration and afliations. A much hyped event hosted by the Art Council was the Asian Art Critics Seminar, proudly announced to be the rst of its kind to be held in an Asian country, under the stewardship of Altaf Gauhar, the literary spin doctor of Ayub Khans 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 commercial 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 painters of a newly independent Pakistan chose American 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 inuences 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 Naqvis words, was preaching Bauhaus philosophy among the teachers and students of the NCA (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 traditions, hindering the integration of visual arts. The distinction between art and craft premised by utilitarian ideologies, which inhibits the integration of artefacts within a unied aesthetic space, was strongly contested by the proponents of the Bauhaus school. Sponenburgh turned out to be a reformer administrator who raised the NCA on the model of the Bauhaus school, with teaching in three main departments of art, design and architecture integrated in arts and crafts. In the rst progress report of the NCA in 1958 59, Sponenburgh described the objectives of education at the NCA in the eld of art, architecture 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 instruction 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 model for developing the NCA, Sponenburgh inspired students and teachers to preserve folk arts which are in danger of being lost amid economic development 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 materials used by craftspeople to create a contemporary 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 the contemporary world [32]. He further stressed efforts being taken to cultivate reputable standards of taste and to give the students an appreciation 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 satisfying products. Above all, he wanted architects who could stimulate greater use of indigenous material 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 constituted as one of the central coordinates for the construction of modern national identity:

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

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 accompanying students on eld surveys and study trips to centres of artisanal productions and factories for research and instruction. One of the very rst eldworks 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 February. The students made measured drawings, photographic surveys, rubbings and paintings as well as collecting samples of woodcrafts, jewellery, textiles, basketry and paintings. The exhibition 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 eldwork was deemedthe rst step to compile an index of Pakistani Design similar to the American Index of Design. The Swat valley eldwork was followed by research on Sindh, especially Cholistan in 196162 and formed a unique craft collection of the region. Both exhibitions travelled to London in 1956 as part of the Pakistan pavilion at the inauguration of the Commonwealth Institute [35]. The department of design built on the legacy of the Bauhaus which made its frequent appearance in industrial art discourses as part of a package 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 ve year plans 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 limitations. 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 rst World Congress of Craftsmen 1961, Sponenburgh reiterated one of his commitments to dene the objectives and function of the NCA as a safe haven for handicrafts, 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 handmade objects prefer cheap machine-made designs in their air 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: Experimentation and research cease to be part of their creative program. To rejuvenate the tradition, Sponenburgh argued, educational philosophy had to be developed to create a genuine appreciation and acceptance of the handicrafts in the country. Militating 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 overall process of production. The rst Pakistani principal of the NCA was Shakir Ali (196275), who by virtue of his location, age and body of art work served as a paradigm for 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

337 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

338 Nadeem Omar

Pakistan, his oeuvre of paintings lends itself to a national cultural identity, as the national art establishment 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 rst 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 traditional 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 maturity of a new nation. One of the unintended consequences of concerns with modern ne art movements in Pakistan was that the Bauhaus philosophy of the college, with its explicit socialist orientations, was submerged and curtailed in fundamental ways in the process of the development of the NCA as a premier ne 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, innovation 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 artistic training both among workmen and those responsible for our designing leading to a decline in exports of handicrafts [38]. In contrast to ne 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 manifesto of the Pakistan Peoples 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 handicraft workmen [39]. The letter was sent to Shakir Ali, who in response drew sharp distinctions between handicraft, industrial art and ne 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 development 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, Architecture 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 diversication to the revival of traditional designs in new applications, from improvising artisans tools to redesigning tools and workplaces, generations of Bauhaus designers in India gave hand manufacture 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. Sponenburghs strong inclination towards serving industry through art and design education disappeared in the context of the post-colonial identity politics of nationalism 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 rst generation of NCA graduates began to look elsewhere for inspiration and critique. Postscript The National College of Arts has grown substantially from a provincial art college under the Department of Industries to an autonomous federal institution 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 presently offering advanced training in a wide range of creative arts. From its original areas of concentra-

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

tion in visual arts such as ne art, design and architecture, the NCA has initiated programmes in performing arts such as musicology as well as technology-based courses in multi-media arts and lm and television. Though not yet a university, it has earned an unofcial 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 government service as well as private business. Invariably 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 worldwide exhibitions, by reworking the traditional practice 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 traditional 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 exhibitions 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 unqualied artists of the country. Perhaps it is only a resurgence of the Bauhaus spirit at the NCA that can bring traditional crafts and ne arts together with industry to strengthen the economy 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-nineteenthcentury 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 (195960). 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 without adequate 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 (195859). National College of Arts, Information Bulletin No. 1.

339 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

340 Nadeem Omar

11. NCAA, Box File No. 195-E, Scheme for the Expansion in the Mayo School of Arts (194348). 12. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the Mayo School of Arts into the National College of Arts, Lahore (195859). 13. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E. 14. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E. The classes for ne arts were initiated in 1956 with the help of graduates from Punjab University, which had set up a department of ne art in 1941, which ran courses exclusive to women until then. 15. NCAA, Box File No. 202-E, Miscellaneous Reports on the Mayo School (195759). 16. A small number, however, rallied around S. L. Prasher, then Assistant Principal of the MSA, to relocate the school after partition in the Indian soil. Such was the afliation 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. After his 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 Masters 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 research fellowship 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 IIII (195761). 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 (195866). 19. NCAA, Box File No. 54-E, Report of the Commission on National Education (195859), 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 nanced mainly American advisors on the newly created Planning Board of Pakistan, which was entrusted with the task of preparing Pakistans second ve-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 of Bauhaus 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 inuence of Bauhaus spread further in the third world. See Benevolo (1984). 22. NCAA, Box File No. 288-E, Free Cinema Shows to Educational Institutions (194972). In a leaet announcing new lm 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.. 23. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File (195966).

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

24. NCAA, Box File No. 14-E, Visiting Lecturers at National College of Arts (195862). 25. NCAA, Box File No. 29-E, Report of the Proceedings of the Principal Ofce (195569). 26. NCAA, Box File No. 133-E, Personal File of Haji Muhammad Sharif (194489). 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 selftaught artists who had enormous potential to grow outside the institutional locations of art production. Without any afliations 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 paintings by 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 qualied gazetted ofcer at Mayo School, he ofciated as the principal of the NCA in its early transitional years before being conrmed on the job in 1962. See NCAA, Box File No. 80-E, Personal File of Shakir Ali, Part IIV (195476). 29. In response to an ofcial 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 195869. 30. NCAA, Box File No. 229-F Meeting of the , Pakistan National Commission. 31. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File (195966). 32. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 278.

33. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 278. 34. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 256. 35. NCAA, Box File No. 175-E, Reports of the National College of Arts (195962). 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 working conditions 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 Ofce (195569). 39. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F . 40. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F .

341 Nadeem Omar

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Ali, S. A. (1997) Forward looking art: years before and after independence, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32, pp. 0000 Ali, W. (1989) Pakistan in Contemporary Art from the Islamic World. London: Scorpion At-aullah, N. (1997) Stylistic hybridity and colonial art and design education: a wooden carved screen by Ram Singh, in T. Barringer & T. Flynn [Eds] Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum. London: Routledge, pp. 0000

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

342 Nadeem Omar

Benevolo, L. (1984) History of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Bhabha, H. (interviewer) (1999), Alter/Native modernities miniaturizing modernity: Shahzia Sikander in conversation with Homi Bhabha, Public Culture: Bulletin of the Project for Transnational Cultural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 14652 Butt, K. S. et al. [Eds] (1982) Shakir Ali: Fun aur Shaksiat (Shakir Ali: The Art and Personality). Islamabad: pub Chatterjee, A. (1988) Challenges of transition: design and craft in India, in M. W. Meister [Ed.] Making Things in South Asia: The Role of Artist and Craftsman. Philadelphia: Department of South Asia Regional Studies, pp. 39 Choonara, S. & Tarar, N. O. [Eds] (2003) The Ofcial Chronicle of the Mayo School of Arts, the Formative Years under Lockwood Kipling. Lahore: National College of Art Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press Eisenstadt, S. N. (1974) Studies of modernization and sociological theory, History and Theory, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 22552 Farrukh, N. (1997), Echoes of socio-political history, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32, pp. 0000 Gujral, S. (1997) A Brush with Life Satish Gujral An Autobiography. New Delhi: Penguin Books India Hall, S. & Gieben, B. [Eds] (1992) Formation of Modernity: An Introduction to Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press Hashmi, S. (1997) The Visual Arts, in V. Schoeld [Ed.] Old Roads New Highways: Fifty Years of Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press Hashmi, S. (forthcoming) Chalk and cheese: interdisciplinary art education at NCA, in N.O.Tarar [Ed.] From Tradition to Modernity

Hashmi, S. & Qadus Mirza, Q. (1997) Fifty Years of Visual Arts in Pakistan. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Hobart, M. (1993) An Anthropological Critique of Development: The Growth of Ignorance. London: Routledge Jain, J. (forthcoming) Tradition and modernity: the post-colonial evolving context, in N.O. Tarar [Ed.] From Tradition to Modernity Jalal, A. (2001) Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Communities in South Asian Islam since 1850. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Lerner, D. (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe, IL: Free Press Majeed, m-S. [Ed.] (1987) Shakir Ali Ke Tehrehrain (The Writings of Shakir Ali). Lahore: pub Maniruzzaman, m-T. (1967) National integration and political development in Pakistan, Asian Survey, Vol. 7, No. 12, pp. 87685 Mitter, P (1994) Art and Nationalism in Colonial . India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Mumtaz, K. K. (1985) Architecture in Pakistan. Singapore: Concept Media Mumtaz, K. K. (forthcoming) Tradition and modernity, in N. O. Tarar [Ed.] From Tradition to Modernity Naqvi, A. (1997) Transfer of power and perceptions of four Pakistani artists, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32, pp. 0000 Akbar Naqvi, A. (2001) Image and Identity. Karachi: Oxford University Press Noman, O. (1988) The Political Economy of Pakistan: 19471985. London: KPI Shiner, L. E. (1975) Tradition/modernity: an ideal type gone astray, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 24552 Sirhindi, M. C. (1997) Painting in Pakistan: 1947 1997, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32, pp. 0000

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Tarar, N. O. (2007) Colonial governance and art education: 18491920s, PhD Dissertation, University of New South Wales, Sydney Tarar, N. O. [Ed.] (forthcoming), From Tradition to Modernity: Essays on Pakistani Art and Design. Lahore: pub Webster, A. (1984) Introduction to the Sociology of Development. Basingstoke: Macmillan Wilcox, T. [Ed.] (2000) Pakistan: another vision: fty years of painting and sculpture from Pakistan, Asia Magazine, pp. 0000

343 Nadeem Omar

JADE 27.3 (2008) 2008 The Author. Journal compilation 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd