Living art

How easy it is to slip into the other. Salima Hashmi, then, on Pakistani art, is honest enough in her initial appraisal that it "is penetrated by the fractures, turbulences and discontinuities of its political history". Therefore, you laugh when her words soon after begin to dance behind the layers of veils, when she hints at Pakistani culture being shaped by the Islamic (which frowns upon art), the British colonial, and the regional (which must pass for the shared history of the subcontinent that has stretched for thousands of years, as opposed to the few decades of the nation state's existence). A state so paranoiac that cubist artist Shakir Ali's first exhibition in Lahore, in 1952, has a plainclothes policeman exploring the works for "coded communist messages".

Later, "cultural capital" Lahore tries to emulate the vigour of the Bombay Progressives, but is to prove less successful since it is East Pakistan that seems to have a "formidable and meaningful presence" in the field of creative arts. Alas, not for long, as Pakistan is splintered and Bangladesh rises out of the chaos. Though Prime Minister Bhutto is a liberal and flirts with artists, the ascendancy of General Zia relegates the plastic arts to "official scrutiny for form and content".

More recent work in Pakistan has been freer in expression than ever before, and has a comic edge in a contemporary idiom that tends to be more provocative than at any other time in Pakistan's brief history (despite the continued fascination with nude forms).

In comparison, India's journey from the modern to contemporary expressions has been almost seamless. It has also been a part of the nationalist movement, canvassing freedom from a colonial yoke, and emerging in different (but confident) avatars in different geographies "" whether Santiniketan, Bombay, Baroda, the grab for the market in Delhi, or even the kitsch art of Sivakasi. The dominant influence after the Bengal school was the articulation of the briefly lived Progressive Artists' Group with many of its members either trained in Paris and London, or living there. "We were expressing ourselves differently, we had different visions during the early days, but what was common was a search for significant form," writes S H Raza, about their frequent meetings and long discussions over endless cups of tea that they could ill afford at the time.

Indian modern art enjoyed state patronage and could pull on ancient myths to reinforce its contemporary idiom, so art critic Rudolf von Leyden was compelled to say that within this movement could be "found some of the most original and even most truly Indian painters of today".

Like Hashmi, Yashodhara Dalmia too tackles the organic growth of contemporary art through different movements as seen through the works of important artists. Therefore, instead of being divided up into periods, the architecture of the text is reinforced as an artistic exploration through the turns in their own works.

Both writers devote a chapter each to women artists "" vastly greater in numbers in India, and infinitely more experimental in the bargain "" but what is interesting is Dalmia's interpretation of how folk forms in India (mythic, religious, cultural, social) have been overtaken by the mass media itself, replacing it instead with "a vibrant, circulated, and mass produced public art". In essence, the origins of this can be traced back to the popular Ravi Varma art press, now appropriated by newer digital technologies. It is these that moved Italian artist Franceso Clemente to say, "In India I never go to the museums, I go to the streets and look at all the things I like. The most beautiful things you see in India are the ones that only last for a day."

"The inclusion of popular culture by gallery art, a growing tendency in India," writes Dalmia, "gives birth to a brassy energy and a reappraisal of the paradigms for art." And while in Pakistan, such popular explorations aim at bringing folk artist and contemporary artist on the same chador where, Hashmi says "a sense of the absurd can be an advantageous trait", in India the increasing sophistication of the experiments has already lent itself "to an incessant hybridity" writes Dalmia, "...in line with the increasingly aggressive Hinduism being propagated in India".

As an introduction to the art in two neighbouring countries, the book under review breaks no new ground "" the two writers might have written their essays for independent publications since there are no shared references. Still, as overviews, they are comprehensive. But what art lovers on the subcontinent might look forward to is a book that looks at the language of art outside the boundaries of a nation's geography, to study the work emerging from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh not within the narrow confines of their identities, but instead as a region of shared histories.

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Memory, Metaphor, Mutations
Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan

Yashodhara Dalmia and Salima Hashmi
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 2,950; Pages: 227