particularizing the non-figurative
Bangladeshi artist Mahmudul Haque, who recently mounted a show at Karachi’s Chawkhandi gallery, is a printmaker and painter of extraordinary textural sensitivity
It is one of the mysteries of art that from millions of possibilities, the artist selects a particular combination to evolve his signature iconography.
What is it that makes an artist give certain elements priority over others?
Is it experience or natural affinity that makes an identity more dominant?
Are the early years in the rain-drenched countryside surrounded by ‘monsoon surfaces’ where colours appear with crystalline clarity after each downpour, as much a part of Mahmudul Haque’s sensibility as his deep engagement with printmaking in Japan?
It is with questions like these that one confronts the art of Mahmudul Haque, a printmaker and painter of extraordinary textural sensitivity.
At his painting show at Chawkhandi Art in Karachi, in April 2006, his second one-person exhibition in Pakistan, the visitor got to see works on both paper and canvas. Though non-figurative, sometimes one can catch in his work a glimpse of the vague outline of a figure as if on a stroll in his verdant and azure ‘landscapes’.
The landscapes etched on the matrix of memory, processed through the cerebral filter of his formalistic priorities in these works are transformed into abstract configurations.
The works on canvas built through a process of layering resonate strongly with texture and patina born from accumulations in nature. Alchemical changes, both accidental and controlled, take place as unfamiliar tones are coaxed to the surface of the canvas. Vibrant patches punctuate the canvas to add the occasional spark. Paint drips like raindrops to create a meditative moment. The works with tiny marks of brilliant white on a ‘melting colourfield’ are strangely reminiscent of shooting stars. The occasional arch echoes with architectural references. Frequently, rectangles of colour try to eclipse each other in an overlapping horizontal movement.
Totally opposed to these ‘quiet’ works are the ones done in frenzied strokes, where the loaded brush seems to twist thick pigment like a knife into the belly of the canvas to draw impasto shrieks. This is perhaps the most evident in the red diptych with a band of encrusted black. Another vast blue canvas with a configuration of textures, evocative of etched plates engages the viewers with its nuanced presence.
Many of the works on paper look as if they have begun their life as a mono-print before turning into painterly musings. In these works black forms dominate to suggest dark recesses, or moss covered stalactites, while continuing to challenge the imagination.
In an interview held during the show, Mahmudul Haque explained that he found the process of painting more interesting than the finished work. Facing an empty canvas charges his imagination and makes him fight it to create something new.
The works are not titled; this makes it difficult to identify them individually, but a few stand apart in the collection with a pastel palette of mint greens and cherry blossom pinks like the work with a dominant metallic silver disc. These works appear as a tryst with the Japanese colour palette.
Mahmudul Haque’s first visit to Karachi took place in 1967 as a student participant in the three—month long printmaking workshop conducted by Ponce De Leon, an American artist. The influence of this workshop had motivated quite a few participants to pursue a career in printmaking. He found the workshop an intensive experience, both in terms of learning the craft and interacting with established artists. For Mahmudul Haque, this was his first journey outside his own environment and work by artists like Shahid Sajjad, Gulgee, Naz Ikramullah and discussions with them helped him to look at ways to transform his figurative work into a semi- abstract vocabulary. ‘The workshop was influential because it opened a new way to express myself by creating an awareness in me to forge a new direction. It drew me to printmaking, which I later studied in Japan,’ recalls the artist
In Japan he chose to take the difficult way out and immersed himself in the time-consuming technique of mezzotint, which has few exponents. Later this expertise was to bring him recognition as a printmaker. An understanding of texture is integral to a printmaker’s skills as the surface of the metal plate is blind to colour and the etched and embossed patterns like Braille signs register the form which is transferred with pressure. This process sensitizes the printmaker to the language of groves and provides innovative breakthroughs.
The mark making, however gestural it may appear, goes through a demanding process, from the plate to the artist’s proof to many editions that must carry mark of virtuosity.
The development of abstract painting as an art genre owes much to Abstract Expressionists. Art Historian Jonathan Fineberg, in his book Art Since 1940—Strategies of Being, explains that ‘the stylistic premise of the group was abstraction, purified of external reference’. The external reference to which Fineberg refers here, in the context of South Asia, is figurative imagery, landscape and dense patterning. The painting traditions of this region cannot be separated from its narrative content. Both Madhubani and Kalighat paintings as a folk storyteller’s tool lend drama to characters and events. Such as also the case with were the court painting of the Mughals and lesser provinces that originated as illustrated manuscripts. The Company School supported the documentation fetish of the colonial power that created a corpus of ethnic studies.
This, however, was to change with the growing awareness of Modernism in the first quarter of the 20th Century at The Calcutta Art School which helped to wean the artists from the narrative towards the formalist strategies of the School of Paris.
The ethos of Modern thought that reached South Asia through literary visionaries like Tagore, Nazrul Islam and Allama Iqbal created a new social and political awareness that not only accelerated the freedom struggle against the colonial power but contributed to a paradigm shift in the way conventions are perceived. It strengthened personal identity as opposed to the communal identity of the old world. This break from traditionalism made it easier to replace narrative art with a modernist expression. Abstraction as a cultural counterpoint to tradition was the product of a mature modern sensibility.
While writing on the artists of the 1950’s, Syed Manzoorul Islam in his ‘From Bengal School to Bangladeshi Art’ (Contemporary Art in Bangladesh, Art and The Islamic World, UK) note ‘… Futurism, expressionism, constructivism, and the American abstract expressionism—all began to leave their mark on the canvas of these artists. Abstraction and non—figurative art became the primary means of expression for many, with a hugely creative and new interpretation given to colour, line, space and texture. For many viewers, these abstract compositions were synonymous with modern art’.
Mahmudul Haque is a part of the generation that received his art education after 1947. He was introduced to Modernism by pioneers like Zainul Abedin and his peers. He was also fortunate enough to watch Kibria closely as a student at The Dhaka Art School.
These formalistic concerns of the creators of abstract art are explained by Manzoorul Islam in the following words: ‘Modernism was a state of mind, an experience that brought one face to face with the anxieties and uncertainties of the time, as well as a need, an expediency more than an aesthetic indulgence that assumed a distinctive identity and a cultural content, even a cultural logic.’
Almost three decades later Mahmudul Haque is still a strong advocate of this ‘cultural logic’. His work remains non-figurative despite the new groundswell of figurative art that marks the freedom of expression in place since the early years of Bangladesh’s emergence a new country. In many ways Mahmudul Haque’s work reinforces the role of abstract art as a storehouse of symbols of the universal value of harmony with the belief that at an elemental level everything in the world is based on similarities.
Mahmudul Haque’s vocabulary has evolved into two distinct trajectories that are linked to his empirical philosophy. One symbolizes natural harmony and projects man’s natural need for tranquility. At the other end of the spectrum is placed his hard- edged works with the agitated surface that acts as a metaphor of the excitement and tension that fuel urban chaos.
Early as 1919 in his writings in De Stijl Piet Mondrian elaborated on the relationship between art and its modern creator thus: ‘Modern man, although a unity of body, mind and soul—exhibits a changed consciousness: every expression of his life has today a different aspect, that is, an aspect more positively abstract. It is the same with art. Art will become the product of another duality in man; the product of a cultivated externality and an inwardness deepened and more conscious.’
Art to this important artist from Bangladesh is not about external trends that often compel a change in the vocabulary of an artist for greater acceptability, but an inner voyage that keeps him in touch with himself.
Niilofur Farrukh is the Editor of NuktaArt and President, Aica Pakistan
Bangladeshi artist Mahmudul Haque, who recently mounted a show at Karachi’s Chawkhandi gallery, is a printmaker and painter of extraordinary textural sensitivity It is one of the mysteries of art that from millions of possibilities, the artist selects a particular combination to evolve his signature iconography. What is it that makes an artist give certain…