Daily Times

The publication of a book telling the life story and presenting the artistic creations of one of Lahore’s, and Pakistan’s, leading artists, Mian Ijazul Hassan, is a most welcome contribution to the world of art and culture. In a society afflicted by extremism, intolerance and outright obscurantism claiming hapless victims every now and then, the artist, the writer, the singer, the musician — in short all creative people — become the vanguard of the forces hoping against hope, so to say, that things can change and should change for the better and that we all must keep trying.

Mian sahib’s life story is told by his life partner Dr Musarrat Hassan. Who else could do it better? However, there is always the danger that close intimacy and involvement can render the biographer’s text too celebratory and hagiographical. Dr Hassan very successfully avoids such proclivity. Understandably though, she writes with fond admiration but the tone is modest and temperate: the items selected to illustrate Ijazul Hassan’s artistic achievements speak for themselves, however. Additionally, there are many photographs included, some of historic events and occasions. Many readers will find them no less fascinating.

I met the artist either in 1969 or 1970 when some of us who were studying at Punjab University began to congregate at his residence to attend the Tuesday study circle on Marxist philosophy and ideology. I met some other people as well with whom lifelong friendships and associations were formed. It was a period in history when it seemed that Mao’s revolutionary ideology would sweep the world and the exploitation of man by man would come to an end. My esteemed teacher Professor Khalid Mahmud at the Department of Political Science, Punjab University, had been an inspiration to me. It is because of him that I started attending the Tuesday meetings.

I knew then that Ijazul Hassan was teaching at the National College of Arts and that he was a leading artist but the discussions on Tuesdays were essentially political and ideological; art and culture did not figure in those meetings. That I think was a bit too puritanical but revolutionary zeal in those days was about action and agitation. This time I went along with another dear friend from the Tuesday study circle network, Dr Rashid Amjad, and met Mian sahib again after 43 years. In all those years, I had been visiting Pakistan for a few weeks each but our paths did not cross even though he had told me that he had been reading my weekly columns.

Therefore, the rendezvous, after 43 years, introduced me to the artist, Ijazul Hassan. His commitment to the best values of the humanist left — compassion, solidarity, protesting injustice, agitating against oppression, valuing freedom and adoring nature in its most pristine and despoiled form — continue to inform his sensibilities as he paints and draws the human figure, political and social scenes, and nature. Indeed, one of the most central concerns in artistic creativity is whether art should be appreciated for art’s sake or whether art is also the artist’s engagement with the social and political world. That he was arrested during the Zia era and was taken to the infamous Lahore Fort for interrogation means he remained on the barricades at the worst of times.

Let me confess, I am not informed enough about all the schools and forms of painting. Some leading art critics have expressed their views on Ijazul Hassan’s paintings. I found those comments in the book very helpful in developing a better understanding of his work. The paintings that moved me most deal with horrendous tragedies such as the civil war in the former East Pakistan, Pakistan, the Vietnam War, the obscene contrasts between the rich and poor and indeed the oppression and victimisation that took place after General Zia came to power. His murals are very clearly political statements as well. Not surprisingly, we learn in the book that this engagement with social issues earned him the scorn of some wiseacres.

However, that does not seem to have deterred or discouraged him. His paintings from the beginning of the 21st century are no less powerful critiques of rampant iniquities and inequities that permeate our social existence. On pages 240 and 241, the oil paintings on canvas entitled Mothers of the World Unite and Executing the Dead are telling indictments of the violence all around us. Another one called Last Moments is homage to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. It is a most moving portrayal of a very traumatic event.

One fascination has remained constant for Mian Ijazul Hassan: nature, especially trees and plants. Some of the paintings on this theme are too beautiful and too exquisite. Some are like scenes one can see from a window of a prison cell, literally or even symbolically. Since the artist was incarcerated on a number of occasions one can have some idea of the yearning for freedom that Mian sahib felt in those days. The trees grow many branches and those branches tell many stories. Dr Mussarat Hassan’s commentary is a great help to laymen like me to understand and appreciate painting and art as a whole as a medium of not only self-expression and self-realisation but also of engaging with a world as complex and challenging as the one we have inherited and are likely to pass on to the coming generations.

The reviewer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com