Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
I was reading Dawn this morning trying to understand more about the NATO airstrikes that killed 26 Pakistani soldiers. I don't have more insight into that than you can find anywhere else, but I found a column that I wouldn't have read otherwise, and thought it might interest everyone as much as it did me:
Two events trigger this column. One is a visit to New York Metropolitan Museum that puts out a banner in red announcing the ‘Wonder of the Age: master painters of India 1100 -1900’, identifying Indian painters. The second is a personal lamentation after the visit. A loss of inheritance. I look with envy, parents of Indian origin proudly and patiently, explain to their American-born kids the Indian exhibit at the museum. Animation, energy and ethnic pride sucks up the air in the room.
A hundred years from now, I wonder what art will the Met exhibit from Pakistan. As I move in sullen silence with the throng viewing Indian miniature paintings, whose artists are mostly Muslims of the Mughal era, seething anger stirs within me. Ziaul Haq comes to mind. The man who forcibly made us forget our past, consciously replacing it with Kufic calligraphy. The beautiful images of art, culture and heritage of our ancestors were forever shunned. In Pakistan today, on display around homes, shops and public places is mass religiosity.
But soon I cheer up. Art in whatever form, shape, age and century can never die, I assure myself. It will always live, no matter if pillaged, ransacked, looted or ignored by zany extremists or timid governments. My mind plays tricks. From a happy state of hope and celebration, it relapses back to dark despair. Physically I am in New York but my thoughts are grounded thousands of miles away. While we may still have the Lahore, Peshawar, Taxila and Karachi museums, Lok Virsa and Islamabad’s PNCA and National Art Gallery, these institutions are dens of babudom. They lack the oomph, the mojo, the dynamism that is a sign of living, vibrant and progressive societies ...
Political issues aside, a question in art history, for anyone who might know the answer. Why were the Mughal painters unable to master perspective? There was certainly exposure to it, as this painting by William Schellinks suggests.
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Jan '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Re perspective. I've often wondered about that. But I also think that above could be a way to display more information - perhaps 2D is less limited than 3D depictions - because one doesn't have to worry about so many things - floors can be flipped up to show mosaics, background vegetation can be prominantly displayed, etc etc
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Well it's hardly as if the European painting tradition lacks rich characterizations of vegetation or floor mosaics ... interesting question, isn't it? I'm sure someone has attempted to answer it.
Apr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
This isn't really an answer, but ...
You are aware that African tribesmen who are shown two drawings of an elephant from above, one literal like an overhead photograph, and one stylized like the elephant had been split in half, with legs and body splayed out to either side, invariably choose the latter as more accurate?
I don't know what the theory on this is. I'd guess it means most Africans see elephants in profile and don't need to visualize how they would look from above. Consequently, they choose a fanciful view that most corresponds to their observation rather than indulge in manipulating that into a spatial overview.
Alternatively, there could be some relationship to the optical phenomena that causes the moon near the horizon to appear four times larger than when it is overhead.
Or, of course, something else entirely.
Jan '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
I would have to say that, Islamic culture being as 'traditional' and resistant to change as it is, they just didn't care to either develop perspective as an artistic technique or adopt it after exposure from the West.
Nov '10
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Why should they have mastered perspective? It wasn't important to what they were trying to achieve.
Nov '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
It is a mistake to think of the linear perspective used in the west since the Renaissance as the only way to represent space - or even the best way. This is just an indication of the hold the artistic ideals of the Renaissance still have on much of the world. In fact, there are many different ways to represent space convincingly. The still classic study by Margaret Hagen, Varieties of Realism: Geometries of Representational Art, discusses this question in detail (a Preview is available on Google Books).
The show at the Met was splendid, but it is worth pointing out, especially in the context of a discussion about perspective, that its purpose was to give actual historical names to some of the painters considered the most outstanding of the tradition. This emphasis on the great artist, as well as the use of style as the basis for the identifications, also are hallmarks of the Italian Renaissance ideas of art. Not that this approach is bad - it is the basis of most of western art history for one thing - but it is very partial.
Nov '10
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
The story of Western painting (at least until the advent of photography and electric light) is essentially an investigation into the nature of space and light and how they are translated onto canvas. In Persian/Mughal painting, however, the emphases which underpin their stylistic development are completely different. The lovely example Claire included has no one single point of view. The picture is an exercise in prepositions: we look up, over, into, through, down, on, between and at any given element, depending on how the artist has wished to present it. Thus we look down on the fountain but up at the princess shooting her bow. The painter offers the viewer the big picture, not just what a single individual can see on his own. By having the viewer change focus with each point of interest, the artist conjures a completely full, if rarefied world.
Jesuits visiting the emperor Akbar's court in the early 1570s brought European prints which the Mughal artists studied, eventually incorporating into their works atmospheric recession and shading. But the addition of European techniques of perspective should be seen in context of a growing emphasis on realism, not an attempt to emulate a foreign style.
Nov '10
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
It is an interesting question, but to get to the root of it you have to look at a huge range of questions, ranging from what what the artists were trying to express to the nature of the culture in which they were doing it. On top of that, one has to look at how we actually perceive (rather than see), which is arguably more effectively represented by the first picture than the second. But I can't do it in 200 words, and 5 minutes until today's model gets here.....
@marjorie - that's your book, Writing about Art? I'm putting it on order...
Nov '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Magritte: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe." All paintings are falsehood--mere representation--as are all forms of art.
There's reality.
There's our perception of reality.
There's the way we represent our perception.
Our representations are (at least) two steps removed from reality, like shadows of puppets--not even puppets, but mere shadows of puppets.
Linear perspective is one method of representing things. But it doesn't capture the way things actually are. Linear perspective does not even capture the way we perceive things, unless our way of seeing has been thoroughly "captured by" linear persepctive. More precisely, linear perspective is one method of representing the way we perceive things.
In the realm of representation of reality, rather than reality itself, the value of a form, style, genre, method (apart from its intinsic beauty), depends much upon what one wants to accomplish. One wouldn't ask, "Why were the Greeks unable to master the verbal and visual 'realism' of a certain style of contemporary Western drama?" One would do better asking, "Why were the Mughals not mastered by perspective, the way some Western minds have been?" "Why did they not need the peculiar falsehood of linear perspective?"
Edited on November 27, 2011 at 6:37pmApr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Astonishing:
There's reality.
There's our perception of reality.
There's the way we represent our perception.
Well, veering even more off-topic than I did before, consider color spaces, infrared to ultraviolet. Then consider rods and cones in the eye. Then consider RGB monitors. Then consider YMCK printers. Then consider the mind as an integrator of input.
The first lesson I learned as a color copier technician is that color is a perception. (Actually, probably the first lesson I learned is that print shop owners don't like to be told there are limits to the technology they've purchased.)
Anyway, I think ... "schematic" (sorry, don't know art terms - I abase myself before you) art is fully representational of life as received.
Having said that, I'm a primative. Give me Jon Gnagy anytime.
Nov '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Glenn the Iconoclast
Astonishing:
There's reality.
There's our perception of reality.
There's the way we represent our perception.
Well, veering even more off-topic than I did before, consider color spaces, infrared to ultraviolet. Then consider rods and cones in the eye. Then consider RGB monitors. Then consider YMCK printers. Then consider the mind as an integrator of input.
Well, that opens a big can of worms: Are light waves and sounds waves the reality, and colors and sounds our mere perception? Notwithstanding what I wrote before, I still say the sounds and the colors are the reality, much more than the light waves and the sound waves, which I would say are "merely" the scientist's perception of them, a very useful perception, but still merely a perception, rather than a reality.
So when it comes to things like love, honor, friendship, and, yes, art, and yes, even "reality," I trust Shakespeare or the Bible more than any scientist.
Aug '10
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Glenn the Iconoclast
Well, veering even more off-topic than I did before, consider color spaces, infrared to ultraviolet. Then consider rods and cones in the eye. Then consider RGB monitors. Then consider YMCK printers. Then consider the mind as an integrator of input.
The first lesson I learned as a color copier technician is that color is a perception. (Actually, probably the first lesson I learned is that print shop owners don't like to be told there are limits to the technology they've purchased.)
Glenn, are you familiar with the work of color theorist Dan Margulis?
Claire, if I had to make an offhand guess, I'd agree with those who say that Western-style mastery of perspective simply wasn't a priority for these artists.
Nov '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
HalifaxCB
@marjorie - that's your book, Writing about Art? I'm putting it on order... · Nov 27 at 7:05am
Yes, I am the author of the (self-published on CreateSpace) book Writing About Art. Thank you!
May '10
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
To the original question: style? One might as well ask why Orthodox icon painters haven't mastered realism? Painters paint, at least on some level, to be appreciated by an audience, at least some audience.
Jul '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Perhaps the clue is in the name of the exhibit? "Miniature"? None off the Mogul era miniatures are larger than 3inches square.....
As for the nonsense about Africans and their art - the Taj was built by the Moguls, and there, the writing is scaled in such a way that the lettering on top is twice as large than the lettering on the bottom - so the writings are readable. How's that for perspective?
Nov '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
I didn't think what Glenn the Iconoclast said about African tribesmen's perceptions was nonsense. But perhaps one of us missed his point.
I understood Glenn's point to be that a human being (African or not) whose perceptions are unsophisticated (or unbiased, or uncorrupted, if those terms are more palatable) would choose a particular type of image as a better representation. His example seemed to suggest that an unsophisticated/uncorrupted perception would prefer an image that simultaneously presents more than one view of a thing (i.e., the splayed elephant), rather than an image that presents a one-sided photo-realistic view (i.e., the "accurate" sky-view picture of an elephant).
One implication is that rigid photo-realism can be not only "de-elephantizing," but also "de-humanizing," and that's an interesting idea, which, among other things, might cause us to approach "primitive" art with more respect and admiration.
Apr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Glenn the Iconoclast
Well, veering even more off-topic than I did before, consider color spaces, infrared to ultraviolet. Then consider rods and cones in the eye. Then consider RGB monitors. Then consider YMCK printers. Then consider the mind as an integrator of input.
The first lesson I learned as a color copier technician is that color is a perception. (Actually, probably the first lesson I learned is that print shop owners don't like to be told there are limits to the technology they've purchased.)
Glenn, are you familiar with the work of color theorist Dan Margulis?
Claire, if I had to make an offhand guess, I'd agree with those who say that Western-style mastery of perspective simply wasn't a priority for these artists. · Nov 27 at 11:08am
No, not by name anyway. Let me go look ....
Apr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Barkha Herman:
As for the nonsense about Africans and their art - the Taj was built by the Moguls, and there, the writing is scaled in such a way that the lettering on top is twice as large than the lettering on the bottom - so the writings are readable. How's that for perspective?
Umm ... I'm okay with you rejecting my couple of speculations on African art. If, though, you are rejecting the facts underlying my speculations, I have a problem. I don't know as this is really the forum for those differences - shoot me an e-mail if you like.
Apr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Astonishing
Glenn the Iconoclast
Astonishing:
There's reality.
There's our perception of reality.
There's the way we represent our perception.
Well, veering even more off-topic than I did before, consider color spaces, infrared to ultraviolet. Then consider rods and cones in the eye. Then consider RGB monitors. Then consider YMCK printers. Then consider the mind as an integrator of input.
Well, that opens a big can of worms: Are light waves and sounds waves the reality, and colors and sounds our mere perception? Notwithstanding what I wrote before, I still say the sounds and the colors are the reality, much more than the light waves and the sound waves, which I would say are "merely" the scientist's perception of them, a very useful perception, but still merely a perception, rather than a reality.
So when it comes to things like love, honor, friendship, and, yes, art, and yes, even "reality," I trust Shakespeare or the Bible more than any scientist.
I believe in objective reality. Have you watched the subjective reality "checkerboard" video going around YouTube?
Apr '11
Re: Pakistan and the Metropolitan Museum
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Glenn, are you familiar with the work of color theorist Dan Margulis?
I looked. I learned, I suppose, what you wanted me to learn. But durned if I know what that is.
What is it that Robbins says in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues? Look! Look! he shouted (to the short-sighted and temporal-minded). The dolphin used to have thumbs!
Something like that. I haven't read it in a spell.
That's sometimes the feeling I get when talking with o.p.