History, Narrative, and the Female Figure (As Disruption) / Rizvi 35 Guises Himself in Jayida’S Clothes to Deceive Her Husband

Shahzia Sikander began studying painting at the National of great artists. Like poetry, paintings were incorporated College of Arts in Lahore, working closely with Bashir into the performative rituals of the court, where the Ahmad, a master of the art of manuscript illustration. The cognoscenti gathered to admire and evaluate the works History, Narrative, “miniature,” as the genre he taught is sometimes referred of art. to, places Sikander’s work in a lineage that is at once Lahore was well known in the sixteenth and sev- local and historically grounded. Although once perceived enteenth centuries as one of the capitals of the Mughal and the by Euro-American scholars as conventional and repeti- Empire, with a magnificent fort, mosques, and gardens. tive, early modern illustrated manuscripts and drawings— The imperial household included talented scribes, poets, the foundation of Sikander’s practice—are now under- and artists from across India. Among the most well Female Figure stood to be a platform for innovation and artistic virtuos- known were Miskin (active ca. 1580–1604) and Basawan ity. Her paintings are in fact imbedded within a complex (active ca. 1580–1600), both of whom were extolled by tradition of art-making, with its strategies of allegory, narration, and appropriation. They build on past precedents and are made contemporary through their subject matter and through her rendition, scaled up or down and translated to other media, such as animation. Sikander’s perspective is informed by the social, political, and religious cultures of her home in Lahore, while reflecting her participation in the broader art world of New York, her current residence. There is never any one inspiration for an artist, and the trajectory of Sikander’s work points to multiple sources—from feminist discourse to Islamic mysticism. This essay considers how her practice engages with previous masters of illustrative manuscript painting in sixteenth-century Lahore and also in the twentieth century. The comparison is not meant to create a teleol- ogy for her work but rather to reveal tropes within the genre and explore the manners in which Sikander adapts, expands, and disrupts them. Most significantly, she occupies a space often closed off to women, who, while sometimes patrons or amateur enthusiasts, seldom (as Disruption) achieved entry into a profession that was limited to male artists. The term master (ustād), reserved for her teacher, points to this tension.1 In the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century kitābkhāna (atelier), artists worked from models, either from a manuscript or from albums in which paintings depicting stock figures and characters were collected. In addition to dynastic and imperial chronicles and Sufi hagiogra- phies, the Mughals (r. 1526–1857) commissioned illustrated histories, fables, and poetic anthologies. The texts, as well as the paintings, built upon earlier examples, forming chains of transmission passed down from teach- Fig. 01 ers to students. For artists of this period, individuality Miskin (Indian, active ca. 1580–1604) Bahāristān (While Lovers Meet, the Friend Gets was a goal, but only within the parameters of tradition— Beaten), 1550–1600 that is to say, one could claim talent not by being different, Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Photo Bodleian Libraries. MS. Elliott 254, fol. 42a Kishwar Rizvi but rather by refining the past and being part of a lineage 34 History, Narrative, and the Female Figure (as Disruption) / Rizvi 35 guises himself in Jayida’s clothes to deceive her husband. Jump ahead three hundred years to a Lahore under the Yet the women appear as types more than personalities. He unfortunately spills milk and is severely beaten by the British Empire, colonized and yet distinct in its identity Their shaded eyelids conceal any form of agency, even as husband, although his ruse is maintained, and he is sent as one of the centers of artistic production. The Mayo their voluptuous bodies appear to invite the male gaze. away to spend the night with Jayida’s sister. The center of School of Industrial Art was established in 1875, named the painting shows a tense scene of the furious husband after the Viceroy of India, Lord Mayo. Perhaps the most outside the sister’s tent, being held back as the friend well known of its students was Abdur Rahman Chughtai Sikander was born two generations after Chughtai and hides inside, his face partially obscured by a veil. In the (1894–1975), a Lahore native descended from a family educated at the same institution in Lahore; the Mayo background, Ashtar and Jayida sit beneath the protective of craftsmen and calligraphers.2 Chughtai’s paintings and School of Industrial Art would be renamed the National foliage of a verdant tree. Similarly tranquil scenes fill the etchings speak to his multiple identities, loyalties, and College of Arts in 1958. Although she was trained in the foreground; for example, a young shepherd is milking his experiences during the intense historic period that saw classical tradition carried on since at least the Mughal cow while goats and sheep rest peacefully nearby. Miskin’s the collapse of British power in South Asia, the 1947 par- period, her paintings depart from earlier precedents in focus on storytelling is evinced in the manner with which tition of India into separate Muslim and Hindu states, distinct ways. For starters, her subject matter is neither discrete vignettes wind their way across the picture plane, and the first three decades of Pakistani nationhood. dependent on historical precedent nor does it seek refuge depicting temporal and narrative shifts spatially. Chughtai came of age at a time when ethnic and in an idealized past. Although her paintings certainly ref- Basawan’s painting The Vain Dervish Rebuked (fig. religious identities were significant. Although he painted erence Mughal art, they dig deeper into her own personal 02), also from the Bahāristān, illustrates the conver sation Hindu and Buddhist subjects, it was Islamic history, life and offer commentary on issues that are of signif- between Abu’l Abbas and a dervish who places more especially of the Mughal dynasty, and popular Punjabi icance to her. Of particular importance in Sikander’s importance on his clothing than on his devotions. The set- tales that inspired many of his works. He was also drawn ting replicates the red sandstone architecture of the Lahore to Persian and Urdu poetry, which explore the emotions fort, with a white marble edifice in the foreground indi- of love and romantic yearning—themes common to both cating the presence of a holy figure. A pair of goats stand the Hindu and Muslim literary traditions—and present by while their kid suckles, and two peacocks rest on the love as a metaphor for spiritual devotion. Chughtai placed marble building. The foreground is occupied by a gnarled his work within the broader context of a European and tree with intertwined branches, while in the background Islamic art history, citing as inspiration such diverse fig- two figures greet each other within a garden setting. The ures as Raphael, Leonardo, and Rembrandt; Bihzad, Aga pairings reflect the themes of companion ship and dialogue Mirak, and Mir Sayyid ‘Ali. Although the past stimulated that are at the center of the story. him, the work was of its time, drawing on contemporary Fig. 02 Basawan (Indian, active ca. 1580–1600) Basawan utilizes perspective to indicate distance, trends such as Art Nouveau and Romanticism.3 Bahāristān (The Vain Dervish Rebuked), 1550–1600 with shading and modeling giving depth and three- The Fruit Seller (ca. 1960; fig. 03) exemplifies Bodleian Library, Oxford University. Photo dimensionality to the figures. The sky is rendered in Chughtai’s oeuvre. Two women occupy the foreground, Bodleian Libraries. MS. Elliott 254, fol. 9a shades of yellow, pink, and blue, echoing the coloration dressed in yellow saris, one of them languidly holding in early modern European paintings. Artists such as a branch of bamboo. Their faces are in profile, with large court historians and commissioned to illustrate deluxe Basawan had access to prints and paintings that were doe eyes and delicate features, their bodies adorned in imperial manuscripts. Signed paintings by them reveal gifted to Akbar by European missionaries and visitors to colorful jewelry. A third woman sits at their feet, while distinct styles in composition and coloration, as well as— his court. In the Bahāristān painting, Basawan has merged others are seated in the rear behind fruit baskets filled in the case of Basawan—a focus on portraiture. Represen- his training under the master Abd al-Samad, an émigré with pineapples and watermelons. The warm yellow and tative paintings of both artists can be found in an illus- from Safavid Iran, with the Mughal interest in naturalism orange tones of the painting illuminate the brown skin of Fig. 03 trated manuscript of Bahāristān (Spring Garden), which and pictorial depth. The result is a unique and captivating the women, the whole cast in a radiant glow. Watercolor, Abdur Rahman Chughtai (Pakistani, 1894–1975) The Fruit Seller, ca. 1960 was compiled in the Lahore kitābkhāna in the years 1550 image that succeeds in working within conventional topoi the medium Chughtai uses, lends transparency to the Reproduced with kind permission of Arif to 1600. Written by the fifteenth-century poet and mystic even as it transforms them through contact with other painting, making the surface appear porous and delicate. Rahman Chughtai, Chughtai Museum, Lahore, Pakistan, holder of the copyright, and owner of Jami, the text comprises short didactic stories that serve forms of visuality. The painting reveals the dynamism of Unlike the flatter gouaches used in Mughal painting, the work as allegories of wisdom and spiritual fulfillment. Mughal art at the end of the sixteenth century, enlivened watercolor here creates a different experience of pictorial Jami’s works were popular in the Mughal ateliers, by the presence of diverse artists and a multitude of inspi- depth and movement.

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