Miniare: to Color with Red

“Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration”(KACC) affords a viewer with an enriching account of a present-day Pakistani miniature painting collaboration. This work contributes to the furtherance of two distinct art historical topics. The first and perhaps more immediate reference, is this works orientation to the Persian arts (more specifically, the rich history surrounding the painting workshop – Karkhana). While the second, and particularly distinctive element of this work, is its alignment with other artistic collaborations. Keeping this in mind, the artwork on exhibit is important because it documents a diffusion of the miniature method into occidental contemporary painting. This new “Karkhana” represents a break with the traditional institution and reflects a distinctly contemporary moment through collective expression.



History of the Karkhana

“Karkhana”, an Urdu term for workshop, references the imperial Mughal court of the 16th century. In 1526, a Turkish warrior Babur (1483 – 1530) captured Delhi and established the Mughal Dynasty. Babur’s son, Humayan (reigned 1530–1556), had spent fifteen years in Persia prior to his father’s death, and developed a preference for the styles observed in the Persian arts. When he returned in 1530 to continue his father’s dynasty, he imported with him Persian émigrés and Indian courts to be patronized within the Mughal Empire. The dynasty promoted new subjects based on Mughal history, rulers, and nobility. Due to these origins, Mughal painting began as a purely Persian style, marked by virtuoso brushwork and naturalistic rendering of forms.
Humayan’s successor, Akbar (reigned 1556–1605), one of India’s greatest and wisest rulers, continued and expanded this tradition of patronage. Circa 1565, the imperial Mughal court began to expand. The pool of artisans enlisted in the imperial Mughal court workshop went from approximately 50 to reaching as many as 130 painters by 1600. At its height, the court was a “complex organization where bureaucracies were set in place to harness the appropriate talents and coordinate tasks in a fruitful and efficient manner”(Seyller 12). For any project there was an elaborate process of distributing the work amongst several skilled artisans. Single manuscripts would be circulated amongst several artists over multiple stages of development. Each artist would contribute their part separately, and pass it on to the next artist until the work was complete. Since authorship belonged to many, a strict style was developed for the sake of consistent image production. This was achieved through refined technical practice that was passed down from generation to generation. Mughal painting gradually developed its own identity, however, new techniques and subject matters blended with more established traditions.
The established tradition of Mughal miniature painting is still in practice today. The National College of the Arts in Lahore Pakistan is just one of the universities still instructing the more traditional elements. All six artists in the KACC exhibition have graduated from this program. This exhibition is an opportunity to view contemporary Pakistani painting and observe how elements of the traditional Mughal miniature are incorporated to form a hybrid expression of both contemporary and ancient technique.



Collaboration is Key

As mentioned previously, collaboration is another central topic found within this KACC exhibition. Collaboration is influence positively perceived as part of an ongoing cultural dialogue. Whenever artists create, they assume an established way of looking and reacting to the world. Art is, simply, a means to an end. Art communicates complex understandings that words cannot. The collaborative nature of this work allows for a collective expression from combined understanding. This exhibition allows the viewer the opportunity to see, learn and grow from an alluring array of Pakistani artisans. In addition, collaborative art enables both the artist and viewer to examine the dialogue and/or conversation between artists. So in effect this work offers valuable insight into an eastern perspective through the dialogue of contemporary art making on world politics.
This work is also significant because of its alignment with other artistic collaborations. There are several examples of effective artistic collaboration throughout history. However, the Karkhana Catalogue essay “In The Spirit of Improvisation” by Jessica Hough, points out how the manner in which this work was created, directly correlates to the drawing games of the Surrealist movement in the 1940’s and 1950s. The game known as the Exquisite Corpse is most like the KACC style where each artist layers imagery in turn.
The exquisite corpse is a game of folded paper which consists of having several people compose a phrase or a drawing collectively. This method of the Karkhana artists mirrors this process. In the surrealist game however, none of the participants are to have any idea of the nature of any preceding contribution or contributions. The now classic example, which gave its name to the game, is the first phrase obtained in this manner: The exquisite corpse shall drink the young wine.
In both versions of the game, the final result was believed to be greater than what the players would have otherwise achieved separately or together in conscious collaboration. As a result, the works took the measure of the collective mind. There are several findings on collective thought. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell are experts on the subject, and have published books on how collective thought comes into play through mediums such as mythology, dreaming and entertainment. Andre Breton, the “Pope of Surrealism”, reveled in how each participant supplied only one part of imagination through creation, and how the end product was always multiplied to have a more intense effect than any individual could have imagined.
This form of artistic expression was elevated within the Surrealist movement. By gathering all huddled around and in what was called the “moment of grace”, the etat d’attente or “state of expectation” allowed these poetic representations to take form. “The Exquisite Corpse disorients: it devalues the singular imagination. It exults the anti-sentimental, the anti-individual, the anti-logical. It is about relations, about the mind and the object, the mind and chance, the mind and its ultimate possibility”(Becotte 37). Here, Breton insists on the ability of images to procure a desired emotion. The poetic here is a matter of collective interpretation. For example, what might have seemed, to the outside eye, disorder, proved instead to reveal some remarkable hidden ideas and/or longings within a visual and especially dynamic form. The partial creations merged together to combine an explicit substantiation of group desire for the body entire. Each part refers back to the whole while at the same time remaining uniquely distinct.



Looking Again at KACC

Since each participant added one segment of a larger whole, the combined imagination and creativity is unique to this collective collaboration. Beyond their expression as a collective, they create work that connects to the universal unconscious mind through a collective interpretation and synthesis. In other words, there is an extension of voice through collective expression. Incorporating multiple artistic minds in such a manner enables dynamic, and reflexive expression. This work reveals remarkable hidden ideas or longings within a visual and dynamic form.
This collaboration marks many milestones within both the contemporary and art historical narrative. Since all of the artists featured in this collaboration received their education from the same Lahore Institute only a few years apart from one another (with an overlap in the years enrolled), the artistic nature of these works is relative through their training received, and their cultural heritage. The direction of each work is typically local to the themes and styles consistent within the initial artist’s vein of work, though each subsequent artist thereafter, has full reign over the reinterpretation of each piece. This process allows the artwork to extend the meaning further and become more complex.
In noting the divergence of approach to contemporary art making between the artists located within Pakistan and those who create work abroad in other cultural environments, one can infer aspects of cultural transference. Their joint experience in Lahore is a shared understanding, while their individual experience shows through in how they have acclimated within particular frameworks of living.
The combined work contains all of these perspectives. The exhibition displays both collaborative and individual artwork. This allows a viewer to develop a visual literacy for an individual artist’s style and then be able to trace their contributions through the twelve collaborative pieces. In doing this, the viewer is able to better understand the degree of interplay and lateral thinking that was integrated in its production.

Contemporary Discourse

Aside from acknowledging the difficult interpretation of all the cultural nuances contained in this artwork, one may still behold and appreciate its progressive nature. The KACC exhibition arises from the fusion between traditional oral transmission, and a postcolonial art-school training. The orally transmitted tradition is discrete while the complete influence of British Imperialism in all aspects is intangible. Aspects of both may be perceived, though it is important not to jump to any conclusions from conjecture.
What is known is that there is a widening split between the two discourses on miniature painting. One believes that the miniature should remain autonomous, whereas the other is for the diffusion of both the methodology and philosophy behind the tradition. The artworks of the KACC exhibition are important because they record the understanding of a group of artists who have learned to read both discourses and are critically creating works with a jointly directed vision.
In addition to progressing Pakistani artistic tradition, these works provoke and promote current ideas, thoughts, and attitudes towards Pakistani culture, politics, and worldviews. The distinguishing characteristic of this work is in its ability to recontextualize the robust history of the karkhana. In effect, what is shown, are the lasting elements of a historically traditional system that have negotiated form in a modern way.
What is for certain about this exhibition is that it draws attention to an understanding of global politics. Opposed to the simplified nature of western media coverage, this work acts as a positive and peaceful force in the US and Middle Eastern dialogue. The artwork offers creative and insightful foreign perspective on a thoroughly complex issue. It’s acclaim and positive reception in occidental venues will encourage the furtherance of this vanguard and similar hybridizations anew.



Bibliography
Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration

Beach, Milo Cleveland. The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge, United
Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Contemporary Miniature Paintings from Pakistan. Fukuoka, Japan: Fukuoka Asian Art
Museum, 2004.

Hashmi, Salima. Unveiling the Visible: Lines and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan.
2nd edition, Lahore, Pakistan: Lahore – Pakistan , 2003.

Jaffe, Cynthia, Robert C. Hobbs and David Shapiro. Artistic Collaboration in the
Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984.

Mehmood, Zafar. Aisha Khalid: 2001 – 2002. Lahore, Pakistan: printingprofessionals,
2002.

Muhammad Imran Qureshi 2002. Lahore, Pakistan: printingprofessionals, 2002.

Nasar, Hammad, Karkhana: A Contemporary Collaboration. New York, The Aldrich
Contemporary Art Museum; Connecticut: green cardamom, 2005.

Rogers, J.M. Mughal Miniatures. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 1993.

Talha Rathore: Between Worlds. Contemporary Art of India Series, Vol. 15, Edition of
50, New York: Bose Pacia Modern, 2003.

The Return of The Cadavre Exquis. Becotte & Gershwin, Horshaw, PA: The Drawing
Center. 1993

They Way I Remember Them: Paintings by Nursa Latif Qureshi. Northampton,
Massachusetts: Smith College Museum of Art, 2004.

Transcendant Contemplations: Paintings by Hasnat Mehmood and Saira Wasim. Ed. of
1000. London, UK: green cardamom, 2004.

Turner, Caroline, Art and Social Change: Contemporary Art in Asia and the Pacific. The
Australian National University, Canberra, Australia: Pandanus Books, 2004.

Production of a Karkhana Miniature
How is this Made?
Seeing as several docents frequently stress understanding the manufacturing process of artwork- here are some helpful descriptions of the components incorporated in these artworks. This information may be appealing to people who partake in the artistic tradition of creation, however, one should note that the general public is typically more concerned with what the artwork means as opposed to how it is created. In other words, beware boring your audience by lecturing about Karkhana’s production techniques. Keeping that in mind, below are some additional insights into the process behind the miniature tradition. This is a supplement to information viewable in the Project Space video by Anna Sloan.

The Support
The support for a miniature painting is wasili; a board composed of three or four sheets of paper glued together using laii, a flour paste. A sheet of paper is wet with water, and then laii is applied and worked into the surface. Trapped air bubbles and excess laii are worked out to the edges of the paper by hand. This process is repeated as more sheets of paper are added. Finally, a decorative piece of paper (tea-stained, marbled, a page from a book, etc.) may be used for the top layer of the wasili.

Preparation
The wasili is taped to a flat surface using strips of paper coated with laii. The paper strips prevent the board from curling as it dries. They can be removed later, or left on the wasili as decorative elements. After the board is completely dry, the surface is burnished using a shell. The thin layer of laii that was left on the final sheet of paper is polished to a very smooth, hard surface for painting.

The Brushes
In addition to the artist’s fingers, several sizes of brushes are used in miniature painting. The smallest are made by hand from the hair of a squirrel’s tail. The hair is collected from a certain part of the tail, sorted, individually inspected, shaped, bound together, and then set in the base of the shaft of a pigeon feather. The handle is created by whittling down a bamboo splinter.

Types of Painting
There are two types of miniature painting. The first, siyah qalam, is a transparent watercolor technique using only sepia-colored paint. The paint is made by mixing gum arabic and very finely ground pigment powder. The second type, guddrang, is similar to gouache, in that white pigment is added to make the paint opaque. In both types, gold leaf and gold paint are often used to embellish the surface of the painting.

Technique
Indian miniature painters mix their paint in mussel shells and use their fingers as both palette and paintbrush. They achieve a sense of shading through the use of tiny parallel brushstrokes, filling in the spaces between the strokes until there is a very even transition from light to dark. In the guddrang technique, color is first laid down in a flat, very even wash. Shading is done over the top of this solid area of color. Jewelry and other details are added at the end. Artists traditionally work while seated on the ground, supporting the wasili on a knee or a small board.