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Artist Statement:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Exhibitions:
EXHIBITIONS: (One Man Show)
1. 1983 National College of
Arts, Lahore - Pakistan.
2. 1994 Rest House, Chakwal.
3. 1996 National Art Gallery,
Islamabad.
4. 1997 R.D.A.Complex,
Rawalpindi.
5. 1998 Fort Manro, D.G. Khan.
6. 2001 Al Hamra Art Gallery,
Lahore.
7. 2002 Hamile Art Gallery,
Lahore
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Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
COLLECTION
Parliaments House, Islamabad.
Pakistan Santé, Islamabad.
President’s House, D.G. Khan.
Commissioner’s house, D.G.
khan.
Punjab House, Islamabad.
Governor's House, Peshawar.
Chief Minister's House,
Lahore.
Civil Secretariat, Lahore.
Standard Charted bank,
(Lahore, Singapore).
Union Bank Ltd. Lahore,
Faisalabad.
United Bank Ltd. zonal office,
Lahore.
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Further Information
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Commissions:
COMMISSIONED PROJECTS:
Punjab Social Security
Hospital, Lahore
Walled City Project, Lahore
Commissioner’s house, D.G.
Khan
Civil Secretariat, Lahore
Standard Charted Bank, Lahore
Punjab Provincial Co-operative
Banks Ltd. Lahore
Deputy Commissioner’s office,
Chakwal
Saga Sports, Sialkot
ACHIEVEMENTS
1. Shield from Unicef for the
best calendar designing for
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Further Information
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S.M. MANSOOR’S MINIATURES
A Blending of Tradition and Modernity
Dr. S S Bhatti
Former Principal, Chandigarh College of Architecture
ARCHITECT, ART CRITIC, ARTIST, AUTHOR
Chandigarh (India)
The Daily Post
S.M. Mansoor is one of the finest artists, using the rich inheritance of the art of calligraphy, manuscript-writing, and miniature painting, to extend his Family Tradition into the realm of Modernity, by the sheer power of his own exceptional creative talent. His work is easily distinguished by consummate skill, luminescent colours, unusual compositions, apt techniques, and diverse themes. His glorious example substantiates my pet thesis that Creativity alone can provide an all-important link between Past and Present, and form the fertile ground from which all genres of artistic expression eventually spring. Although his work will be seen differently by different people, and may even win him some ardent admirers, yet to view Mansoor’s art intelligently needs a comprehensive background. I will attempt to delineate such a background.
Since the very word ‘Miniature’ or ‘Manuscript’ evokes notions of the Art of yesteryears, it is important to understand the Past in a new light. In this context, Tradition, to me, is not something dead and forgotten, but an undying living force. For a quantum leap into the Future, therefore, the running distance must be found in the Past. This simple notion makes Tradition the continuous development of a body of creative activities and achievements, such as in literature, music, painting, etc. However, there is a stark difference between merely continuing a Tradition and thoughtfully extending it. In this sense, Modernity becomes Tradition subject to continual renewal by the creative action of self-motivated (often, self-taught) individuals.
S.M. Mansoor is one such individual who has taught himself to be avidly receptive to the advancement of technology, and thus to use its products and processes to enrich and enlarge his own repertoire of Creativity. He has given up the traditional methods of making paper, colours, and brushes—which once consumed so much of the traditional artist’s time and energy as to quench his thirst for spontaneous Creativity. Thus, Mansoor is right when he avers, “Artists of today are now better equipped.” He uses water colours, oil paints, acrylics, and collage in mixed media, on cardboard, with a corresponding repertoire of tools and techniques.
In the past, Feudalism, with its obsessive notions of Absolutism—the irrational belief that the power of a Monarch (who was the highest product of Feudalism) was unquestionable, because (as he perceived it) Objective Reality was unchangeable, forever being at his command. This notion had its artistic correlate in the fact that all Architecture was compulsively designed on an axis of symmetry; robes and items of furniture were heavy and almost immovable, and dress design invariably had a border decorating the neckline, sleeves, etc., as a mark of ‘absolute’ definitiveness. Relativism, which finds its political correlate in Democracy, is an offspring of scientific discovery such as Albert Einstein’s. As against Absolutism, which insisted that the Objective Reality was static, Relativism reveals the world to be in a constant flux, and thus dynamic. From this springs my axiom that Symmetry, which was thought to be a perennial virtue of artistic sensibility by the Traditionalists, is required only in the production of things that move e.g., robots, aeroplanes, cars, scooters—with their counterparts in humans, animals, and birds. But symmetry can be totally dispensed with in Art that deals with images on canvas, cardboard, cloth, or paper—which are essentially static, but only virtually evoke dynamism. This curious dynamism of Modernity has broken the ‘absolute’ definitiveness suggested by the heavy frames of paintings in Tradition, and extended their restricted size to entire walls. Technique, which was once a painstakingly cautious process, has fallen apart with the introduction of Action Painting such as by the American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-56).
S.M. Mansoor uses his time-renewed perceptions (albeit, unconsciously) to introduce an element of dynamism in an-otherwise static frame of reference. Thus, frames within his paintings, though carefully delineated and painstakingly decorated, are broken in gay abandon of the dynamism of Modernity, thereby transforming Tradition into an undying living force of Creativity. I will return to this significant aspect of his work a little later. Let me first say something about what Art is, per se.
In my view, Art is all that Man creates but Nature can never produce. Nature produces the sugarcane but Man makes sugar and many related products out of it. Nature has curves and circles. But man has invented the straight line. Thus, Art is human skill (and sensibility) diametrically opposed to Nature. In other words, Art has two aspects: Creativity and Craft. Creativity is the product of Sensibility as a workforce compounded of emotion, imagination, intuition, etc. Craft is the application of skill, guided by principles, to the production of beauty (especially visual beauty), and works of creative imagination, as in the fine arts.
Mansoor’s case substantiates another favourite thesis of mine that true Specialisation is developed by the continual practice of a given skill that runs from generation to generation in the same family. Thus acquired, Specialisation becomes a consummate skill such as is hard to match in any other way than inheritance. The modern-day Specialisation is a product of unbridled craze for making a quick buck. It has nothing to do with the pride of perfection, which was a family’s prized distinction, earned by generations of practice of a skill until it came to the individual as easily as breathing.
Skills of miniature painting, manuscript writing, and calligraphy have come to S.M. Mansoor as priceless family endowments. He uses them with a joyous flourish like a magician’s sleight-of-hand. His craft is so consummate and exquisite that others will find it hard to match. Mansoor hails from a renowned family of Miniature Painters, such as may well be one of the oldest families, who have kept alive the Art of miniature painting on the Indo-Pak subcontinent. His is the seventh generation of this distinguished Art Family of Patiala Gharana (literally, a group of artists whose works reflect a common conceptual, regional, or personal influence; the gharana or school is thus easily identifiable by certain characteristics. His grandfather Ustad (maestro) Haji Mohammed Sharif was a legendary artist of national eminence in Pakistan. Haji’s father and his grandfather were the court painters employed by the State of Pepsu (Punjab & East Punjab States Union) in undivided India. Mansoor’s father SM Zahoor was a pastmaster in the art of calligraphy, and excelled in its Urdu and English forms. His father was a contemporary of artist Mohammed Aziz, the adopted son of the legendary artist Ustad Allah Bakhsh. To Mansoor has thus been bequeathed an invaluable inheritance of miniature painting, manuscript-writing, and calligraphy. His work, grounded in a living Tradition, is authentic. The work of those, who imitate Tradition for special effects, is, at best, faddish, if not downright fake!
Some of the most eye-catching characteristics of Mansoor’s paintings are: (1) His paintings irradiate an inner luminescence; (2) They are passionately animated, yet seem to remain in a state of suspension; (3) They break the barriers of convention as a liberating function of Creativity; (4) They rejoice in the heady thrill of movement and speed; (5) They celebrate life in all its bounty and beauty; (6) Though apparently ‘symmetrical’ in composition they achieve an occult balance; and (7) They reinterpret old motifs and signs to reveal their little-known aspects, or create absolutely new visual metaphors.
The inner luminescence imparts to Mansoor’s paintings a psycho-spiritual focus, transforming the viewer’s encounter into a meditative visual experience. The intense animatedness, vis-à-vis mid-air suspension inherent in his Art, makes it an evocative visual metaphor for life in the modern world: there is an infectious excitement in being in its midst despite the waywardness of its lifestyle. The frames deliberately broken are yet there, in the selfsame act of respecting Tradition and welcoming Modernity, as an artistic evidence of being palpably alive—here and now. Dynamism, being the chief element of Modernity, movement and speed, as suggested in Mansoor’s paintings, are an apt expression of the ethos of our times. The hordes of elephants in a relentless race capture this aspect in breath-taking beauty. The animal-figures are excitedly stretched into pulsating, straightened-out shapes to suggest their gargantuan power in thrilling action. Colourful buntings, moon on a cloudy night, flying-carpet-like aircraft against clouds playing Holi (the Festival of Riotous Colours), etc. celebrate life in all its beauty and bounty. When a frame is placed even symmetrically in the painting, an occult balance is achieved by rendering the overpowering background with savage spontaneity. Regally bedecked elephants, portraits of emperors in their majestic resplendence, etc. are reinterpreted as symbols of modern human psyche rooted in an undying sense of feudalist self-assertion. Mark his three female torsoes, with breasts pulled out flat to hang on a clothesline as ‘laundry’ to dry: they are an Artist’s visual satire on the double standards of the powers-that-be in a Man-dominated world. The new Woman may be pregnant with the embryoes of ‘A Brave New World’, but she is yet a mere commodity for an incorrigibly feudalistic Male psyche. His use of stamp- and envelope-symbols conjures up images of mass communication: a collective reaching out to things that are just yet out of human grasp. His technique of mingling, rather than mixing, of colours subtly suggests this crucial aspect of Mansoor’s aesthetic sensibility.
I could write a whole book explaining Mansoor’s marvellous paintings—but here I have to content myself with a restricted write-up. Suffice it to say that this painting have much more than meets the eye—and require deep and long contemplation to get drunk with their unusual aesthetic elixir. Since I am not familiar with the works of other Artists of Pakistan I can make no comment whatsoever, in my assessment of this exceptional artist’s work vis-à-vis theirs, in terms of how he fares in his own country. But I can certainly vouch that SM Mansoor’s work could easily be placed among the best works of the front-rank artists of India!
Allah, the Merciful and Most High, has blessed him with an exceptional sensibility, which is backed by the inimitable skill of seven generations of artistic endeavour, and thus SM Mansoor is cut out to do great things in life for the honour of Pakistan and the glory of the entire Art World. His Art is bound to step out far beyond the borders of this subcontinent to address an international viewrship—peoples of the world who may well find in it the cause for self-discovery, which would enable them to rejoice deservedly in the immensity of human creative genius—for its timeless universalism.
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