This book is the outcome of the author's research into the archive of Pakistan artist Zahoor ul Akhlaq, and travels from a personal story of the artist (and his murder) to a larger social analysis.
'Taking off from the tragic murder in January 1999 of the Pakistani artist Zahoor ul Akhlaq, the book charts the story of this elusive artist and provides a glimpse into his prolific work. The more the author, Roger Connah, researched, the more versions of a truth emerged. Known within Pakistan as the painter’s painter, Akhlaq appears to have lived a life so public that it became secret, to the extent, as the author explores, his life became a critical fiction.
Beginning with an interest in calligraphy, Akhlaq went on to search, explore and develop ahead of his times a vibrant cultural practice in contemporary Pakistan. A permanently picaresque figure, recalling Sufi scholars from the ninth and tenth century in Asia, he was an artist-wayfarer in and out of cities like Karachi, Delhi, Lahore, Toronto, London, Montreal, Bangkok, Kabul, Tehran, Tokyo, and Venice. This book begins to recount a life in flux, a life on the move, a life exploring the traditions of Islam and the exiles and danced furies, that dancing order, within a Muslim mind. The necessity and urgency of negotiating the invasions and seductions of modernity produces unusual reversals in Akhlaq’s art and within the contemporary narratives about Pakistani society and culture. This is a timely volume which reappraises this artist and the critical fictions made about him, offering an unusual enquiry on society and culture at a time when Pakistan has never been more important.' (from publisher's website)
Includes a portfolio of the artist, and an index.
Art and Society in Pakistan
Onsite
English
2011
409
9780195474725
1
monograph
Book 1: Fragments from a Critical Life
Part 1: A Network of Obsessions
1 Born in Delhi
2 To Live in Plot
3 A Network of Obsessions
4 The Enigma of Departure
5 The Aesthetics of Night
Part 2: Bakwas Beyond Communication
6 Bakwas
7 The Ecstasy of No Further Communication
8 Danced Furies
9 The Book of Beginnings
Part 3: The Infinite Game
10 I Regret that I am Innocent
11 Duchamps to Ourselves
12 The Infinite Game
13 Post-Mortem
14 Misreading Islam
Book 2: Critical Fictions
Part 1: Enigmas
15 Calling All Angels
16 You Think You Know What Time it is!
17 Human Equations/Style Exercises
18 The Wounded Angel
19 Seduction and Calligraphy of All Things!
Part 2: Intimacies
20 Intimacies and Crimes of the Last Century
21 Eaters of Grief
22 The Temple of Man
23 Exist Weeping
24 'Chariya' Zahoor
Part 3: Labyrinths
25 All the Rage
26 Exiles and Roseless Days
27 I am a Snake, I am a Door
28 My Assassin, My Beloved - Stay with this Writing
Book 3: Strange History
29 Strange History: 'Self' and Culture
30 The Three Riders: Navigating Tradition and Modernity
31 (Auto)biography: The 'Musee Imaginaire'
32 Mappings
33 The Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gazatte: Documents
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