330 Aesthetic Modernism in the

Post-Colony: The Making of

a National College of Art in
Pakistan (1950–1960s)
Nadeem Omar

Abstract

Xxxxxx

JADE 27.3 (2008)

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
With the emergence of India and Pakistan as new
post-colonial states, the decades of the 1950s
and 1960s acquired unique importance in the
history of South Asia. It was a period of the
dismantling of colonial structures and institutions
and a gestation for a whole new set of impulses
that owe their life to the birth of modern nations
on the cultural and political map of South Asia
(Jalal 2001). The nascent Pakistani state in its
early decades struggled to forge a hegemonic
cultural identity over a multicultural and multi-
ethnic map to replicate an official version of the
‘imagined community’ of a modern Islamic nation
[1]. The emancipatory discourses of the post-
colonial state were immersed in the paradigm of
modernisation and development, which
prescribed the policies for the growth and devel-
opment of the national economy through trade,
industry and technical education (Noman 1988).
In the modernisation discourses of the Paki-
stani state, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ became
emblems of transitional stages of national cultural
development. The project of modernity spurred
the national imagination as colonialism was
recast as an unfinished project of modernity, leav-
ing room for a renewed agenda for the progress
and development of a modern nation. The central
tenets of economic policy and planning in Paki-
stan in the 1950s and 1960s came to be defined
in terms of the theories of modernisation and
development, which were at the forefront of
social sciences research in the post-world-war
period (Eisenstadt 1974). Borrowing from the
classical sociology of Durkheim and Weber, post-
world-war development discourses viewed non-
Western societies as ‘traditional’ ones, experienc-
ing the same transitory period of evolutionary
development, from ‘pre-modern’ to ‘modern’,
which Western societies had long ago passed
through. Operative from the literal beginning of
the European Renaissance, the opposition
between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ society formed
an important link in the genealogy of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century modern thought and
continues to provide substance to the theories of
modernisation circulating since the 1950s (Hall &
Gieben 1992).
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
The advocates of modernisation theories focused 331
upon the socio-economic conditions of Western Nadeem Omar
and non-Western societies with particular refer-
ence to the notion of ‘development’, and drew
parallels between them to highlight the contrast-
ing features of their prototypes (Hobart 1993). A
tangled web of discourses, in diverse genres
including economics, political sciences and soci-
ology, similar to discourses of Orientalism but
with North America as the primary referent repre-
sented the former colonies in continuing need of
education from the Western world (Escobar
1995). Western societies, viewed as constituting
the pinnacle of progress, had abandoned more
traditional forms of community and tradition, and
this ‘passing of traditional society’ became the
guiding canon for a wide range of studies analys-
ing the worldwide transition to modern societies
(Lerner 1958). From Parsons-inspired typologies
of economic modernization to Lerner’s studies of
social-psychological contrasts, and Rostow’s
‘stage’ model, the Western-dominated scholar-
ship on development, generated various models
for isolating essential features of tradition and
modern societies (Webster 1984). In their deter-
ministic worldviews, various trajectories of transi-
tion from tradition to modern societies were
projected on the world map, dividing the socio-
geography of the world into the ‘traditional’ and
‘modern’ (Shiner 1975).
Framings of traditions: the Mayo School of
Art and modern art education in Pakistan
The Mayo School of Arts (MSA) Lahore, which
was established as a school of industrial art and
design in 1875, was restructured and upgraded
as the National College of Arts (NCA) in 1958 to
provide art and design education to the modern
artists of a newly independent nation [2]. By the
early 1960s, the craft section of the MSA was
restructured and curtailed in fundamental ways in
the process of the formation and development of
the NCA as a premier art institution which was to
be integrated with the emerging urban-industrial
economy of Pakistan. Like its predecessor, the
NCA was located at the apex of the provincial
(and later federal) system of art instruction, for
which the sphere of influence went far beyond
332 the confines of the college. Being the only art
Nadeem Omar institution in the country for several decades, the
NCA became the arbitrator of a public aesthetic
sphere, anchored in the canon of modern West-
ern art (Farrukh 1997).
In the nationalist discourses on art education
in South Asia, the shift from ‘craft’ education to
‘fine art’ instruction was understood to be symp-
tomatic of a cultural transition from traditional to
modern society [3]. However, the cultural proc-
esses for the construction of national identity
were rooted in the fundamental postulates of
colonial modernity that considered ‘arts’ and
‘crafts’ as binary opposites made to appear as
separate and almost unrelated constituencies.
The exclusive claims of painting, sculpture and
architecture to the status of ‘fine art’ and the
marginalisation of undifferentiated ‘crafts’ to a
salon de refuse is part of the discourse that consti-
tuted fine art as a sign of the modernity of the
nation, and craft as the emblem of timeless folk
traditions [4]. Tradition and modernity became
the axes around which debates on the construc-
tion of cultural identities of modern nations in
South Asia would continue to generate [5]. For
the rising generations of Pakistani artists in the
1950s, the formation of NCA heralds the begin-
ning of modern art in Pakistan, the spirit and prac-
tice of which was allegedly discouraged in colo-
nial art schools, intended to produce low-order
craftsmen for the service of the colonial economy
(Hashmi forthcoming).
To be sure, for modern artists and the national-
ist elite, the MSA was always configured as a
craft school, which was narrowly concerned with
continuing and encouraging artisanal products.
Its links with the rural development and cottage
industries of the province were over-emphasised
in contemporary literature at the expense of the
much wider influence the school has exerted
under the sway of the Arts and Crafts movement
over the construction of the Oriental canon in
Northern India. Specifically, the contributions of
the MSA and its large number of Indian teachers
and alumni to the Indo-Saracenic architecture
and industrial arts of the Punjab through instruc-
tion, commissions and exhibitions for more than
half a century, are passed over in silence [6]. Most
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
importantly, the transformation of the school in
the early decades of the twentieth century, under
the pedagogic influence of the Bauhaus and its
sustained engagement to negotiate craftsman-
ship with modern industry is conveniently
ignored. Routinely represented as the ‘childhood’
of institution, under the imperial tutelage of the
venerated first Principal Lockwood Kipling, the
static image of the MSA as a craft school, trying
in vain to revive the decaying folk industries, was
invented and retained [7]. Even Shakir Ali, the
renowned modern painter and the first Pakistani
principal of the NCA recalled the objectives of the
MSA as imparting ‘instruction in various forms of
crafts-work in order to help the indigenous handi-
crafts and art industries of the Province by main-
taining ancient traditions’ (emphasis added) [8].
Without a qualified critical appreciation of colonial
education, Shakir Ali subscribed to the static
image of the MSA surviving in isolation from the
national and international art world. It was rein-
forced through anecdotal publications as traces
of its archive and the institutional existence as the
school of industrial art and design for more than
half a century in colonial Punjab were erased from
public memory [9].
Prior to the discovery of the administrative
records of the MSA, which led to the formation of
National College of Arts Archive (NCAA) in 2000,
the received wisdom of modern artists and art
historians was never challenged. It never
surprised art historians that the administrative
records of the MSA had such a varied existence:
from carefully kept active records to scraps of old
files and papers left unattended for more than
half a century. The history of contingency of
forgetfulness stems not from a gap as it were,
but from the specific rationalities of the post-colo-
nial state. The forgetfulness gestures towards
the art and educational discourses of the post-
colonial state, which privileged a system of arts
education hinged on the binary opposition of art
and craft. Such formulations in current art histori-
cal scholarship relocated the national cultural
development on the scale of post-world-war
economic theories of progress and modernisa-
tion as well as synchronised with the ideological
discourses of the post-colonial state and national-
JADE 27.3 (2008)
ist intelligentsia (Ali 1997). Given the absolute
dearth of primary sources for the history of the
MSA, prior to NCAA, such a conservative view of
the school came to be established. It appears as
if a backward view of the MSA was based on a
colonial sociology that had constructed Indian
crafts as the historical residue of static, pre-indus-
trial India and was constantly invoked to exagger-
ate the post-colonial career of the NCA as a
national art institution.
From MSA to NCA: the forward-looking years
The independence of Pakistan, the imperatives of
economic planning coupled with the obligations
for nation building, dictated concerns for the reor-
ganisation of the MSA as part of the national tran-
sition from a traditional craft-oriented approach to
a modern design-oriented philosophy [10].
Though officially inaugurated in October 1958 as
a national institution, with three main depart-
ments in Fine Arts, Design and Architecture, the
NCA remained in gestation for several years as
attempts to restructure and upgrade the MSA
began in the years after partition [11]. Sidney
Speeding, the last British Principal of the MSA,
submitted a proposal to the Economic Planning
Commission in 1954, ‘to develop Mayo School of
Art into a National College of Art on the basis of
an institute of Industrial Design comparable in
standards with European Institutions’ to be affili-
ated with the Punjab University. According to his
initial planning, it included training in architecture
to a qualified professional status, textile design
and printing, pottery design and manufacture,
commercial art, industrial design, general design
including interior decoration, and general design
[12]. The location of the school in proximity to
Lahore Museum, Punjab Public Library, the Paki-
stan Arts Council, the Fine Art Society and Punjab
University, equipped with a rich library where a
Fine Arts department set up to teach women
since 1941 was seen to provide ‘a balanced
educational background necessary for students’
development’ [13]. The entrance qualification for
the students was raised from higher secondary
to matriculation at a minimum age of 16 years.
Three-year courses on Architectural draughts-
manship were revised to suit the standards of the
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Royal Institute of British Architects. The 333
programme modules for BA and MA Fine Arts Nadeem Omar
degree programmes in affiliation with Punjab
University were also developed to strengthen
fine art education [14].
Commitments to technical assistance from
the United States were sought for the infrastruc-
tural development of the MSA. Spedding hoped
to stimulate production in textile and metal indus-
tries with improved research in indigenous
designs, in addition to architecture at the School,
which would explore ‘research into tropical
domestic architecture ... leading to possibilities
of new industries’. The instruction for commer-
cial artists to work in the advertising industry was
justified on economic grounds. A publicity art
studio was to be developed to give students
commercial and production experience before
joining industry. Three teaching posts were sanc-
tioned for professors in Architecture, Industrial
and Commercial Designing and Handicrafts
along with the post of Principal, to form the
educational nucleus to streamline instruction at
the MSA. As a result, three years before it was
renamed the National College of Arts (which in
popular lore is still called Mayo college), Sydney
Spedding declared it in a press article ‘as the only
one which has the making of a National College
of Art for the country as a whole’ [15].
The transition of the MSA to the NCA in the
1950s and 1960s also offers a parallel reading of
the making of the Pakistani state and society. The
partition of India left deep scars on the social body
of the MSA. More than half of the school popula-
tion, from faculty, students and staff, belonging to
the Hindu and Sikh religions left Lahore in 1947
and were scattered throughout India [16].
Reduced to a shambles in the aftermath of the
partition of India, the MSA made a new beginning
as a national college of art to train young design-
ers in ways similar to the attempts of the nascent
Pakistani state to develop its infrastructure and to
train citizens for a modern Islamic nation. The
intersection of state discourse in the educational
policy and planning of the NCA offers concen-
trated readings of the ideologies of modernisation
and development that had taken root in the devel-
oping world. The first convocation report of the
334 NCA on 15 June 15 1959 delivered by its first
Nadeem Omar (American) principal, Mark Sponenburgh [17],
draws on this parallel more explicitly:
It is an interesting fact that the new National
College of Arts began its formal instruction on the
6th of October 1958, and that a significant change
in the Government of Pakistan took place on the
following day on the October 7th. We are born in
the climate of constructive change, and we pray
that we may contribute in this progressive and
refreshing spirit. I hasten to add however that
there have been moments during the past
academic year when problems that the new
regime of this college faced seemed surprisingly
similar to those embodied in the national frame of
reference [18].
The priorities of the first military regime of General
Ayub Khan, to whom Sponenburgh alluded, were
set squarely within the paradigm of modernisa-
tion and development of a new nation-state.
Along with the formation of the NCA, the closing
decade of the 1950s saw the large-scale restruc-
turing of educational institutions under the new
foreign assistance programmes sought out by the
military regime. Three months after the capture of
power, President Ayub Khan inaugurated a
National Commission on Education to develop a
plan for ‘a re-organization and re-orientation of
existing educational system so as to evolve a
national system, which would better reflect our
spiritual, moral and cultural values’ [19]. The
Harvard Advisory Group at the Central Planning
Commission of Pakistan developed the second
five-year plan in which technical education formed
the human core of the large-scale industrialisation
and did receive strong financial backup [20]. The
presence of Walter Gropius at the Institute of
Design at Harvard in the post-war years might
explain the proposals of the Harvard Advisory
Group, and the consequent national policy empha-
sis to render architecture and consumer goods as
functional, cheap and consistent with mass
production [21]. To this end, Gropius and his asso-
ciates at the Bauhaus in the years between 1919
and the 1930s had attempted to reunite art and
craft to bring together functional products and
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
aesthetic form. Influenced by the reformative
impulses of the German art movement, the Plan-
ning Commission aimed to increase the profi-
ciency of the skilled labour force to increase inno-
vatively designed consumer goods for local
consumption as well as for export.
In this vision of technical education for Paki-
stan, the NCA played a leading role in developing
the technical resources of the country for urban
industrial development. From concerns with
physical infrastructure to the appointment and
termination of services of the technical staff, the
Central Planning Commission monitored and
reviewed all new projects for the conversion of
the old MSA that were not in line with new polices
being created at the centre. One of the ways to
strengthen the national college was to seek
foreign expert assistance as well as foreign quali-
fied Pakistanis. Consequently, in the initial years,
NCA had a fair number of technical experts who
were brought in to design the curriculum, contrib-
ute to teaching and link it up with diploma and
degree level technical education to serve the
emerging urban-industrial economy.
The NCA received generous assistance from
the Asia Foundation in terms of foreign faculty,
visiting fellowships, scholarships for students,
and visual materials sometimes laden with an
explicit ideological agenda [22]. A large number
of books, journals, magazines and visual aid
material donated by the German Cultural Centre
and the United States Educational Foundation
(USEF) made up the initial collection of the NCA
library. For more than a decade, the USEF steered
the development of the NCA by coordinating and
supporting the visits of American and European
teachers on short contracts. Kochi Takita (1960–
61) a Japanese artist, Professor Warren Barringer
(1960–62) a Canadian designer, and Dr Wallace
Spencer Baldinger (1960–61) a Professor, School
of Architecture and Allied Arts at Oregon Univer-
sity and Director of Museum of Art were respon-
sible for the reorganization of the ceramics,
design and architecture departments at the NCA
respectively. Professor J. Palmer Boggs (1960–
62), head of architecture at Oklahoma University,
taught courses in structural design and formed
the nucleus of the architecture department [23].
JADE 27.3 (2008)
Mary Lewis (1958–60), a Fulbright lecturer in
sculpture, contributed to the teaching at the fine
arts department at the NCA. Abbassi Akhtar, a
lecturer in design who was the first Pakistani
woman-artist at the NCA, took charge of the
fundamental programme [24].
In its founding years, the NCA kept the policy
of retaining teachers from the MSA who were
considered practising architects artists and
craftsmen in their respective specialised fields.
However, a foreign qualification was invariably
preferred over a local degree in the recruitment of
staff. For instance, out of three qualifying condi-
tions for the post of the principal of NCA, Lahore
in 1962, the very first clause demanded a diploma
in Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art, London,
or from other leading British or French universi-
ties [25]. The diploma holders of the MSA were
ranked lower in the official scale and placed in a
separate cadre to foreign-qualified persons. A
new category of gazetted teaching staff,
educated artists and critics, was added to the
establishment as lecturers and professors. A
crop of craftsmen from the MSA were retained as
instructors, masters (and demonstrators) on a
temporary basis. Among them only good, effi-
cient and qualified hands were to be absorbed
into the professional cadres. Ironically, even the
widely celebrated miniature painter Haji Muham-
mad Sharif, who joined the MSA in 1951, at the
age of 60, was not granted status equal to that of
a lecturer (with consequent low salary) during his
entire career at NCA, on the basis that as a tradi-
tional practitioner he held no formal qualifica-
tions. His lifetime experience could not earn him
professional status equal to an art school
educated artist, in a field in which he was cele-
brated over three generations of known ‘heredi-
tary’ miniature painters [26].
In the canons of nationalist art history in Paki-
stan, the birth of modern art was signalled by the
break with the traditional style of painting, which
had a strong public appeal. The works of A. R.
Chughtai, a student of MSA, who painted themes
from Urdu and Persian poetry, and Ustad Allah
Baksh, a self-taught artist-craftsman of mytho-
logical themes and village landscapes were
condemned by a new generation of artists as ‘old
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
fashioned’ and ‘lagging behind the spirit of times’ 335
(Ali 1989, 222). Although Western styles of paint- Nadeem Omar
ing had always formed the centre of gravity for
generations of painters in colonial India, the
source of inspiration of Pakistani artists markedly
shifted from regional genres of art and literature
to predominantly Western visual arts movements
such as expressionism, cubism, abstraction and
impressionism which tapped a rich vein among
art-school-educated artists in urban and educa-
tional centres like Lahore and Karachi. Together
with Zubaida Agha, Shakir Ali, Sadequain Naqvi
and Ahmed Pervaiz, the new generation of
modern artists, created what Akbar Naqvi follow-
ing Harold Roseberg has called the ‘tradition of
the modern’ (Naqvi 1997). At Lahore, a British
landscape painter, Anna Molka Ahmad, painted
and taught a generation of Pakistani modern
artists. The modernity of the Pakistani artists
stemmed as much from their subjects and
themes as much from the institutional location
they belonged to. Any work which existed outside
the institutional framework of gallery, exhibitions
and art schools did not survive in the ‘tradition of
modern’ [27].
Along with a national art college, the infrastruc-
ture for creating a modern art, distinct from ‘tradi-
tional’ crafts in Pakistan was scantly provided by
the federal government, by setting up the Karachi
Fine Art Society in 1949, backed up by foreign
diplomats. A nascent system of art schools,
formal associations, art galleries and exhibitions
was put together to advertise the advent of the
contemporary art of Pakistan as the symbol of
modernity of the nation. The Karachi Fine Art Soci-
ety hosted the first solo exhibition of Zubaida
Agha, the much acclaimed founder of the modern
art movement in Pakistan and continued to exhibit
and promote modern artists such as Shakir Ali, a
‘radical manifestation of European modernism’ in
Pakistan in the 1950s [28]. In addition to the Paki-
stan Art Council at the federal capital Karachi,
regional chapters of art associations were opened
in Lahore and Decca to promote ‘contemporary
art’ and art-school-educated artists [29]. From its
very inception, modern Pakistani art tended to
draw its practitioners from a relatively privileged,
literate and upwardly mobile class of citizens who
336 looked towards the West for inspiration and affili-
Nadeem Omar ations. A much hyped event hosted by the Art
Council was the Asian Art Critics Seminar, proudly
announced to be the first of its kind to be held in
an Asian country, under the stewardship of Altaf
Gauhar, the literary spin doctor of Ayub Khan’s
regime. To be held between 28 November and 1
December 1963 at Lahore, it was aimed at
enabling Pakistani artists to forge professional as
well as institutional links with the International
Association of Art Critics, which sponsored the
event. Moreover, the Seminar was intended to
train the participants in ‘the systems of commer-
cial gallery systems, possibilities of organizing
composite Asian as well as national exhibitions
and projections of Asian Art within Asia’ [30]. As a
logical outcome of looking to the West, the paint-
ers of a newly independent Pakistan ‘chose Amer-
ican history to launch themselves into their orbits’,
a chapter in the history of Pakistan art whose
trajectories are well charted (Naqvi 2001, 10).
Post-Bauhaus influences at NCA: an aborted
agenda
In the 1950s, when Shakir Ali began spreading
the gospel of modernism among educated artists
of Lahore, Mark Sponenburgh, to use Akbar
Naqvi’s words, was ‘preaching Bauhaus philoso-
phy’ among the teachers and students of the
NCA (Naqvi 2001, 35). The Bauhaus school, as it
is known, had a strong mandate to dissolve
certain artificial barriers, considered as an
unwanted residue of the earlier beaux-arts tradi-
tions, hindering the integration of visual arts. The
distinction between art and craft premised by
utilitarian ideologies, which inhibits the integra-
tion of artefacts within a unified aesthetic space,
was strongly contested by the proponents of the
Bauhaus school. Sponenburgh turned out to be a
reformer administrator who raised the NCA on
the model of the Bauhaus school, with teaching
in three main departments of art, design and
architecture – integrated in arts and crafts.
In the first progress report of the NCA in 1958–
59, Sponenburgh described the objectives of
education at the NCA in the field of art, architec-
ture and design education in phrases echoing the
Arts and Crafts movement and Kipling at MSA.
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
‘The completeness of every society must consist
of a capacity to recognize and utilize its native
artistic potentials.’ Against this background, he
brought out the educational philosophy of the
NCA, organized along ‘modern lines … in order
that it can meet the challenge of our economically
and industrially expanding society’. he went on:
This institution seeks to go beyond technical instruc-
tion by placing emphasis on creative thought and
action and to develop in students an awareness of
this essential unity of the visual arts both traditional
and contemporary. In this respect, the National
College of Arts is similar to the Bauhaus school
where effort was made to integrate industry and
visual arts in a harmonious whole [31].
With explicit reference to the Bauhaus as a model
for developing the NCA, Sponenburgh inspired
students and teachers ‘to preserve folk arts which
are in danger of being lost amid economic devel-
opment and social change’. In this task, the NCA
had to play a crucial role, to act as a centre of
enlightened criticism and advice for craftpeople,
as well as learn from the techniques and materi-
als used by craftspeople to create a contempo-
rary Pakistani art. ‘It calls for not only sifting and
preserving what is best in our tradition but also
for revitalizing in harmony with the trends in the
contemporary world’ [32]. He further stressed
efforts being taken ‘to cultivate reputable stand-
ards of taste and to give the students an apprecia-
tion of indigenous traditions, and understanding
of the forms and functions of all the components
of the traditional Design’. In his vision, the artists
were to receive practical and professional studio
training and designers were trained to assess
consumer needs and translate them into satisfy-
ing products. Above all, he wanted architects
who could stimulate greater use of indigenous
material and could become by experience fully
qualified for professional practice [33]. In the
modernisation of art education at NCA, tradition
was not to be ignored; in fact it was to be consti-
tuted as one of the central coordinates for the
construction of modern national identity:
JADE 27.3 (2008)
It should be pointed out that although many of the
recommendations appearing in this report would
point the college more in the direction of design
than of arts and crafts per se, every effort should
be made to preserve traditional indigenous arts
and skills. Indeed the college should be a citadel
for defending and encouraging such traditional
disciplines as miniature painting and calligraphy
for these might otherwise pass out of existence
[34].
The revivalist and preservationist concerns of
national art were achieved by Sponenburgh by
scouting the industrial centres set up by the
Department of Industries, but also by accompany-
ing students on field surveys and study trips to
centres of artisanal productions and factories for
research and instruction. One of the very first field-
works in Northern Pakistan in the summer of 1960
led to an ethnographic exhibition of Folk Arts of
Swat held at the NCA gallery a year later in Febru-
ary. The students made measured drawings,
photographic surveys, rubbings and paintings as
well as collecting samples of woodcrafts, jewel-
lery, textiles, basketry and paintings. The exhibi-
tion also travelled to Karachi where it was hosted
by the Pakistan American Cultural Center. Later
the entire collection of artefacts became part of
the ethnological gallery of the Lahore Museum.
Sponsored by the Asia Foundation, the fieldwork
was deemedthe ‘first step to compile an index of
Pakistani Design similar to the American Index of
Design’. The Swat valley fieldwork was followed
by research on Sindh, especially Cholistan in
1961–62 and formed a unique craft collection of
the region. Both exhibitions travelled to London in
1956 as part of the Pakistan pavilion at the inaugu-
ration of the Commonwealth Institute [35].
The department of design built on the legacy
of the Bauhaus which made its frequent appear-
ance in industrial art discourses as part of a pack-
age to develop indigenous design industries
through professional training and supervision of
the craftsmen. James Warren, Visiting professor
of Design at NCA, phrased the objectives of the
design department in the light of the second five
year plan’s emphasis to conserve precious
foreign exchange by increasing the sale of
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
domestic production through improved designs. 337
He placed a strong emphasis on learning to work Nadeem Omar
with indigenous raw material and techniques ‘to
appreciate both the possibilities and their limita-
tions’. Students were encouraged ‘to learn about
and actually use the tools and processes that are
employed by the craftsmen in this country’ [36].
In his speech to the first World Congress of
Craftsmen 1961, Sponenburgh reiterated one of
his commitments to define the objectives and
function of the NCA as a safe haven for handi-
crafts, which needed to be salvaged from the
impending industrialisation. The fascination for
industrial goods drove craftsmen to adapt to
machine aesthetics for making their product
appears ‘modern’. As a result, he argued that
‘even the traditional producers of excellent hand-
made objects prefer cheap machine-made
designs in their flair to be modern’. He deplored
the cultural domination of British rule, which had
marginalised the popular pride on handicrafts
that were the products of the symbiotic relation
of ‘the craftsman and the public’. In his view, the
craftsperson as the living embodiment of art and
culture had been isolated from public patronage,
causing stagnation in the tradition: ‘Experimenta-
tion and research cease to be part of their crea-
tive program.’ To rejuvenate the tradition, Sponen-
burgh argued, educational philosophy had to be
developed to create a genuine appreciation and
acceptance of the handicrafts in the country. Mili-
tating against older traditions of social and
aesthetic stratification, education at the NCA
aimed to free students from the psychology of
individual genius and help them attain status
satisfaction through their contribution to the over-
all process of production.
The first Pakistani principal of the NCA was
Shakir Ali (1962–75), who by virtue of his location,
age and body of art work served as a paradigm
for modern art and individual artist in the country
[37]. In the eyes of critics, he inspired cubism
among students and colleagues in the early
1950s and as a result, ‘in less than year, nearly
every painter in Lahore, including many of the
older ones, were using a cubist style introduced
by Shakir Ali’ (Sirhindi 1997). Offering a visual
reference to the development of modern art in
338 Pakistan, his oeuvre of paintings lends itself to a
Nadeem Omar national cultural identity, as the national art estab-
lishment combines a version of modern art,
comprising of traditional and avant-garde. To lay
claim to an unbroken lineage of national art
production, for the first National Art Exhibition in
Dhaka (presently Bangladesh) in 1954, the then
West Pakistan government selected the works of
Shakir Ali and Zubaida Agha as torchbearers of
Western styles of painting complemented by
Chughtai and Allah Buksh as insignia of ‘tradi-
tional’ art. The signs of Western styles of painting,
amid more local styles rooted in the folk and the
past, were emblematic of the growth and matu-
rity of a new nation. One of the unintended conse-
quences of concerns with modern fine art move-
ments in Pakistan was that the Bauhaus
philosophy of the college, with its explicit social-
ist orientations, was submerged and curtailed in
fundamental ways in the process of the develop-
ment of the NCA as a premier fine art institution.
Occasionally individuals mourned the loss of
the Bauhaus spirit which enabled the artists and
craftsperson-designers to draw on indigenous
design traditions and skills for inspiration, innova-
tion and adoption. In November 1964, J. A. Rahim,
then Pakistani Ambassador in France, drew the
attention of the Vice Chancellor Export Promotion
Bureau to the ‘complete lack of elementary artis-
tic training both among workmen and those
responsible for our designing’ leading to a decline
in exports of handicrafts [38]. In contrast to fine
art colleges in Europe, which served as the real
suppliers of design ideas for industry, Rahim
castigated the NCA for not doing enough to
educate the workpeople. This veteran Bengali
civil servant, who later wrote the socialist mani-
festo of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in the
late 1960s, echoed the Bauhaus ideology of the
integration of visual arts when he suggested that
‘Art schools or colleges will have to be organized
to take care of artists and the education of handi-
craft workmen’ [39].
The letter was sent to Shakir Ali, who in
response drew sharp distinctions between hand-
icraft, industrial art and fine arts, thereby rejecting
the concerns expressed by the ambassador.
Contrary to the ideals of the Bauhaus set forth in
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
the curriculum of the NCA which aimed to bring
artists and craftspeople into an environment of
mutual learning, Shakir Ali considered the devel-
opment of handicrafts a digression from the
concerns of the NCA. He asserted that the NCA
was primarily an educational institution and was
engaged in training students in Fine Art, Architec-
ture and Industrial Design. In his view, handicrafts
were the historical residue of pre-industrial India,
from which there was little to learn [40].
Contrary to the NCA, the National Institute of
Design, Ahmadabad, in India successfully turned
the principles of the Bauhaus to the service of the
Indian economy. Indian Industrial designers drew
on the skills and knowledge of self-taught artisans
to make hand manufacturing co-exist in a creative
relationship with mass production. From product
diversification to the revival of traditional designs in
new applications, from improvising artisan’s tools
to redesigning tools and workplaces, generations
of Bauhaus designers in India gave hand manufac-
ture a new lease of life (Chatterjee 1988).
In trying to duplicate its principles for reviving
and reinventing craft industries into modern
manufacture, the Bauhaus philosophy had a
short-lived career at the NCA. Sponenburgh’s
strong inclination towards serving industry
through art and design education disappeared in
the context of the post-colonial identity politics of
nationalism and modernisation in a postmodern
economic world. Its founding objectives based on
the principles of the Bauhaus, intending it to serve
the purpose of learning and educating the rural
and urban worker were passed over, as by the
middle of 1960s, modern artists, largely comprised
of the first generation of NCA graduates began to
look elsewhere for inspiration and critique.
Postscript
The National College of Arts has grown substan-
tially from a provincial art college under the Depart-
ment of Industries to an autonomous federal insti-
tution with its own Board of Governors with liberal
credentials. While enjoying relative freedom from
the strictures of the state, it has emerged as
centre of excellence in visual arts, which is pres-
ently offering advanced training in a wide range of
creative arts. From its original areas of concentra-
JADE 27.3 (2008)
tion in visual arts such as fine art, design and archi-
tecture, the NCA has initiated programmes in
performing arts such as musicology as well as
technology-based courses in multi-media arts and
film and television. Though not yet a university, it
has earned an unofficial status of a university of
the arts with its geographical as well as thematic
expansion. Spread over two campuses in two
major cities of Pakistan, the NCA continues to
expand into higher education by offering doctoral
programmes in cultural studies and art history. A
large number of its students have fed into govern-
ment service as well as private business. Invaria-
bly most of the contemporary artists, designers
and architects of Pakistan were trained at the
NCA. In the last two decades the artists of NCA
have gained an international acclaim and world-
wide exhibitions, by reworking the traditional
practice of miniature painting into a contemporary
art form that confounds the distinction between
traditional and avant-garde (Bhabha 1999).
Whilst in the early years of the NCA craft was
being reformulated to marry with industry, in the
later decades it was expelled from the registers
of art education, notwithstanding the fact that the
NCA continues to resonate with the older debates
between tradition and modernity, art and craft,
and skills and creativity. This was signalled by the
fact that miniature painting, rejected as a tradi-
tional craft for more than forty years, due to its
emphasis on copying and craftsmanship, had to
be re-invented before it could be accepted as
equal to the status of fine art. With a deeply
entrenched system of modern galleries and exhi-
bitions in a globalised world which privileges art
school artists, the connoisseurship of modern art
in Pakistan has closed the doors on the traditional
arts and unqualified artists of the country. Perhaps
it is only a resurgence of the Bauhaus spirit at the
NCA that can bring traditional crafts and fine arts
together with industry to strengthen the econ-
omy and rejuvenate national culture.
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Notes 339
1. See Anderson (1991), for a standard reference Nadeem Omar
on the formation of modern national and cultural
identity. See also Maniruzzaman (1967).
2. For a historical study of the Mayo School of
Arts, see Omar Tarar (2007). See also At-aullah
(1997).
3. For a historical overview of modern South
Asian art history, see Mitter (1994).
4. For examples of such constructions, see
Hashmi & Mirza (1997); Mumtaz (1985); Wilcox
(2000).
5. See Jain (forthcoming) for a contrasting
perspectives on the shared history of visual arts
in South Asia.
6. For an early example of South Kensington
inspired colonial art education in late-nineteenth-
century Punjab, see ‘Historical Introduction’,
Choonara & Tarar (2003).
7. Satish Gujrl, a living legend of the Indian
contemporary art world, and a student of the
Mayo School of Arts in the early 1940s
perpetuated a backward looking view of the
school. See, Gujral (1997).
8. From Shakir Ali, Principal NCA to Naheed Khan,
the United States Education Foundation (USEF)
in Pakistan, Karachi for a booklet ‘10 years of
Academic Achievements in Pakistan’ which was
to be published by USEF. See NCAA, Box File No.
209-E, Directorate of Industries, West Pakistan
(1959–60).
9. One of the renowned graduate and teacher of
the NCA, Salima Hashmi, who also served as the
artist principal of the college, could assume in a
review essay on 50 years of visual arts in Pakistan
the loss of Mayo school records without
adequate search. ‘The archives and books of the
Mayo School of Arts were destroyed or lost in
the riots of 1947’ (Hashmi 1997, 70).
10. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the
Mayo School of Arts into the National College of
Arts, Lahore (1958–59). ‘National College of Arts,
Information Bulletin No. 1’.
340 11. NCAA, Box File No. 195-E, Scheme for the
Nadeem Omar Expansion in the Mayo School of Arts (1943–48).
12. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the
Mayo School of Arts into the National College of
Arts, Lahore (1958–59).
13. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E.
14. NCAA, Box File No. 273-E. The classes for
fine arts were initiated in 1956 with the help of
graduates from Punjab University, which had set
up a department of fine art in 1941, which ran
courses exclusive to women until then.
15. NCAA, Box File No. 202-E, Miscellaneous
Reports on the Mayo School (1957–59).
16. A small number, however, rallied around S. L.
Prasher, then Assistant Principal of the MSA, to
relocate the school after partition in the Indian
soil. Such was the affiliation with the school that
the Government College of Art, Chandigarh
(India) traced its origin from the MSA in 1875 and
included all the faculty of the school until 1947 as
part of their institutional heritage. For a brief
overview of the College, see www.
artcollegechandigarh.org/history.html.
17. A Scot by descent, Sponenburgh (b. 1916),
graduated from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in
1940 and then began working as a sculptor. After
his distinguished military services during Second
World War, he attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts
in Paris. He later received an AM from the
University of Cairo in 1952 and his Master’s from
the University of London in 1957. He received an
honorary doctorate from the National College of
Arts in 1970s. Dr Sponenburgh taught at the
University of Oregon from 1946 to 1956 and then
spent a year as a visiting professor at the Royal
College of Arts in London in 1957. In 1958,
Sponenburgh received a Fulbright research
fellowship and taught in Egypt before being
appointed as Principal of the NCA a year later. He
returned to Oregon in 1961 and embarked on a
lengthy career at Oregon State University, where
he was named Professor Emeritus in 1984.
Today, the university maintains the Sponenburgh
Travel Award, which is awarded to a graduate
student every year and endowed by
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Dr Sponenburgh. He currently resides in Seal
Rock, Oregon. For details of his early career at
NCA, see NCAA, Box File No. 293-E, Personal File
of Mark Sponenburgh, Part I–III (1957–61). Also
see the following for details on his services in the
USA: www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/
monumentsMen/bio.aspx?personID=282&PDFn
18. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File
(1958–66).
19. NCAA, Box File No. 54-E, Report of the
Commission on National Education (1958–59),
p. 5. The commission was chaired by S. M.
Sharif, Vice Chancellor of Punjab University
assisted by two American advisors, and two
renowned Pakistani academics, namely historian
I. H. Qureshi, the ideologue of Two-Nation theory
and scientist Dr Abdul Salam, the Nobel laureate.
20. In collaboration with Harvard University, the
Ford Foundation financed mainly American
advisors on the newly created Planning Board of
Pakistan, which was entrusted with the task of
preparing Pakistan’s second five-year plan for
economic development. See Noman (1988).
21. Bauhaus had major impact on art and
architecture trends in Western Europe and the
United States, the latter received the full crop of
Bauhaus graduates as most of the advocates of
Bauhaus including Gropius were driven out by
the Nazi regime. Gropius taught at Harvard
Graduate School of Design in the post-world-war
period, and from there the influence of Bauhaus
spread further in the third world. See Benevolo
(1984).
22. NCAA, Box File No. 288-E, Free Cinema
Shows to Educational Institutions (1949–72). In a
leaflet announcing new film titles by USEF to be
shown to students at NCA including Anatomy of
Aggression, which describes ‘the techniques
and tactics used by the Communists to gain
control and enslave the people of free counties
since the end of Second World War. The same
techniques are being used to enslave the people
of Berlin.’.
23. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File
(1959–66).
JADE 27.3 (2008)
24. NCAA, Box File No. 14-E, Visiting Lecturers at
National College of Arts (1958–62).
25. NCAA, Box File No. 29-E, Report of the
Proceedings of the Principal Office (1955–69).
26. NCAA, Box File No. 133-E, Personal File of
Haji Muhammad Sharif (1944–89).
27. Sadequain, a truly eccentric genius who is
counted in among the pioneers of modern art in
Pakistan, was also among the last of those self-
taught artists who had enormous potential to
grow outside the institutional locations of art
production. Without any affiliations with art
institutions, he suddenly shot to fame in 1955,
when Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy, then
Minister for Foreign Affairs and known patron of
paintings, exhibited a large number of paintings
by Sadequain at his residence titled Exhibition of
an Unknown Artist. For the next 32 years
Sadequain produced more paintings than other
Pakistani artist, while maintaining his distance
from the art schools.
28. Shakir Ali joined the Mayo School of Arts in
1954 as Lecturer in Art. Apart from being the only
‘foreign qualified’ gazetted officer at Mayo
School, he officiated as the principal of the NCA
in its early transitional years before being
confirmed on the job in 1962. See NCAA, Box
File No. 80-E, Personal File of Shakir Ali, Part I–IV
(1954–76).
29. In response to an official enquiry, Mark
Sponenburgh, principal of the NCA, named the
following art school educated artists as the only
known ‘individual artists’ in the whole of
Pakistan: Abdul Rehman Chughtai, Khalid Iqbal,
Moin Najmi, Safdar Ali, Zainul Abedin, Shakir Ali
and Aminul Islam. See NCAA, Box File No. 158-E,
Lists of Artists, Art Associations and Seminars on
Art Education in 1958–69.
30. NCAA, Box File No. 229-F, Meeting of the
Pakistan National Commission.
31. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, Convocation File
(1959–66).
32. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 278.
JADE 27.3 (2008)
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
33. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 278. 341
Nadeem Omar
34. NCAA, Box File No. 238-E, p. 256.
35. NCAA, Box File No. 175-E, Reports of the
National College of Arts (1959–62).
36. NCAA, Box File No. 175-E.
37. For his lasting contribution to the
development of modern art in Pakistan, see Butt
et al. (1982). See also Majeed (1987).
38. J. A. Rahim spelled out the need to earn
foreign exchange by promoting exports in
handmade artefacts. Carpets, embroidery,
ceramics, brass and copper work were
recommended for exports. He questioned the
use of child labour in the carpet industry and
expressed a need to improve the working
conditions of the workers. He recommended an
organisation be set up by the government for
human welfare as well as rationalising the tools,
methods and working conditions of the workers.
J. A. Rahim, Ambassador to France, to Wazir Ali,
Vice Chancellor, Export Promotion Bureau, 1964.
NCAA, Box File No. 21-F, Correspondence with
the Principal Office (1955–69).
39. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F.
40. NCAA, Box File No. 21-F.
References
Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of National-
ism. London: Verso
Ali, S. A. (1997) Forward looking art: years before
and after independence, Arts and the Islamic
World, Vol. 32, pp. 00–00
Ali, W. (1989) Pakistan in Contemporary Art from
the Islamic World. London: Scorpion
At-aullah, N. (1997) Stylistic hybridity and colonial
art and design education: a wooden carved
screen by Ram Singh, in T. Barringer & T. Flynn
[Eds] Colonialism and the Object: Empire,
Material Culture and the Museum. London:
Routledge, pp. 00–00
342 Benevolo, L. (1984) History of Modern Hashmi, S. & Qadus Mirza, Q. (1997) Fifty Years
Nadeem Omar Architecture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press of Visual Arts in Pakistan. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel

Bhabha, H. (interviewer) (1999), Alter/Native Hobart, M. (1993) An Anthropological Critique of

modernities – miniaturizing modernity: Shahzia Development: The Growth of Ignorance.
Sikander in conversation with Homi Bhabha, London: Routledge
Public Culture: Bulletin of the Project for
Jain, J. (forthcoming) Tradition and modernity:
Transnational Cultural Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1,
the post-colonial evolving context, in N.O. Tarar
pp. 146–52
[Ed.] From Tradition to Modernity
Butt, K. S. et al. [Eds] (1982) Shakir Ali: Fun aur
Jalal, A. (2001) Self and Sovereignty: Individual
Shaksiat (Shakir Ali: The Art and Personality).
and Communities in South Asian Islam since
Islamabad: pub
1850. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel
Chatterjee, A. (1988) Challenges of transition:
Lerner, D. (1958) The Passing of Traditional
design and craft in India, in M. W. Meister [Ed.]
Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe,
Making Things in South Asia: The Role of Artist
IL: Free Press
and Craftsman. Philadelphia: Department of
South Asia Regional Studies, pp. 3–9 Majeed, m-S. [Ed.] (1987) Shakir Ali Ke Tehre-
hrain (The Writings of Shakir Ali). Lahore: pub
Choonara, S. & Tarar, N. O. [Eds] (2003) The
‘Official’ Chronicle of the Mayo School of Arts, Maniruzzaman, m-T. (1967) National integration
the Formative Years under Lockwood Kipling. and political development in Pakistan, Asian
Lahore: National College of Art Survey, Vol. 7, No. 12, pp. 876–85
Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: Mitter, P. (1994) Art and Nationalism in Colonial
The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Princeton: Princeton University Press
Mumtaz, K. K. (1985) Architecture in Pakistan.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1974) Studies of moderniza- Singapore: Concept Media
tion and sociological theory, History and Theory,
Mumtaz, K. K. (forthcoming) Tradition and
Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 225–52
modernity, in N. O. Tarar [Ed.] From Tradition to
Farrukh, N. (1997), Echoes of socio-political Modernity
history, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32,
Naqvi, A. (1997) Transfer of power and percep-
pp. 00–00
tions of four Pakistani artists, Arts and the Islamic
Gujral, S. (1997) ‘A Brush with Life’ – Satish Gujral World, Vol. 32, pp. 00–00
– An Autobiography. New Delhi: Penguin Books
Akbar Naqvi, A. (2001) Image and Identity.
India
Karachi: Oxford University Press
Hall, S. & Gieben, B. [Eds] (1992) Formation of
Noman, O. (1988) The Political Economy of
Modernity: An Introduction to Sociology.
Pakistan: 1947–1985. London: KPI
Cambridge: Polity Press
Shiner, L. E. (1975) Tradition/modernity: an ideal
Hashmi, S. (1997) The Visual Arts, in V. Schofield
type gone astray, Comparative Studies in Society
[Ed.] Old Roads New Highways: Fifty Years of
and History, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 245–52
Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press
Sirhindi, M. C. (1997) Painting in Pakistan: 1947–
Hashmi, S. (forthcoming) Chalk and cheese:
1997, Arts and the Islamic World, Vol. 32,
interdisciplinary art education at NCA, in
pp. 00–00
N.O.Tarar [Ed.] From Tradition to Modernity

JADE 27.3 (2008)

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Tarar, N. O. (2007) Colonial governance and art 343
education: 1849–1920s, PhD Dissertation, Nadeem Omar
University of New South Wales, Sydney

Tarar, N. O. [Ed.] (forthcoming), From Tradition to

Modernity: Essays on Pakistani Art and Design.
Lahore: pub

Webster, A. (1984) Introduction to the Sociology

of Development. Basingstoke: Macmillan

Wilcox, T. [Ed.] (2000) Pakistan: another vision:

fifty years of painting and sculpture from
Pakistan, Asia Magazine, pp. 00–00

JADE 27.3 (2008)

© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 NSEAD/Blackwell Publishing Ltd