In his book On Beauty, Umberto Eco quotes a Delphic oracle as saying: “The most beautiful is the most just.” Eco elaborates: “in the golden age of Greek art, beauty was always associated with values, like moderation, harmony and symmetry.” The word just, according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary means, “acting or done in accordance with what is morally right and fair; proper.” A word related to just is justice: it is described in the dictionary as “fairness.”

The general idea of justice in our midst is not separate from the Greek concept of just, i.e., fairness, symmetry and balance. An applicant to a court of law seeks a fair and equal treatment for all partisans. People are happy and satisfied if every person is dealt in a balanced manner. Equal distribution of time, space and attention, importance is regarded the highest sign of justice.

What we expect in our life, at courts and in public offices is a just behaviour – moderation, harmony and symmetry, which according to Greeks is a form of beauty. But when it comes to the art of our times, we often abandon fairness, moderation or symmetry. The history of modern art is an archive of works defying just or justice. A viewer can hardly locate balance, symmetry, equality while standing in front of a canvas by Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Paula Rego, Antoni Tapies, Shakir Ali or MF Husain.

The world represented by these and numerous other artists is often disrupted, imbalanced and disharmonious. Yet, many of them desire a harmonious, fair, just and balanced existence, and similar characteristics in their surroundings. If applying for a grant, an award, state support, exhibition chances, the artists of today hope for a just and fair procedure. In their practical affairs, most of them try to follow similar principles. Some of them, working at state museums, public galleries or art schools, maintain fairness, equal opportunity and balance in these dealings.

However, once the situation changes from an office to a studio, from a public space to a private place, the people who advocate, favour and fight for justice, fairness and equality are totally transformed: almost as soon as they are with their materials, subjects, ideas, concerns and strategies. Much of their work is produced in contradiction to these norms and the maker hardly bothers about these. A prominent example of this is the distribution of space, or composing a figure/ subject in an artwork. The formal training in an art, exposure to the history of modern art and an urge to break norms compel the maker to forsake the conventional codes/ settings of beauty: moderation, harmony and symmetry.

All of this starts at the beginning of a professional life. A teacher of a foundation course at an art school, especially in drawing and sculpture classes, can recount a chain of disputes, dissatisfactions, disagreements between the instructor and the freshmen. If a still-life is arranged in the studio, or a human model is posing along with a range of objects: bowls, fabric, fruit, flowerpots, and the student is asked to draw it, their impulsive response is two-fold: one, to place everything in the middle, thus leaving vast areas around it on the drawing sheet; and two, to focus only on the main point of interest: the human body, a vase, a bottle, omitting the surroundings as unnecessary.

Predictably, for this the student gets a poor grade. Most art teachers prefer a composition that is not evenly balanced, a drawing that does not have a central point of focus but is spread across the paper. Equal distribution of white space across the edges of a drawing is openly discouraged. The placement of subject (figure, still life) in the middle is not favoured either. Instead, an uneven composition of elments, an imbalanced arrangement of space and a lack of emphasis on a single object/ subject are appreciated.

The first lesson that an art student, in this sense, learns is to abandon his/ her natural tendency and follow institutional guidelines. Human beings – no matter how cruel, horrible or kind – are just by instinct. Even a bunch of thieves distribute their gains in a fair scheme. A gangster deals with his group fairly and equally. A suffering and striving mother treats her children with identical tenderness, feed and care. When a young individual joins an art institution, he/ she performs according to his/ her perception, upbringing, aspiration; hence dividing the drawing sheet into corresponding segments. If folded in the middle, the drawing may appear a Rorschach test. Both halves uniform and symmetrical.

However, this solution, invites the ire of the tutor. So the student, soon recognising it, starts positioning his/ her subject matter in random ways. This exercise, at a beginner’s level is a means to introducing unusual, unknown, untried and unseen possibilities. Basically, the student’s initial behaviour is a reflection of symmetry, routinely observed at home. For instance, a pair of decorative items is settled on both sides of the mantlepiece. In a house, two photographs of grandparents are hung keeping an equal distance between them. In a living room, sofas, chairs and side tables are set in a perfectly balanced order. In a rural house, plates, pots, glasses, cups are lined in an evenly aligned manner; because this is the canon of beauty.

Ironically, when a painter renders these scenarios, he/ she chooses a position from where things look unequal, asymmetrical, inharmonious – hence interesting, original, new, and transformed into art; responding to an impulse for freedom.

If you follow the norms, obey rules, maintain the equilibrium, you are one of the millions stopping at red signals, filing their tax returns, observing the dress code at a party, funeral, formal meeting; but a creative individual can denounce standard behaviour. Probably not everywhere, but in the inner sanctum of the studio he/ she can dismantle all norms, requirements, restrictions; most importantly relating to the ideas of aesthetics. No one is interested if the modern and contemporary artists are following any principle of beauty, balance and harmony, because in the realm of present a rule in the domain of aesthetics is a feeble and short lived notion. (Surprisingly and intriguingly a number of modern and contemporary artists – including some from Pakistan – are consciously or intuitively employing the language of symmetry and centrality in their work. The pictorial space is evenly divided and the subject is centrally located.)

Artists, across continents and cultures, generally deviate from the constraints of convention, i.e., balance, equilibrium, impartiality; since they feel they can go beyond regulations – in their life and art. Actually, this adventure in the domain of art is possible, permissible; even admirable. Examples from the biographies of Caravaggio, Gauguin, Schiele, Kahlo illustrate it, but in the sphere of public life, one cannot be an outsider, individualist, authoritarian or afford disturbing the balance for personal glory, glamour, eternity. He/ she can decide not to agree with the fifth century BCE Greek sculptor Polykleitos’s treatise on human prorations, his Canon indicating the ideal human proportions; yet he needs to follow the civil Canon, the Qanoon, and the common law of a country.

The writer is an art critic based in Lahore.