old and art have had a long lasting relationship. In many traditional art objects, such as the Christian icons, illustrated Islamic manuscripts and Indian miniature paintings, gold was applied for varying reasons. It sometimes represented the divinity (through light, sky, sun/ halo and by inscribing words attributed to God). According to Simon Schama, gold “has been associated with immortality… since it never tarnishes or corrodes. It was also used to illustrate precious jewellery, royal costume, crown, throne and other accessories. The presence of gold not only made a work of art valuable in terms of its subject matter but also made it an expensive article.

Besides, its monetary worth had a romantic connotation. Purity is a virtue sought in the metal as well as appreciated in human behaviour, feelings, emotions and relations. Yet purity is mostly an ideal and not feasible in many situations. For example, bangles made of 100 percent gold are not practical because due to the softness of the material they bend easily and lose their shape. Therefore; goldsmiths use some alloy metals (copper, silver, nickel, or zinc) to make the jewels more durable.

Semitic religious traditions often emphasise purity. However, with passage of time, all faiths spread to other areas and through interaction with diverse thoughts, practices and beliefs evolve into new avatars /sects, each following an independent interpretation and often disagreeing with the rest. The concept of tradition is no different. It is sometimes mistaken as homogenous, unadulterated and unique; whereas it is typically formed through exchanges with other societies and their rituals, customs and physical and cultural products. If one scrutinises one’s experiences, expressions and ideas on a single day in terms of their origin, one it likely to recognises that all of us are a ‘blend.’ This is equally true of housewives, drivers, university professors, shopkeepers, philosophers, ministers, preachers, pilots and street vendors.

Miniature painting, which mainly flourished in South Asia under the Mughal dynasty, is also conceived by some as an indigenous identity. It has been called Indian miniature, Indo-Persian or Mughal miniature but betrays connections, influences and assimilations from many regions including Iran, Turkey, China, the Netherlands, Flanders and Portugal. The English colonialism has been an important late influence.

Ahsan Jamal trained in the discipline of miniature painting at the National College of Arts. Since graduating in 2003, he has held eight solo exhibitions besides participating in numerous group shows in Pakistan and abroad. Jamal has impressed his peers and those interested in the art with his superb skill in rendering sensitive detail and with his choice of subjects, especially the series on goats (2009) in which the ready-for-slaughter animals look almost human.

His ongoing exhibition, 24 Carat Ghazal (July 4-15 at Ejaz Art Gallery, Lahore) is yet another testament to the artist’s grasp on the technique. However, the imagery and the content of new paintings can be perplexing. Each of the exhibits has been created in ‘acrylic on up-cycled surface,’ a medium and material unheard of in connection with miniature painting, which is typically rendered in gouache on wasli paper.

Responding to the contemporary trends, several artists trained and experienced in classical miniature painting, have abandoned the technique in favour of mixed media pieces, digital prints, photographs, video projections installations, oil and acrylic paintings, collages, assemblages and sculptures. 

In a sense, the up-cycle description is the key to decoding the artist’s concept. Jamal has used waste material (mostly packaging paper) sent to Pakistan to be dumped. What he draws on these surfaces can also be seen as a rehash of images linked with various schools of traditional miniature painting. Examples of this include a cow in the middle of a blazing meadow (The Sun setting Garden); a charging animal on the edge of waves (The Sun setting Sea); a horse snuffling a blood streak under a hurricane of trashy clouds/ fumes over its body (Red Bin Snuff); two steeds advancing towards one another (Black & White); a snake charmer in vernacular attire playing his instrument behind a curtained arch (Charming the Snakes); a diptych of mountainous landscape (See Me Here I & II); a few village maidens taking a dip in a stream (Happy Bath Day); and a gazelle enclosed in a glowing space (Ghazal, Deer). The last mentioned image probably led to the title of the exhibition, but some of the works, too, carry clues to the content.

Both 24-carat gold, and ghazal signify the quality of being untainted. Pure gold and quality ghazal are unblemished as they are unalloyed/ influenced by external factors; hence the favour and reverence.

Yet the two are not viable/ available in their original (desired) state in the contemporary world. One may inherit 24-carat gold, but one cannot put it to routine use. Likewise, one may admire the traditional ghazal, but recent experiments with form have broadened, transformed and deconstructed its structure. A parallel can be drawn with the revival of traditional miniature painting that has gone through numerous updates in the last two decades. Its contemporary concepts, images, compositions, mediums, techniques, scale and context are remote and removed from the miniatures of Akbar and Jahangir’s courts, or even those of the Rajasthani kingdoms and Pahari states.

Responding to the contemporary trends, several artists trained and experienced in classical miniature painting, have abandoned the technique in favour of mixed media pieces, digital prints, photographs, video projections installations, oil and acrylic paintings, collages, assemblages and sculptures. This amounts to a recycling of the hand-me-down artistic practices. Ahsan Jamal has identified this process and highlighted it on a material/ elementary level. In commenting on the past of miniature painting – being a combination (of pictorial segments from diverse sources), he exploits the lustre of a golden sheet dispatched to Pakistan for recycling/ reuse. Joining pieces of this industrial product to prepare the surface he requires, Jamal treats this once dysfunctional substance, as a substitute for the richness of gold-leaf found in historic miniatures.

Beyond his commentary on the way the past merges into the present, and East meets the West, Jamal seems to be stuck with a romanticised vision of classical miniature painting, particularly in his selection of imagery, construction of pictorial space and colour palette. Arguably the most minimal painting A Hill Far from the Mill, comprising tips of a rock against the luminous patina of golden dusk, is the most impressive creation, because here more than recycling the historic imagery, Jamal up-cycles it to makes it a modern, personal and poetic work of art.

The writer is an art critic, curator, and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore