arcel Duchamp, the most discussed artist of the Twentieth Century, says his biographer Calvin Tomkins, believed that “the artist performed only a part of the creative process and that it was up to the viewer to complete the process by interpreting the work and assessing its permanent value. The viewer, in other words, was as important as the artist...” Perhaps, the reviewer, too, has a similar role. A writer attempts, with a background of art history and aesthetic theories, to look at a work of art through multiple lenses: formal, contextual and cultural.

The posthumous solo exhibition of Shahid Jalal is an opportunity to approach the artist’s favourite, hence recurring subject, landscape, from various angles – and from varying lengths. Faced with a stretch of fields, landscapes that Jalal rendered throughout his creative life, lend a range of choices: flowers, trees, bushes, water channels, sections of residential or religious buildings, animals, the sunshine, clear or cloudy sky and the time of day in a particular season.

The person (the painter) can decide where to position themselves. One may decide to stay – safely – at the edge, standing on a narrow pathway to enjoy a distant scene in its entirety. Many painters in Pakistan, especially in the Punjab favour this option, since a majority of them follow the formal structure of Khalid Iqbal’s landscapes. Iqbal is the unmatched master of the genre. Looking at his paintings one hardly feels the need to enter the areas that these represent, because the urge to be inside the picture is already satiated, through the painter’s portrayal of atmosphere, tranquillity, breeze, light, stillness and sensation of season in a careful, calculated and captivating manner.

The other usual encounter with a piece of land involves walking in, being close to a plant, touching a tree, inhaling the fragrance of a flower, avoiding the thorns, missing or stepping on a puddle, plucking some weeds, inspecting a leaf and gazing at an insect, etc. This can also be accomplished without ever setting a foot in the mud and getting the shoes soiled – since a camera can zoom in on the desired scene. Some of the paintings rendered using this method, can create the illusion that the artist was physically close to his/ her subject, rather than catching it with a mechanical device.

Shahid Jalal’s exhibition In the Realm of the Cacti (August 8-16, Ejaz Art Gallery, Lahore) marks a different (possibly final) stage in his long artistic journey – from studies at the National College of Arts in 1979 till the last year of his life, 2020. (Two canvases in the show remain unsigned.) Jalal – a child prodigy, who won awards for paintings at the Alhamra Arts Council – distinguished himself through his manipulation of paint in its physical form. He applied thick impasto to capture sensitive details of the landscape, a challenge he set for himself by employing diverse strategies. At a previous solo show of landscape in Lahore, the fertile fields were divided into loosely formed grids as if observed from a low-flying plane. In his other exhibitions a spectator could sense the painter’s position in reference to his subject; but the physical location was not delinked from the painter’s personal, formal and conceptual position.

Compared with his contemporary landscape artists, Jalal’s selection of spots to create imagery from with heavy coats of colours is an important key to reach/ read his paintings. There are views of rural areas and of urban spaces: public parks, green grounds, lawns, grassy pavements, flower beds. Some domestic extensions are observed from a window. Though most of these were produced in a natural and neutral tone, one can recognise the artist’s relation to his imagery from the manner of delineating it.

Given their un-ignorable presence, power and persistence, these cacti presumably signify an artist’s existence, resilience and survival against all odds. It is like tough plants survive in unsupportive, unsettling, harsh and hard environment. With their thorny and rough configurations, they live longer than other - pretty, common and comfy - plants. 

Jalal’s fondness with reverting to manicured lawns, well-kept green areas, flowers arranged in perfect order and planned vegetation, was a contrast to ‘naturalness’ of unkempt greenery often preferred by a large number of landscape painters from this region. This difference probably relates to the dissimilarity between two types of artists. Shahid Jalal was a neatly clad gentleman, simultaneously successful as a chartered accountant. He was also a well-read person, aware of matters beyond art and enjoying a comfortable life. In comparison, many landscape artists have had humble beginnings, struggled for years and still romanticise dressing up in shabby clothes even though (having produced highly sought after canvases) they can easily afford designer stuff.

One could learn about more facets of the artist from the recently concluded exhibition. The blend of nature and structure, plants and built entities illustrates two sides of the artist. He was equally at home in his two professions, but one suspects that he may have felt like something of an outsider in both. The idea arises from the unusual appearance of ordinary stuff in his last paintings.

These can easily be segregated in two groups: lawns with buildings; and the cacti in clusters. The former category has a uniform element, repeated in six canvases: a single rock amid neatly placed and trimmed plants. This body of work demonstrates the artist’s control on portrayal of every segment of landscape in detail (closer examination helps you appreciate the precision of the painter). The imagery, an unhewn rock inserted in growing vegetation, may allude to the artist, a painter in a corporate world; an artist who will survive longer, if not for an eternity (like a stone) in relation to other prosperous professionals doomed to perish after their shorter life span (like small trees).

The other, overwhelming half of the exhibition consists of surprising compositions: canvases filled with enlarged cacti. A bunch of closely joined cacti spread on the earth. A few paintings depict succulent stems of various species and hues. The paintings do not look like regular landscapes, but portraits, fabricated with clinical detail; so much so that one can count identify each cactus in a large setting, and calculate every spine of the untouchable growth (don’t forget that Shahid Jalal was a trained chartered accountant).

The most remarkable feature of the paintings is not the precision, intricacy and their placement in a symmetrical scheme. It is how alive and unforgettable they look; like flesh. Artists, students, academia and critics are conditioned to connect some peculiar content with the painted visuals of fruits, flowers and vegetation. The floral imagery of Georgia O’Keeffe, the American painter, was/ is read as a substitute for the female reproductive orgarn (O’Keeffe reportedly denied this connotation). Shahid Jalal’s towering, turning and stumpy cacti can be similarly perceived as a metaphor for the male organ, but this would be misleading.

Given their un-ignorable presence, power and persistence, these cacti presumably signify an artist’s existence, resilience and survival against all odds. It is like tough plants survive in unsupportive, unsettling, harsh and hard environment. With their thorny and rough configurations, they live longer than other - pretty, common and comfy - plants.

To believe in this version one needs to agree with Marcel Duchamp’s observation that a viewer’s interpretation of a work of art completes it.

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