he same things are referred to differently across contexts and continents. Shashi Tharoor, in his book A Wonderland of Words, observes: “In Britain, one concludes a restaurant meal by asking for the bill, and conceivably paying by cheque; in America, one asks for the check and pays with bills. What the Brits call chips are fries in America; what the Yanks call chips are crisps in Britain.”

For many years, several old, dusty, and disintegrating gunny sacks lay stuffed in a tiny abandoned room at an art school. Then a faculty member noticed their existence, opened them and realised that they contained the school’s archives (established during the colonial period). Inside were papers, files, documents, drawings, plans and photographs. Subsequently, those were sorted, aired, fumigated, preserved and classified. This effort culminated in an extensive archive documenting art education and the history of art since the British Raj.

Other forms of art archives and histories have also existed in this region. These include chronicles, biographies, autobiographies and anecdotes, particularly from the Mughal Empire – though they often lack specific dates, locations and numbers. Perhaps art-making was historically perceived more as an act of devotion, service, skill and pride, than something requiring meticulous record-keeping.

It was only with the arrival of the East India Company, its advance into the midlands and eventual occupation of vast territories, that the practice of formal archiving began to thrive. This was a practical necessity as merchandising required receipts, vouchers, ledgers, records and data entries. Colonial governance depended on comprehensive statistics. Understanding native languages, races, customs, faiths and geography was essential for the British Crown to subjugate and control an unfamiliar land. These records were compiled into official gazettes, which facilitated the successful administration and control of a vast population.

It is not surprising that the annual gazettes of every district were published in English. The language became a barrier between the colonisers and the colonised. In line with Thomas Macaulay’s vision, the foreign rulers advocated for the introduction of English in India to replace Persian, aiming to create a class of Indians who would be Indian in name, dress, skin colour and religion, but with an English mind-set.

The English language, which facilitated the formation of an English mind-set, not only displaced other languages previously used in court communication and madrassa/ pathshala education, but also alienated Indians from their history. The documents distributed across India in English were regarded as authentic – if not the only – history, reinforcing the colonial narrative.

Following the example of their foreign rulers, local subjects came to accept the supremacy of English, a shift best illustrated by Macaulay’s brash assertion: “I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

He added: “The dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them.”

Echoing this approach, art education under the Raj was used as a means to uproot local artists from traditional practices and image-making methods, or to demean these practices as mere craft, placing them beneath the status of fine art. This hierarchy was further reinforced when the Mayo School of Art was upgraded to the National College of Arts in 1958, with foreign faculty invited to design and teach new courses aligned with the modern art movements of the West.

One of the key consequences of this shift was the prevailing perception of the artist as a creative, imaginative and intellectual individual, in contrast to the craft practitioner, whose work was relegated to a lesser status. For centuries, Mughal miniature paintings were regarded as craft objects in Europe. Even Rembrandt, fascinated by their intricate imagery, produced numerous drawings replicating Mughal miniatures, influenced by the Dutch East India Company’s trade with the Mughal Empire, which brought Indian goods to Amsterdam and ultimately into his art.

Understanding native languages, races, customs, faiths and geography was essential for the British Crown to subjugate and control an unfamiliar land. 

Due to this artistic hierarchy, even today, painters and sculptors are widely recognised, but potters, carpet weavers, carpenters and gold-/ silver-smiths, as well as makers of religious statues, remain largely anonymous – despite their exquisite work adorning museums around the world.

For many years, artists in the subcontinent – not adhering to past conventions of image-making – were also disinterested in documenting their identity, omitting details such as names, dates, locations and titles from their work. As a result, researchers attempting to trace Pakistani art from the 1940s to the 1970s face a daunting challenge, as crucial information is either missing or, in cases where signatures exist, often illegible or incomprehensible.

There could be several reasons for this absence – or negligence – of documentation. Perhaps the artists of earlier periods, immersed in an idealistic stupor, did not feel the need to attach specific details to their work. To them, art was a purely visual experience – a stimulus for the mind, a source of imagination or a spark to invoke pleasure in the spectator’s soul. Consequently, names, signatures and dates were omitted unless they were integrated into the artwork itself.

A striking example of this approach is found in the mixed-media collages of Iqbal Geoffrey, whose signatures are deliberately scrawled upside down or in multiple directions, often confounding curators and exhibition organisers attempting to establish a coherent display.

Another reason for the lack of archival documentation is associated with higher artistic or spiritual pursuits. The bronzes of the Gupta period, for instance, remain undocumented for two reasons: first, there is no record of the makers’ identities or periods, as each work followed in the footsteps of its predecessors; second, every statue was cast as an act of devotion, where the process of creation took precedence over the individual artist.

With the Age of Enlightenment, religion was dethroned by revolutions and romanticism, paving the way for the rebellious figure of the artist – an individual driven by self-expression rather than documentation. In this sense, these artists were not unlike many writers, who published collections of stories, poems and essays without indicating years or dates. This practice could also stem from the widespread belief that true genius is timeless, rendering chronological markers irrelevant.

It was only with the rise of academia and the expansion of the art market that archiving art became a major necessity. Research papers could not be based on assumptions – dates provide authenticity, quotes establish credibility and documentation determines the value of a study.

Similarly, with the establishment of art galleries and the professionalisation of the art business on an international scale, artists were required to archive information such as title, year, medium and dimensions of each work – later supplemented by an authenticity certificate. This information became essential for gallery records, sales documentation and export permits, treating artworks like commercial products, where paperwork often assumed greater importance than the work’s aesthetic concerns, content or cultural context.

Archiving always has a purpose – an agenda, a plan. Thus it often assumes greater significance than what is actually archived. Perhaps in response to this, the conceptual artist On Kawara (1932–2014) created his renowned Date Paintings series from 1966 to 2012. Over six decades, he produced thousands of paintings, each featuring nothing but a date – for example, June 16, 1966 – painted in white against a single flat-colour background.

To some extent, these notations evoke Jorge Luis Borges’ short story Funes the Memorious, about a boy who, after suffering a fall, became bedridden but acquired an extraordinary ability to remember every detail – even the exact shadow of a tree on a wall at 4:13pm.

However, dates in Kawara’s paintings were not merely archival markers; they held deeper significance for the Japanese-born artist, who “was twelve years old when the atom bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the World War II in Japan with devastating effect.”

After moving to New York City, Kawara’s Date Paintings became a record of significant moments, whether personal or public. Some of their subtitles ranged from historical events, such as the space race – “Three American astronauts were ready tonight to embark tomorrow on man’s second voyage to land on the moon …” (NOV. 13, 1969) – to the seemingly banal and personal:“I got up at 9:29 and painted this.” (NOV. 6, 1971)

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