VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a MFAH Lecture: Modernism and Contemporary Art in Pakistan, Sunday, January 15, 2pm-3pm, Audrey Jones Beck Building Mezzanine. A book signing and a reception sponsored by Friends of Asian Art and Friends of the Arts of the Islamic World follow the program. Presented by Iftikhar Dadi, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, and Chair, Department of Art, Cornell University.

Since the 1920s, key artists in Pakistan have dramatically reconfigured Islamic art, blending traditional approaches with the subjectivity and individuality of expression characteristic of modernism.

In this lecture based upon his new book, Modernism and Contemporary Art in Pakistan, Iftikhar Dadi traces the emergence of the modern and contemporary art of Muslim South Asia in the context of dizzying social and political change that included decolonization, the rise of mass media, and developments following the national independence of India and Pakistan in 1947.

Bringing new insights to such concepts as nationalism, modernism, cosmopolitanism, and tradition, Dr. Dadi underscores the powerful impact of transnationalism during this period and highlights the artists' growing embrace of modernist and contemporary artistic practice in order to address the challenges of the present era. Among the artists he will discuss are Abdur Rahman Chughtai, Zainul Abedin, Shakir Ali, Zubeida Agha, Sadequain, Rasheed Araeen, and Naiza Khan.