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Renowned Pakistani
artist, Ismail Gulgee, spoke on the creative process and his own
work as an artist's tribute to God, at a lecture held at Aga Khan
University (AKU) on 19 March 2003. This programme was part of AKU's
special lecture series featuring talks by prominent personalities
with the aim of providing students and the general public with a
broad-based education to enrich their understanding and appreciation
of the humanities and social sciences.
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| Gulgee
speaks about the creative process and his own work as an artist’s
tribute to God in a lecture held at AKU auditorium. |
Gulgee, who
has earned international recognition as a versatile and talented
painter, started his career as an engineer. He completed his MS
(Hydraulics) from Columbia University, and MS (Soil Mechanics) from
Harvard University. Irrefutable proof of Gulgee's talent in portraiture
emerged through his painting of King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan in
1957. Since then he has become known as a portrait painter par excellence;
an abstract painter of the first order; a calligraphist painter
and a moulder of calligraphy into free standing sculpture; a worker
in stone mosaic, and an artificer of a variety of art work in metal,
including the gigantic crescents that top the lofty minarets and
central structures of the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad. A preference
for the lustre of gold, juxtaposed with the richness of lapis lazuli
have made his work recognisable through their heightened contrasts
of hue and texture.
The audience
glimpsed Gulgee's prolific work through the slides shown by the
artist. These ranged from formal portraits of well-known personalities
like His Highness the Aga Khan and Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai,
to free flowing calligraphic expressions. Among the recent works
shown was a mural commissioned for Lahore airport based on Iqbal's
poetry. During the talk, Gulgee focused more on his calligraphic
works, and the emotional and spiritual journey accompanying the
creative process. He said that "I studied calligraphy till my eyes
were blinded. I can write in the style of any calligrapher. But
after that my heart yearned for something beyond that..I thought
let me forget all the classical calligraphy and let myself go".
So that "when I wrote Allah, I felt Allah in my blood, in my bones,
and in my soul, and I wrote it, abandoning oneself, without a thought
of what it is going to look like". He said that when writing Allah's
name or an Ayat from the Holy Quran, he does not decide how it should
be written; instead the outcome is left in the hands of God. He
gave the example of the huge six feet disc of hardboard at the inaugural
ceremony of Aga Khan University Hospital, which he painted while
the Quranic verse was being recited.
It is said that
a painting speaks to each individual in a different language, but
this lecture provided the audience with the rare opportunity of
hearing what the painting says to the artist who painted it. The
audience, who gave Gulgee a standing ovation at the end of the talk,
felt spiritually and emotionally uplifted by the artist's sincere
passion and love for his work and all creative endeavours.
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