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mong the arrangements for a wedding ceremony, an important one is to get the newlywed couple photographed by a professional. On visiting many houses in South Asia and other parts of the world, one comes across pictures of husbands and wives posing together for the camera; actually for the next generations. Often, these photos are framed and hung on walls or placed on mantelpieces, shelves and side tables. Not long ago, these were kept in family albums to record a new beginning, to materialise matrimonial love, to stamp the mutual bond.
Today, the digital format has by and large replaced physical paper. So newlyweds share their posts on social media. These receive instant and wider viewership. Not many realise that they are the heirs of an ancient custom of documenting or representing couples for a large public. Its earliest example is traced back to a small statue of the Egyptian royal couple Akhenaton and Nefertiti (1345–1337 BC). Probably produced for a family altar, it shows the king and queen standing side by side and looking straight, as if at an audience. A detail uncommon for that period is that both are holding hands. This object, apart from its history, is not different from today’s normal and much-adored marriage snapshots.
Another, rather informal image of an ancient royal couple is also from Egypt: a wooden relief made around 1327 BC, of Queen Ankhesenamun touching the shoulder of King Tutankhamun. The tradition of portraying pairs in pictorial forms continued, whether of real individuals, religious figures or mythological characters. These include emperors, generals, merchants and affluent personages, as well as lay people. So, there is a portrait of Roman baker Terentius and his wife, a fresco from c.50 AD in which the two are gazing in front of them.
A large quantity of Indian court paintings depicted princes and princesses in physical surroundings or imaginary settings, often converting them into divine entities of Krishna and Radha. Just as Indian miniature painters were assigned the works by rajas or patrons, European artists were commissioned by affluent classes to portray them as couples. Two of the most referred to paintings in this regard are The Arnolfini Marriage (1434) by Jan van Eyck, and Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750) by Thomas Gainsborough. The former is significant not only for depicting the matrimonial duo, but for its detail of elegant attire, rich interior and the attributes attached to male and female. The wife, Giovanna, is shown as a house caretaker by posing near the bed, while the husband, Giovanni, “stands next to the open window, a symbol of the outside world to which he belongs.” The latter canvas illustrates a member of the English gentry with his rifle and dog, positioned close to his wife on a bench amid a vast landscape; a double portrait, which, in the opinion of John Berger, gave Mr and Mrs Andrews “the pleasure of seeing themselves depicted as landowners. This pleasure was enhanced by the ability of oil paint to render their land in all its substantiality.”
Beyond painting patrons, rulers, or business tycoons, artists have also portrayed themselves with their partners or drawn their fellow artists with their companions. Edgar Degas created a remarkable double portrait of his contemporary Edouard Manet with his wife, Monsieur and Madame Manet (1868), in which Manet is casually perched on a sofa, enjoying his wife playing the piano (unfortunately, the canvas was slashed from one side, and Madame Manet’s profile is now partially visible). Henri Rousseau rendered a picture of himself with his two wives in The Past and the Present or Philosophical Thought (1899). The artist’s younger version is depicted with his first wife in whirling clouds. His later self stands next to his new wife in a blossoming garden. This blend of reality and imagination is witnessed in Frida Kahlo’s painting Diego in My Thoughts (1943), showing the artist’s portrait with her husband’s small face in the middle of her forehead.
Like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, artists often marry one another – a relationship that culminates in various, often unpredictable, outcomes. In some cases, two artists living together have produced individualistic, distinct and independent work – occasionally interlinked too. Though that connection is more than a by-product of partnership, it is a reflection of both interacting with like-minded contemporaries. In some situations, one of the two companions dominates while the other fades into a supportive role. However, in present times, this scenario has transformed due to changes in social structures, economic resources, gender emancipation and professional opportunities at local and global establishments. This phenomenon also relates to a shift in the perception of a married couple, now seen as equal breadwinners rather than one depending on the other. The number of families in which both husband and wife work has increased significantly in recent years, mainly due to economic conditions.
Another factor that forces both partners to be simultaneously productive is the matter of identity. Long gone are the days when women, after getting married, used to replace their surnames with their husbands’. Now, particularly in the hemisphere of art, it is not a widely preferred practice (unless a requirement for travel documents, account maintenance, inheritance certificates, etc). Even if some artists choose to change their family names, their imagery, idioms, ideas and techniques remain personal, even grow more distinct – and distant from their partners’ – with the passage of time.
In some instances, a couple, instead of, or alongside creating separate work, decides to collaborate, which evolves into a range of formats. It could consist of indistinguishable contributions by each maker (for example, Gilbert & George). Sometimes one partner becomes more prominent, like Christo being better known in comparison to his collaborator Jeanne-Claude.
Perhaps the problem here is perceiving a work of art as an utterance, rather than a dialogue or a conversation. A conversation is not a solitary act, but a collective activity, usually involving more than two people. In any conversation, there is no single speaker, as all participate in creating chains of thought that initiate further discussions, speculations and elaborations.
In contemporary art, the phenomenon has been expanded and called a ‘collective.’ There are many artists’ collectives internationally, and a few in Pakistan – each with a certain focus, lens and group of people. Interestingly, what is displayed is the product of shared effort; thus every member is a fellow creator. Of the many concerns of these collectives, one is to debunk the authority of a single manufacturer, to challenge the notion of originality (connected with a person’s style or signature), and to invalidate the power of the maker by shifting priority to what is produced.
A reaction against the art world, which usually revolves around (big) names. (“I got a Picasso;” “a Van Gogh is hanging on my wall;” “we inherited a Rembrandt.” The names are enough to qualify the worth of work, like readers buying book after book of a favourite author and not bothering to flip through their texts. Artists’ collectives may sound like a new entry in the arena of art, but in their emphasis on anonymity and common production, they do not entirely belong to the Twentieth or Twenty-first Century. The Thousand and One Nights, which has inspired many writers – from Cervantes to García Márquez to Rushdie is a book of interwoven tales told by Scheherazade, which in reality is the work of collective storytellers compiled during the Islamic Golden Age. Like The Odyssey and The Iliad, which were composed by invisible individuals of the Eighth Century BC – a cluster of unidentifiable poets or poetesses – a collective we recognise today as Homer.
The writer is a visual artist, an art critic, acurator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design atBeaconhouse National University, Lahore.He can be contacted onquddusmirzagmail.com