A significant recent book on Sadequain that links his drawings and poetry
Words change their meanings and connotations with age. Today the term ‘web’ is understood with reference to the Internet (World Wide Web). Before computer became a familiar and popular tool, web only meant a sort of net fabricated by a spider to catch insects. Due to its delicacy and almost invisibility, this feeble structure reminded of a sense of unaltered state because an intact cobweb meant there was no modification in the surroundings.
Sadequain repeatedly used the symbol of cobweb for the sign of unchanging times and unavoidable conditions. In some of his drawings, cobweb circled entire human bodies or surrounded fingers, hands and heads. Using sensitive lines, Sadequain communicated the eternal fate of man who is tied up with constraints of all sorts.
Contrary to what he drew, Sadequain was a free soul, not obliged to please the powerful, nor prepared to offer his work to the rich. He lived as an independent individual who remained faithful to his true calling -- the making of art. This choice liberated him from worldly needs as well as endowed him with a kind of supremacy on others -- those who desperately follow their desires to have material goods and are part of a rat race.
This position turned him into ‘The Fakir and the King’: the title of Sibtain Naqvi’s introductory essay from a recently published book, Cobweb World of Sadequain. The book comprises his drawings, his Urdu quartets (translated by Sibtain Naqvi) and a text by Faiz Ahmed Faiz on the artist.
The posthumous volume on the painter’s art and poetry is significant because it tends to focus on the link between words and images, the two sides of Sadequain’s oeuvre. However, he wasn’t alone in pursuing these dual interests; a number of artists from his generation were equally eloquent in both mediums. Indian painter Ram Kumar was a recognised short story writer, and in Pakistan names such as Anwar Jalal Shemza, Hanif Ramay, Raheel Akbar Javed and Tassadaq Sohail wrote as well as created works of art.
Actually, there have been many examples of individuals who have worked in two mediums -- William Blake, Gao Xingjian, D. H. Lawrence and Octavio Paz. But in the case of the former two, both their writings and paintings are equally valued whereas the latter two are more known for their prose or poetry, and their art is merely an added qualification.
Sadequain can perhaps be compared with Lawrence and Paz because he is more known as a painter than a poet. Yet, one needs to investigate the need for an established artist to venture into verse (even in Punjabi, which was not his mother tongue) and publish volumes of his quartets. On a simple level, this is not surprising because in teens everyone is a poet and it’s only with growing up that you either abandon it completely or adopt it as a serious pursuit or profession.
One must realise that Sadequain belonged to a culture in which there was no concept of a specialist individual. A learned man was supposed to be well-versed in various disciplines, so one came across figures who practiced traditional medicine, wrote poetry and participated in politics. But they scarcely worked with hands except writing calligraphy which was regarded a sacred activity -- and that in a way is an extension of writing, since it is called Khushkhati, the pleasant lettering. Working with hands was considered a ‘lowly’ job.
It would be interesting to recall how Ustad Allah Bux, a contemporary of Sadequain, during a visit to Dhaka in 1954, shared with his fellow painter, Zubeida Agha, how surprised he was at being honoured as an artist. He told her he was "of the rank of a carpenter and blacksmith and did not know how he had become an artist" as quoted by Akbar Naqvi in his book Image and Identity. Hence, one hardly encounters a famous poet who is equally good in forging metals, carpentry, or making pottery.
Only a few like Sadequain and Shakir Ali who, along with having literary leanings, still ventured into the world of image-making, which was not about sitting and scribing with clean hands, but working with paint and brushes in messy environments. Sadequain’s link with poetry can be understood through this newly published book, because here the compiler/editor has collected his drawings from 1966 and composed them with his verses. Not all drawings correspond to quartets, because both must have been created at different times and occasions. Still, one is able to find parallels between his visuals and vocabulary. Probably, a key to comprehending the art of Sadequain is provided through this thin volume.
Flipping page after page of eight sections of drawings (titled as: Heads, After the Crucifixion, The Webbed, Some Other Things to Care, Figure with a Head, Artist and the Model, Sar ba Kaff, Symphony) one realises the connection between his art and poetry. If poetry in its essence is about meanings, Sadequain’s art was also about meaning, and that is why he never painted an abstract canvas.
Meanings in a work of art are sufficed through different means, often employing similes and metaphors, since the two are about infusing a range of all possible comprehension and decoding. When one looks at the drawings of Sadequain reproduced in the book, one recognises the artist’s focus in making works which had poetic imagery/references such as crows nesting on human heads, man holding his decapitated head on his hand, and man entangled in his surroundings. In some of his verses, one locates the same subjects rendered in words, but by and large, the poetics of Sadequain is about incorporating complex and shared cultural imagery that exists in our social and literal narrative.
However, that poetics is not devoid or distanced from politics because, like in the reign of a dictator, in the realm of poetry, a writer searches for symbols and metaphors to express unbearable situations. In Sadequain’s work too, one encounters links to the situation under Ayub Khan’s government which, despite being celebrated as the Decade of Development, was as autocratic rule. This was indicated in the essay by Sibtain Naqvi: "Sadequain’s paintings had become the Delphic Oracle, sometimes misunderstood but accurate. As in many instances he would have the last words. Years later he would remember the Ayub era work, ‘There were lizards, cobwebs, rats, sealed lips. All that was in 1966 -- the Ayub era. It was as big as it should have been’. Sadequain was right, the state narrative false. The fakir was triumphant, the king dethroned."