The Art of Abdur Rahman Chughtai

Iftikhar Dadi is Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies in Cornell University. Dadi received his PhD. from Cornell and currently teaches a wide variety of courses ranging from introductions to photography and visual studies to more advanced seminars designed for senior students. His most recent work is Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), which traces the growth of artistic modernism in South Asia, and more specifically Pakistan, through the lens of nationalism, cosmopolitanism and religious tradition. Apart from this, Dadi has published extensively, and his articles have appeared in Bioscope, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures and ISIM Review. He has chapters in a number of forthcoming books, including �Transaesthetics in the Art of Shirin Neshat� in The Migrant’s Time: Art, Dispersal and Difference, ed. Saloni Mathur (Clarke Institute, Yale University Press) and �Ibrahim El-Salahi and Calligraphic Modernism in a Comparative Perspective.� In Ibrahim El-Salahi Retrospective, ed. Salah Hassan (Yale University Press). He also has a forthcoming book of his own, entitled Art, Publics, and Urban Popular Culture in Contemporary South Asia.

Apart from being a prolific academic, Dadi is also an active artist. His recent exhibitions include Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010) and Lines of Control, The Third Line, Dubai (2009). Dadi has served on the editorial board of Art Journal and as a contributing editor to Bioscope.

Professor Dadi will be speaking at Yale on the art of Abdur Rahman Chughtai (1899-1975). Chughtai, perhaps one of Pakistan’s most celebrated artists, was credited with the revival of miniature painting in the subcontinent. Yet his revival was not based on the imitation of medieval forms but instead combined influences drawn from both the past as well as modernist movements occurring around the world. Chughtai’s work is characterized by the use of architectural motifs and pictorial nuances in subcontinental art, thereby signaling an early break with the dominant Anglo-Saxon artistic tradition. Indeed Chughtai was truly a pioneer in this regard, and along with other artists of the New Bengal school, of which he was a part, influenced scores of artists to do the same. He is most famously remembered for his distinctive artistic style, blending the old with the new, in what came to be known as the Chughtai school of painting. Yet what is perhaps less well known today is that Chughtai was also a prominent intellectual and was extremely interested in Urdu poetry. In an attempt to blend his two loves�art and poetry, Chughtai produced Muraqqa-e-Chughtai, a publication in which he has complimented Ghalib’s poetry with his art.

Professor Dadi’s talk will be held in Room 203 of Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue. The venue is wheelchair accessible.