Nude Art in Pakistan
In Pakistan even the normal art has been a taboo for society, then what about “nude art”? it must not exist here! It does exist, as Pakistan has got some real good adroit painters who could fashion human anatomy with their skill and imagination and furnish the canvass up to the level of “a treat to watch”. Talism-e-Hoshruba by Ustad Alla Bakhsh has got tinges of semi exposed human bodies in a mystical atmosphere. Sadqain’s paintings give you an idea about bodies of active, working human beings that do not come under nudes but do reflect painter’s skill.
Shakir Ali, we could say, was the first one to paint abstract nudes as real art in Pakistan. His strong contours, dark bold colors and conceptual attitude, truly distinguish him from his contemporaries. Shakir experimented in showing women’s body in a hidden abstract approach. In new generation, Saeed Akhter, with his realistic style of work has contributed valiantly in this prohibited art form while Jami Naqsh sharpened the edges of his ideas along with nude figures in his paintings done in knife work. As art is, what a person thinks about and the way of thinking, so the expression has been close to nature where sometime, norms and values could not be considered.
Bernard Berenson (1897) said, “Not what man knows but what man feels concerns art. All else is science.”