Bringing out Dickens and Manto in Colour

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.”

-Plutarch 

With such a bond between poetry (literature) and painting there just had to be a visual art display during the Pickwick Festival. So the Graffiti making competition was put in to experience poetry as a painting to be seen, and painting as poetry to be felt.  

Charles dickens is believed to have subtly propounded arts though his works. In Hard Times, he depicts art to be essential in life. This becomes evident when Gradgrind, a person devoid of appreciation of art is shown as a pathetic failure in life. Dickens relates to the visual arts in several ways. Firstly, Dickens worked unusually closely with the original illustrators of his. Like Thackeray, who illustrated his own books, Dickens thus offers the rare example of a novelist using another medium to amplify and enforce the meaning of his writings. As scholars have shown, Dickens chose the subjects of his illustrations and gave precise, detailed directions to the artists who produced them. He had final control over these illustrations and made their creators revise them according to his notions of what they were supposed to convey. His instructions to his illustrator often provide fascinating glimpses of the novelist at work.

Manto, in his essay 'Allah ka Fazal hai' (Blessing of God), he sketches the scene of a country after it has been purified from all kinds of vulgarity, hedonism, activities of pleasure and indulgences such as arts. Poetry, literature, music and painting have been wiped out, and even the dictionary is revised to take out all immoral words.

In this imaginary landscape, Manto exposes the reaction of state and religious powers towards man's creative activities. In his imaginary society, visual arts are considered immoral thus there are no artists living or practicing in the perfect state of blessing (and not bliss).

Actually, what Saadat Hasan Manto had penned down was not just his flight of fancy; it had some relevance and relation to how our public perceives art and artists. A normal citizen views art as an extraneous indulgence and feels guilty in enjoying his own enjoyment through art.

Coming back to the Festival....Of all the six activities that the festival is conducting, the Graffiti making competition was the first one to have registrations full – within a week of declaration. And registrations are still pouring in! Had we known about the enthusiasm that the competition will receive, arrangements for more teams would have been made.

This event will be conducted on the first day after the inaugural function. Ten teams from various colleges are participating. The competition starts at 1p.m. in the front lawn of the English department and will run over the course of an hour. Prof. Zahoor Ahmad Zargar and Prof. Mohammed Asaduddin will be judging the competition. Paintings will be judged on the basis of theme adherence and creative presentation.

-Wafia Kissa   

B.A.(Hons) Eng II