LITERARY NOTES: Shafi Aqil's momentous contribution

There are very few writers in our midst whose productivity and contribution could be compared with famous writer Shafi Aqeel whose 42nd book Surkh, Safaid and Siah has been published this month in spite of the fact that he is no in good health for some time.
Shafi Aqil's association with an Urdu daily spans over five decades and he is still contributing Book Reviews Section. He always does justice to the books under review. He raises pertinent points and doesn't let the points of disagreements pass unnoticed.
His latest book is a collection of his humorous and satirical columns and dramas written as a stop-gap arrangement or on the spur of the movement. However such writings demand of the writer her best efforts because he or she has to prove his mettle.
It is quite strange that Shafi Aqil has proved in his humorous columns in the latest book that he is a gifted humorist who has made a name in this field as some one who had an innate talent to see things with an angle of a humorist. He is not hard on his characters as he regards human frailties as a necessary baggage of a simple person who can laugh at him / herself with others.
It is a pity that our society doesn't care enough about meritorious persons like Shafi Aqil. One who has edited the Magazine section of country's largest circulated newspaper and enjoys telling us about the humble beginnings as an associate of Majeed Lahori in Namakdan and then about his rise from the junior position to the Magazine Editorship it is but natural that he has been one of the most sought after journalists and writers of the country for more than half a century. Yet his friends could be counted on fingers tips.
As a poet of eminence he has avoided his projection knowing only too well that he occupies a position which didn't allow him to be accessible to the publicity seekers.
Shafi Aqil's friends have never tried to use his position to get publicity. Having been himself a painter in his youthful days his natural inclination has been writing on painters a bit differently from others. In a way he has pioneered art criticism in Urdu. Long before English newspapers thought of giving some space to the Arts activities, Shafi Aqil wrote on the exhibition of Pakistani painters as a regular feature for decades.
Poet, critic, journalist and research scholar Shafi Aqil has authored 42 books so far. Among these books is his pioneering four-volume work on Art criticism in Urdu. He is the only Urdu writer who has accomplished the feat. These works are Do Musawwir: Bahsir Mirza and Ozziz Zuby; Char Jadeed Musawwir: Ahmed Pervaiz, Syed Ali Imam, Anwar Jalal Shamza and Qutub Shaikh: Taswir Aur Musawwir (Analytic Studies of 46 painters); and Musawwari and Musawwir, studies on Art Movements and some outstanding foreign artists.
I am taking up Shafi Aqil's laudable work on art criticism because no other Urdu writer has devoted as much attention to this field as Shafi has done. Stray writings of some Urdu writers are available but no one has made a lasting contribution in this important field.
All of these four books are fully illustrated with pictures of painters and their representative works and do justice to our artistic heritage.
As one who has written almost 50-60 evaluations of Pakistani painters, some of them in Urdu as well, along with such luminaries as Sultan Ahmed, Jalaluddin Ahmed, S. Amjad Ali, Hameed Zaman, Marjorie Husain, Muhammad Jami, Sabiha Hafeez, Baseer Ashraf and Neelofar Farrukh, I know what it is to write about the scene of painting in Pakistan. What is most difficult in this field of writing is the awareness of parallel literary movements to comment on art scene as a whole. It is no use talking about Visual Art in isolation from other art forms which most of our art critics do.
Jalaluddin Ahmed and Neelofar Farrukh have, of late, turned their attention to emphasise the importance of a composite picture of Art along with other art forms. After all how could other visual arts stand in splendid isolation when our literary scene was alive to realism, surrealism, structuralism, post structuralism and post-modernism. Why is it that the majority of our art critics appear dumb and blind to the contemporary Urdu literary criticism? Why Visual Art in Pakistan doesn't have to relate itself to the kindred movements in literature and music?
I am happy that Shafi Aqil is one of those Art Critics who have their pulse on Pakistani Society and its cultural currents and it is for this reason that his art criticism is more 'deep' than the otherwise 'superficial' 'surface' studies of most of our art-critics.