Has art quality improved?

Over the years, art has gained more and more focus among a more diverse cross section of society. Now it is not just limited to the upper classes of society to whom it has always been social status to admire and collect art. Today there are admirers of art from these art collectors, to mere amateurs, to simple art lovers who love to admire fine lines and graphic symbolism and to whom it is a challenge to try and interpret what the artist has shown.
While once the concept of art galleries was not so prevalent, it seems as if there are art galleries on every corner, springing up to serve its market of increasing art admirers. Dr Shaukat Mehmood, otherwise known as Maxim (the cartoonist), explains that that the concept behind art galleries started in France where a place known as Salons displayed works of art, which were approved by ‘experts’ and judges. These salons were so strict in their standards that they had at one time even refused to display the works of Picasso and Braque.
“Art galleries today are not really places of display as much as they have become shops,” says Maxim. “This is a big change in art today especially in Pakistan. These galleries just display art it seems to sell the paintings. But unfortunately, art is being sold on political leverage only not quality,” he says. Maxim says that often politicians are asked as chief guests to come to open exhibitions and they buy two or three paintings, but later they usually never hang them up or give respect to these paintings.
“Even those who used to be frame makers have opened up their galleries; these people don’t know about art,” says Maxim. In fact, he blames this trend on art critics and writers. “Art critics are not interested in positive criticism. They are scared of writing anything which goes against the grain. I always tell young people, if you find something morbid in the work of a known artist say it! If you think Shakir Ali is not a good calligrapher, say it! Looking from the other side, when Picasso was refused to display his cubist work by art ‘experts’, it was the art writers who wrote about it interpreting it and promoting it,” he says.
Artist Ejaz Anwar does not agree that all art galleries aim for the same thing. There are types of commercial galleries and types of non-commercial ones too, he says. There are galleries by framers, which are the most commercial and have grown out of frame shops. These, he says, are the most misleading because these set the standards of art and what should be sold. Framers, he says, have no art education or understanding, and cannot go about setting the standards for art. The other kind of commercial ones are run by more learned people and may be slightly better in their selection and collection. These include the Collector’s Galleria in Qaddafi Stadium, and the Reviver’s Art Gallery among others.
“The issue with these galleries is they decide what should sell and often younger students of art are negatively influenced by their standards,” says Anwar. As far as non-commercial art galleries are concerned, there are those so private with such a small selection of art that hardly anyone knows about them. “Perhaps some of the best and biggest art galleries here are run by the government like the Al Hamraon Mall Road, and one at Gaddafi Stadium, which houses the richest collection of art permanently on display,” says Anwar.
“But galleries are on the whole not very inviting to people. Even though the exhibitions are open to all, not many people know about them, and not many understand that they can enter without paying.
Also the socio-economic conditions have become such that the sale of paintings is not too high,” he says. A recent commemoration of Ali Imam’s paintings drew large crowds but not one painting was sold. But art galleries should be maintained in any case, concludes Anwar. “The restoration of the Tollington Market Gallery is a big victory for citizens,” he says.