This study by Iftikhar Dadi, titled "Miniature Painting as Muslim Cosmopolitanism," is of great importance in that it analyses how traditional miniature art has been reconstructed in the modern world not merely as a means of nostalgia for the past but as a global and contemporary language of expression. Reading the evolution of miniature art centred on the Pakistani city of Lahore through the interaction between local roots and Western modernism, the article offers a perspective that breaks the customary traditional moulds of miniature art.
The content of the text focuses on the two great waves of revival that the Mughal miniature tradition has undergone since the beginning of the 20th century. The author first examines how Abdur Rahman Chughtai used the miniature to construct a modern Muslim identity, and second details how, after the 1980s, artists graduating from the National College of Art (NCA) transformed this art into a mischievous, political and subversive language. The article explains, through the strategic position of the miniature in the contemporary art market, how this new generation of artists question current political themes and the reality of media images by using techniques considered outdated.
The true value of this article is that, by defining miniature art as a Muslim Cosmopolitanism, it carries it beyond national borders. The author argues that contemporary miniature, nourished both by Indo-Persian aesthetics and by the possibilities of (post)modernism, creates a post-national aesthetic. Showing that art is not merely a historical heritage but offers an extremely flexible and dynamic platform for discussing today's global issues, this study is a fundamental theoretical resource for readers who wish to rethink the place of traditional arts in modern art history.
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Source: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/17081
