Works in progress

I had been hearing about an art exhibition called “Unfinished” all though the summer. People had waxed lyrical about it in Lahore, I saw posters for it at the Venice Biennale, heard about it in museums in Greece and read reviews of it in papers at airports around the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York recently bought the building that used to be the Whitney Museum, and to it they have exported all of their modern and contemporary art collection. This show was to be their big launch.

It is, by all accounts, a big hit. And it’s not hard to see why. As the title suggests, it is an exhibition of works by all the famous artists you can think of that remain unfinished. Sometimes this was because the artist got caught up in something else - a love affair, a bout of depression, syphilis - but most of the time it was because the artist died (not of the Syph as fate would have it). It’s an accessible theme for people, since it exists without so much of the art jargon that makes many shows today exhausting exercises in masturbatory verbiage. No matter what your exposure to art, to see an unfinished painting is cool. There is no pretension in it. It is what it is, and its unfinished state allows you to relax your mind.

I mean, I love me some Pollock, but who is to say any of his paintings are "complete"?

The show begins with pieces by old masters in various states of completion: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Van Eyck, Titian, etc, When you usually see their works in books or (if you’re lucky) in person, the surface is finished, polished and sickeningly good. The skin tones are flawless, the drapery meticulous and even the spontaneity can come across as contrived. As a student I was often left wondering how someone could ever get to be that good. This show lets you know how. You can see the under-painting, the little tricks of tone, color and perspective that the old studios held like closely guarded secrets. The whole experience is demystifying; indeed it feels almost wrong, a bit like seeing a magician’s act through X-Ray. Amazing and instructive as it was for me as a viewer to see the Cezannes and Matisses, I can almost guarantee that most of the artists in the show would be turning in their graves if they knew what was on display. Degas, for instance, who was known to spend ages working on pieces until they looked “spontaneously masterful”, would be positively mortified by his pieces up there. This is not the case for many of the Picassos - mainly because he was far too talented for his own good but also because cubism was hard to ever call “finished.”

That’s what I loved most about the show: the conversation I was having with the artist in my head. “So that’s how you did clouds…” I would whisper. “Oh God, please don’t look,” they would say. This conversation came to an abrupt end the minute the middle of the twentieth century hit on the second floor and most of the modern and cotemporary work looked pretty meek. I mean, I love me some Pollock, but who is to say that any of them are “complete”? By the end of the show the contemporary videos and sculptures come out to play and that’s when I lost interest and went for a sit-down in the corner.

A few minutes later I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a really nice person I knew from Lahore (they exist!) who was visiting town and also at the show. Delighted by a Lahori sighting that didn’t require me to prepare my poisoned darts, we caught up on as much as a museum whisper would allow us. It is then that I found out about the wonderful, opulent and as yet also apparently unfinished wedding extravaganza known to Pakistanis as the #Manush wedding. “The longest wedding in Pakistan’s history” was a phrase juicy enough that I spent the rest of the afternoon Googling.

How in the world had I missed this? Who are these wonderful people? Where are they? Where do they live? For those who still don’t know, this young couple has caught some public attention for having a rather opulent wedding that involves a boat, a destination wedding reception, themed parties and so many outfit changes you’d think it’s a Broadway play. People on Pakistan’s social media are showing a lot of reactions to this. They are outraged by the displays of wealth, bewildered by the number of events (apparently the wedding festivities began in January, and it’s still not over) and utterly perplexed by the range of outfits. How dare they do this, these naysayers cry.

All I am is grateful. I am supremely and genuinely grateful to whoever in the #Manush wedding extravaganza planning committee came up with the idea of having a Disney Princess party and then was gracious enough to post pictures of it on social media. I applaud you. Look for pictures of girls in yellow Belle dresses, blue and white homages to Snow White and the best bit is that the bride actually dressed up like Cinderella without a hint of irony. Amazing!

I have to admit that some of the more rabid reactions to this wedding baffle me, mainly because I have seen so many other weddings just like it. Large, opulent, demonstratively expensive homages to fresh filial alliances. The only difference between this and any other big fat Punjabi wedding is that the wedding party seems intent on courting attention, which is hardly unexpected in a culture where society pages are something people actually want to appear in. In the absence of other kinds of social gatherings, weddings are what wealthy Pakistanis do (as do wealthy Russians, Arabs and Indians, the last of whom have taken to renting out Versailles on some occasions). So I am at a loss to understand the outrage. Like the paintings, the longest unfinished wedding in Pakistan merely reveals the under-painting beneath. Who are we really mad at here?

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