“A MULTIMODAL AND VISUAL SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF SACRED CALLIGRAPHY IN SADEQUAIN’S PAINTINGS”

Abstract

This paper discusses the transformation of sacred calligraphy in the works of one of the most influential modern artists in Pakistan, the work produced by Syed Sadequain Ahmed Naqvi (1930 to 1987). Unfamiliar with Islamic calligraphy, Sadequain was the pioneer of integrating modernist concepts of calligraphic cubism and painterly abstraction, transforming classical scripts into figurative and abstract forms of expression. The work has a multimodal and visual semiotic structure, based on social semiotics of multimodality by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen (Images of Reading: The Grammar of Visual Design, 1996; 2006) and the theory of denotation and connotation of Roland Barthes (Rhetoric of the Image, 1964) which relies upon the sign theory developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (1916). The article explores the interplay between linguistic, visual, and spatial modalities to produce multi-layered spiritual and cultural meanings with close visual analysis of selected works by Ramadan including monumental Quranic murals, The Evolution of Mankind and the Frere Hall ceiling, calligraphic panels with verses in Surah Al Rehman, and figurative composition of his Parisian era of the 1960s. The discoveries show how Sadequain re-read the holy texts as living symbols, who connects the Islamic tradition with the modern expression and how he articulates the themes of divine unity, human struggle, and postcolonial cultural identity as a part of South Asian modernism.