Fisher woman of my Mohenjo

The way in which what is extremely ancient resonates within
the best and most characteristic art being created right now is
something that has always fascinated me. In fact, I got into art
criticism seventy years ago, because I was a teenage antiquity
collector, using my pocket money to buy bits and pieces from
antiquity sellers in London’s famed Portobello Market. Even
then, I was mirroring the pattern set for me by collectors very
much senior to myself. Ever since what we now call Modern
art came into existence, more than a hundred years ago, in the
earliest years of the 20th century, the very old and the very
new have gone hand in hand.
One step up from the Portobello, I used to run errands for and
buy inexpensive treasures from London’s best- known antiquity
dealer of the immediately post-war period. He had a little shop at
the other end of the street where I then lived. A client of his,
whom I met there, was the great sculptor Jacob Epstein. It also so
happened that this dealer was one of the first to sell work by
Francis Bacon, long before Bacon was represented by the
Marlborough Gallery. It is therefore no surprise that Jamil
Naqsh’s recent work seems to speak so directly and
personally to me.
Great changes have taken place in our knowledge about the
ancient world since I first encountered archaeological
research and scholarship. Equally great changes have taken
place in the world of contemporary art. In both cases, one of
the most important changes is that our range of knowledge
has vastly increased. Our knowledge of ancient cultures has
become plural. In our response to contemporary art,
pluralism also prevails. It is no longer possible to devise a
Modernist and Post-Modernist storyline that narrates a single
unified line of development. Although, it must be said, many
Western commentators on new developments in art still seem
to feel a nostalgia for this – with Western ideas and values
remaining fully in charge.