Vrishchik - In Quest of Identity

..'

•

In Quest ,of Identity GEETA KAPUR

A Vrishchik Publ ication

..

In Quest of Identity: Art & Indigenism in post-colonial culture with special reference to contemporary Indian painting

GEETA KAPUR

Contents Preface Synopsis Part I

Part II

Part III

Chap.

Chap.

I II

National Consciousness and Indigenism Indigenism and the Artist

Chap. III Chap. IV

Critique of Contemparary Western Art Implications of Internationalism in Art

Chap. V Chap. VI Chap. VII Chap. vm

Contemporary Indian Painting M. F. Husain Bhupen Khakhar J. Swaminatban

Preface Alter

m ,IIl~'

hesitations I am publishiJig lllis lon g essay I wrotc

during Ill )' rear's stay in London in 1968路'69. The hesitations were on two accOllnts. TIle ideas I was interested ill, altllOugh generated b,' contempora ry art. look me into areas of enquiry with which I was hitherto quite ulIf:]lI1ilmT. Tllcreiore my formulations within these areas could 1I0t but be sim ple and sometimes tentative. This tIle reader wiII discern: that there is an unevenness in tbe level of under;;,t;mding and complexity of problems jn the Co urse of the essa~ ' . The oHler factor is tlmt it is ahead}, a year since I finished writillg this. III tIle mcmHvhiIe I have m odified some of the ideas, or developed them further, but I cannot include them without

reworking the entire essay. As 1 have finalIy decided to publish it without further delay I wi11 briefly mention, as examples, some aspects Olaf I have subseqllently considered.

The Tc"j,'-alist. indeed 'reactionary' OlSpects of indigenism altllOugh considered at some length in the essay,. have become more immediately diliturbing because of the pseudo路Tancric trend that lJas spre:ld so rapidly in conlemporary Indian art. This does not invalidatc, as far as I call see, the thesis thOlt I ha ve exp lored, bur it does mean that one must recognise even more dearly, the gap betn-cell theoretical formulations and tIle artistic manifestatiollS of ,Ill attitude and continuollsly re-eva luate both in the light of each other. As a result of this, however, one may just as well conclude tlla t the idea Uhe theoretical formulation) was misguided as the particular artists who are seeJl (correctly or incorrectly) to embody it. 1 do thillk that it has become necessan' to re-consider tIl e implications of sOllie of the ideas I have raised but 1 stiJl hold to the necessity (indeed cmplws;7.f.: it) of enq uiring into tllC motion at indigclIisllJ and I would FtiJI leave it open as to wl1etljer the intention or tllC lIlallliesf;ltioll of it is to be questioned.

Another aspect that 1 would now like to both modify and develop eOllshhltc5 tllOse ideas that ha ve socia-politica l implicati(lns because of m ~' slightly greater understanding of them. In the essay 11 h;we at times simplJEied or stopped short of problcms in this area became of inadequate information or understanding.

Tilus, on the one hand, tile ~Ssav nn re-working may become more c lUtiollS, Oil tile otl1cr, more bold whidl would change the empbasis but not its basic content. It is because I consider tIle basic contetent to be valid t1lat I am pubUshing. it even as it is.

The debate if any, tllat it provokes would further push mc to defe~d or revise my id~lS and then perhaps the essOlY could be re-written altogether. This is as jt should be, f think; ideas must change and develop in inter路action with the changing reality.

ti

Synopsis This essay explores tbe relationship between a rt and indigenism - the latter in terpreted to mean, a contemporary's concern fo r the unique fea tures of his

nation', bistory and tradition, its surviving culture and it, environment. It is in colonial countries that this concern becomes most intense, indeed obsessive. It is reali sed that

Yet lhe arlist, even when conscious of tbe relevance of ind igenisll1 cannot simply subsume t bat searcb into his own : in actua l practice he would be faced with difficult choices. The most obvious danger is that he will fall back into a traditionalism or revivalism because the margins between tbese and a contemporary indigenism - more akin to a cultural renaissance - are not easily discernible.

t he distinctive features of the cult ure have been obscured, often distorted by the colonialists, draining, the people of their identity. This realisation coincides wit h and feeds

T he differences are subtle and tbe artist wisbing to avoid reviva lism as wen as a spurious modernism and internationa lism, walks along a tight rope. Tn doing this lhe only test is his contemporary awa reness and authenticity - or to put it anothe r way - it is his ability

national consciousness that culmi nates in national

to negate all that gives him false

independence. But the concern takes on another complex it) in the post-colonial period. The intelligentsia in particular sees itself faced with the challenge of building a

at the same time to stri p himself of t he i!lusions of a modernism he has not himself experienced. Tt is in this process that he finds. as is likely with the most deeply

con temporary ~oc iety. without the readymadc 'val ues' o f

inS ightful artists - a communion w ith the cu lture in which he has been nourished because in its most inti mate

the foreign system, and equally without tbe need for heroic chauvinism that was displayed in the face of derisive foreigners. It is then that the fundamental scarch begins, to define a cultu ral identi!; in relationsbip to the past and the aspirations for the future and in t bat process t o discover a contemporary uniqueness in a world in which t hese people have clearly been 'left behind'.

~ecllrity

in the past and

form it has moulded his very means of experiencing rea lity. One might say that the individual essence and authent icity will be arrived at by a dialectical process between the artist's subjective and objective i.e., the societa l dimensions. E ven if the art ist appears to be operating fro m a secluded psyche he is the more enriched and enriching if he is involved in this dialectic.

The art ist is involved in t he quest. automatically, if often unconSCiously, in so far as he is a member of the nation's

~ea r ch illg

intell igentsia. I pro pose that he is

integrally involved by t he ve ry natu re of his activity. If t he quest can be stated as one for cultural essence and authen ticity - thc artist's OWn inten tion coincides with this. The imaginative apprehension of reality whicb is the artist's natural app roach, is peculia rly suited to grasp a culture's configurating ethos <as against its particular. conventionally catagorised features). Secondl y. "the artist's specific preoccupation with lal11!uage whicb yields him his unique Form and Style. brings him to the very sourCe of the culture for it is witbin the horizons of language that individuals and the community apprehend and shape their experience.

Tf the locus of choices is no t the art ist, but as often happen c.; in issues of national cuItll f l.!. other i dco~ogically

incl ined members of the society. tbe pu rsuit of indigen ism wi ll almost invariably tend toward revivalism. And if the pursuit of indigenisll1 develops into political and social ideologies aspi ring: to lay down the ground rules for creative act ivity. it will strangle artist1c creation and

indeed, the renascent culture. At all t imes the relationship must be organic or not at all . There are enough bistorical exa mples to prove how quickly creati vity can be destroyed by ideologies appropriate to other - however important objectives. The source of art lies in life as processed tbrough a liberated imagination: its effect is the extension of consciousness and areas of human freedom . And both

these belong to tbe idealism of tbe perennial rebe t, of whom the artist is one.

subtle and significant - divested of the earlier, defensive chaUVinism. The issues are not seen as ideological alternatives within some

pre~conceived

notion of 'national

The first part of the essay elaborates the theoretical propositions summarised above. Certain cross cultural referenccs are made to illustrate tbe points: the example of Mexican art of the 1920's is dealt with in some detail to suggest the potential as well as tbe real problems faced by contemporary artists. in quest of a cultural identity.

culture'. They are as it were, internationalised by the individual artists, made integral to their own search for meaning and style. There is therefore no attempt at soluticn. But in the lest ten years the re-admission of the qu est at a subtle ,level has opened up the potential

The second part of the essay attempts to analyse tbe '. contemporary situation of Western art and the so called International art with a deiiberately critical viewpoint of an 'outsider . Tangentially, it reinforces tbe proposition for indigenism by challenging the commonly, even inevitably accepted hegemony of Western art. The historical premises, products and evaluative criteria special to Western art, are generally considered ipso facto the only contemporary and International criteria. Under the circumstances, it seems necessa ry to take the outsider's position - a privileged position - to gain insight of tbe

Indian art.

Thus the work of contemporary Indian painters is discussed in some detail to relate the theoretical formulations to â&#x20AC;˘ living situation and to see how the problem is confronted in ad.! its complexities by individual artists who have acknowledged it. The choice of the 3 artists (Husain, Swam-inathan and Bhupen Khakhar) is obviously based on this - their conscious ac knowledgment of t his dilemma .- without attempting to see them as models or solutions to what still remains a cultural quest .

for a new originality and uniqueness in contemporary

Tt is important. however. that the justification for the critical attitude be derived from tbe works themselves. therefore, a cross-section of contemporary works, their

There are no conclusions to such a study : the tentativeness is an attribute of the nature of problems raised and should justify itself in the course of the argument. Anyone who raises the issues of cultural identity regarding his or her own culture, is also likely to introject into the study. the persO'M1. dilemma o[ choices that are a part of the total cultural situation. To my mind this is as it should be ,if we are concerned with

social context and historical premises are examined and

sensitive awa reness and respons iveness to contemporary

evaluated.

culture rather than formulae for their success. The significance of such explorations, including the ambivalences, depends on the depth level at which this occurs. And the deeper one goes, the more complex even a single aspect of the cultural phenomena becomes.

Just as one faces ones anguish of choices, a people or nation bound by a common culture, must confront their collective anguish. thrown up by history. 1 see the one interposed upon the other. both seeking ": a cli~ecti~l process something as ambiguous and obseSSIve as Identlty.

overwhelming 'success' of Western art. At any rate it is

probably the only relevant point of view for those of us who are not an organic part of Western culture but bound to it by historical contingency.

The brief review of 20th Indian art and more particulary art since Independence, draws out the underlying polemic between Indianness and 'modernity' or 'Internationalism'. This issue has been a discernible preoccupation throughout, not only with historians and critics but with the artists themselves, seen in the art movements and stylistic attitudes.

In the last. 20 years the polemic has become much more

PART I CHAPTER

Introduction NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND INDIGENISM "If man is known by his acts. then we wil1 say that the most urgent thing today for the inteUectual is to bui1d up his nation.

If this building up is true. that is to say if it interprets the manifest will of the people ... . .. then the building of the nation is of necessity accompanied) by the discovery and

encouragement of uni\'crsalising values. Far from keeping aloof

Beginning with a conceptional framework built from cultural cross-references, the specific pre-occupations of the artist, his ideological and aesthetic dile=as, will be considered. In the last section, issues in contemporary Indian painting will be discussed in the light of tbe above.

from other nation s, therefore, it is national libera tion which leads the nation to play its part on the stage of history. It is at the heart of national consciousness that international consciousness

lives and grows. And this two-fold emerging is ultimately only the ~o urce

of all culture."

Frantz Fanon

Post-colonial nations are overwhelmed by a polemical search for direction and values as they face their dislocated cultures. There is an underlying search for identity; an identity defined in relation to their own tradition and tbeir aspi ration for the future .

It is during the struggle for independence that tbe issues about identity begin to emerge. The struggle demands a concept of nationalism; this may be based on a shared race, language religion, territory and cultural tradition; t he emotional rallyi ng force is a presumed national character.

After independence, during the process of re-construction, issues become ever more complex . Nationalist fervour gives place to internal dissentions that may have been artificially suppressed during t he national struggle: a chaos threatens thd very concept of the nation. It is often against this background that the nation's intelligentsia finds itself as the majo r participant in evolving a contemporary culture.

In this process, the special concern for history and tradition, for the surviVing culture of the people, and the environment, I refer to as indigenism.

1 begin by proposing that indigenism is an imperative for colonial peoples : at the initial stage it is a means for claiming one~s djgnity and one's liberty; at a more complex level it is an instrument for t he re-appI1lisal of the morass of values that survive colonialism, by an understanding of history and tradition in terms of contemporary needs. And finally, it is a means of establishing a creative relation~hip with one's natural and cultural environment.

Objections arc likely to be raised on the very notion of indigenism. It is easy to say, for example. that this express'on has no established meaning and simply perpetrates a myth or a fallacy; that in so far as it includes elements of vendetta against the dominating natoins. it is hardly a fruitful aspiration and that in fact it becomes retrogressive. Further, that it is a waste of energy to prove the ex istence of a unique culture when in the ve-y process of economic development, it will be submerged again - this time by the effect of science and tochnology. that establish a uniform Tnternational culture.

Although these objections are reasona ble. J think they miss the psychological motivation that gives meaning to Following the rise of national ism in tile 19 th cen tury, there were

many racial. ethnic and cultural re\-ival!; in Europe. 1 shan however, draw my examples from th e countries of the 'Tllird \ Varld' because ,the shin ed fate of colonialism gi\'cS a special edge

to their problems.

indigenism. In the course of the argument, I will try to tackle the objections.

Here I would like to mention One important objection: that indigenism implies -

or becomes. revivalism, in

almost every instance and especially in societies that arc tradition-bound. The revivalist attitude comes to the surface in various cultures, in periods of defeat and foreign oppression, or contrarily, during rapid historical change. Every attempt at a revival begins and ends in a nostalgia for some past golden age. Yet the mere fact of looking into history - and a period of cultural efflorescence in the past_ is not escapist. The European Renaissance from the 15th century. is a most impressive

example of a vastly forward reaching movement, based on historical inspiration. I would suggest that in contra 路 distinction tu revivalism, a renaissance is a conscious

shedd ing off_ of a ritualistic tradition, in order to look at fundamental hllman problem - for which alone the spirit (and only secondarily_ the forms) of an appropriate past are invoked. Tndigenism in the sense ....

which I have used it, is related in attitude to that of , renaissance. It is an attempt to dig deep into the .'ioil. in w/rich one is rooted - to make it fertile again.

Given the interruption of centuries in the organ ic life of these cultures, the search for identity is bound to be elusive. Nor can the quest that lies at the heart of it, be simply judged by the objective 'success' of the respective cultures, if indeed there is any measure for that. The more perceptive leaders and members of the intelligentsia are not unaware of the problems involved, and try to take steps to combat these from the very beginning.

Frantz Fanon, the Negro writer from Martinquc (who

later lived and worked in Algeria during its Liberation struggle) has expressed the nature of this problem at its most fundamental level. The obsession to assert himself, even his despised nature haunts the 'native' under foreign rule. And it is through this antagonism with 'other', the foreigner that he exorcises his courage and his freedom.

"Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native's brain of all form and content. By a kind (If perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it . .... .. . "

1

It is wit.h the greatest delight and relief that the colonised people begin to discover - once the movement for liberation begins - their own suppressed culture. And the native intelletcual, realising this and that they are constantly in danger of being swamped anew:

" . .. . .... relentlessly determine to renew contact once more with the oldest and most pre-colonial springs of life of their people." 2 " Tn such a situation the claims of the native intellectual a re no luxury but a necessity in any coherent programme. The native intellectual who takes up arms to defend his nation's legitimacy, who is willing to strip himself naked to study the history of his body. is obliged to dissect the heart of his people." 3

1 Frantz Fanon , TIle \Vrctched of tile Earth , p. 170

" Ihid., ))p. 169路 170 3 Ihid; )). 117

JNDlGENISM: SOME HISTORICAL EXAMPLES.

I

Jean Franco in her book The Modern Culture of Latill America describes how, from the early studies of the Hispanic civilization by Jose Enrique Rodo (from Uruguay, 1871 -1917, author of 'Ariel'), to the Mexican intellectuals of the post-revolutionary period like Jose Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, Samuel Ramos, Leopold Zea and Octavio Paz, this question of national selfidentification - made especially touchy hy their mixed Indo-Spanish background - is posed again and again through interpretations of their history.

It was under Jose Vasconcelos (1882-1959) who was

twice the Education Minister in post-revolutionary Mexico that a far reaching programme of cultural nationalism became effective. His pioneering work included mass literary programmes in which the Indian population was sought to be included, both as a subject and object of education. He initiated the establishment of the Institute of Indigenous Studies and the Museum of Anthropology and History. As he put a high premium on the arts in the building up of national culture, he encouraged t he Folk Ballet, the National Theatre, musicians and orchestras, particularly those using traditional and folk instruments.

He is of course best known for extending Government patronage to the Mexican painters, giving them opportunities to study pre-Columbian art, encouraging them to develop the mural technique and commissioning t hem to paint murals that allegorised the struggles of the Mexicans in finding their freedom and identity (although the famous painters, Rivera, Sequeiros and Orozco were The exam ple of Ind ia will be treated in grea ter detail in a later section of the essay. Here I am making a brief mention of tv.'o

soon on their own and out-lived their patron, through their work) .

" .. . .. . the impulse behind cultu ral nationalism was two-fold. First, there was the desire to bring all sections of the community into national life. Secondly, the elite now sought in folk culture, in the indigenous peoples and the environment, the values they had previously accepted from E urope." 2 Cultural nationalism itself, was seen by Vasconcelos and others as a preparation for a great collaboration of the Latin American cultures: intellectuals and artists were invited from the Latin American continent to come and participate in Mexico's experiment. And this was further conceived as a model for the fusion of races and cultural integration on a world-wide scale.

These ideals never reached the peak of conviction (and achievement) as in the 1920's; indeed, were hetrayed in the political situation of subsequent years, as the Indian population remained illiterate and neglected, capitalism ncurished and the intelligentsia remained an elite group.

There were however, some lasting gains: through the institutions that were founded, the arts, particularly mural painting which affected social and aesthetic consciousness not only in Mexico, but in the world. Moreover, nowhere in Latin America, as in Mexico, are the people so aware and proud of their historical tradition, tbeir popular culture, and this creates - at least - a potential for another resurgence.

The notion of NegritUde (Negroism), that developed after the 1930's amongst the Negro intellectuals, particularly of the French colonies, expressed in militant terms, the need

cultural sih13tions that provide a contest to the theoretical

proposition:; made above.

2 J. Franc.:o: TIle lH odern Cu lture of Latin America, pp. 71路72

for rejecting what the white colon ising world stood for and upholding the intrinsic qualities of the Negro; his naturai aptitudes and passions, his culture and tradition.

The two famolls writers of this movement are Aime

Cesaire (from Martinique) and Leopold Senghor (national leader and writer from Senegal).

Thirty years ago, in his long poem, Return to My Nati ve Lll1ul. Cesaire said to his fellow-negroes -

"Sun, Angel Sun, curly-headed Angel of the Sun, 0 leap the I sweet greenish fluid of the waters of Shame!"

acros~

Later in the poem he says :

everywhere and even with the young whites in America

"My negritude is not a stone, nor deafness flung ou t against the clamour of the day.

My Negritude is not a white tower nor cathedral it plunges into the red flesh of the soil it plunges into the blazing flesh of the sky My Negritude riddles with holes the dense affliction of its worthy patience."

Afro-American identity their most articulate leader, Eldridge Cleaver deliberately subordinates the long history that severed them from their home land, emphasises their racial-cultural distinctness and thereby gives his people the will to fight white oppression. At the least. this is a strategy necessary at a particular historical stage in the struggle ; if it releases problems, these are a part of the prOblems of rehabilitation which are unavoidable and which, with the hindsight on colonial struggles now available, can be simultaneously considered. In his collection of essays, entitled SOLiI On Ice, Eldridge Cleaver does go beyond separatism for its own sake, by linking the struggle of his people with the liberation movements

2

Negritude has bl!en criticised as defensive and

self-defeating. Frantz Fanon is sympathetic to the notion as a step toward in intensifying self-conSciousness . but

he points out t hat the final limitations of a pan-Africanism is that it simplifies the historical-social content of the struggle and therefore the objectives. Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer and poet commented ridiculingly that we may just as well have the Tiger proclaim its Tigerism. Yet Negritude is a weapon which the American negroes are nOw taking up. In claiming an 1 Aime Cesairc (trans: John Berger and Anna Bostock ) Retllrn to My Native Land, London , Pengnins, 1969, p. 65 2 Ibid., p. 75

who are fighting the established culture of oppression.

EXTRAPOLATION Indigenism is most fruitful when its aims are a

self-directed questioning. But often it becomes a means by which newly independent people defend themselves from being assimilated by the more advanced nations.

Alternative values are expessed in over sinlplified polarities - the blindly materialistic west, and the rest, the exploited cultures as ipso facto more spiritual and more human. In the wake of this come theories of inherent or historical superiority, most of which are merely chauvip.istic.

The actual state of these nations. tpe enormity of their problems, ma'kes even the more I]lodest assertions seem hollow and vahi, the swan song as it were of civilisations that have in effect been submerged by history. Yet the West, despite its phenomenal achievements has been humbled by its own actions during this century and the value of its supremacy questioned by its own best minds.

The material optimism of the 19th century exploded into

anguished I pessimism after World War 1. The subsequent rise of Nazism and World War II have intensified the sense of crisis.

"The western man is now realising the limitation of his own view of what constitutes reality ... But this is equally being realised by other men, who until recenay had to justify their humanity to a world that begrudged it."1

Octavio Paz,

ill

his exploration of the Mexican identity

says :

"We were objects before, but noW we have become the agents of historical change, and our acts and our omissions affect the great powers. The image of the present-day world as a struggle between two giants with the rest of us as their friends, supporters, servants and followers, is very superficial. The back-ground - ana indeed, very substance - of contemporary history is the revolutionary wave that is whelming in the peripheral countries ............ 2(my italics) Against this background the search for identity by post-colonial nations, through a revaluation of their past, acquires real significance. It is not that they can conjure up, from their ancient past, solutions for contemporary problems but they can (a) create a sense of perspective though their hitherto ignored or sullied historical traditions (even as an anthropologist can, through his 'models' of primitive societies); (b) extend indigenism from a remantic pursuit for its own sake, into an instrument of criticism, a means by which they distance themselves from

the oppressive achievement of the West. A means by which to rethink the fundamental questions, to ask as it they were at the beginning: what are their needs, instead of blindly following the solutions made for them by the West.!

The qu.e st of these emerging peoples will be greatly strengthened if they recognise th. t indigenism is one means by which their culture is vitalised; it must be accompanied by a diversification and radicalisation of the total cultural body. Secondly, that the historical circumstance of colonialism and underdevelopment has 2iven these several nations common problems and their ~nity is essential. and not just a tactical contrivance.

One of India's important SOCiologists said far back as in J 942 (when the Indian people were launching their biggest offensive aoainst British rule), that our identity is to be seen in the double perspective of the past and the future .

These words apply to all emerging nations: ~

"Along with the withdrawal of foreign rule, India, the whole of it or each part of it. must 'withdraw' into itself. Every civilisation in history has thus 'retired' to draw from its inner resources and come out to meet a new chalIenge . . ....

"It is not a reactionary move provided that the rally is affected. India has done likewise in her times of trouble; . . conscious emphasis will have to be laid On the return and the rally; the withdrawal being into the collective unconscious cannot but be unconscious.

This should be seen in relation to the argument of Herbert Marcuse

1 Mexican tllinker Leopold Zea; quoted by Jean Franco, The lvlodem Culture of Latin Amerka, p. 216

in One Dimensional

2 Paz, Labyrintll of Solitude, p. 180

reality to its single dimension -

~Ian;

that the achievements of post-

technological societies absorb dissent and idealism and reduce the established status quo.

Conscious adjustment te Indian traditions and symbols is thus the first condition of remaking ...

"The outgoing attitude will have to be one of hearty alliance with all the people's governments. .. Wherever the people are On the move, wherever they have triumphed over their political economic or social matters, the so-called repositories and matters of culture, there the interests of Indian culture will be.

as the claims of inherent superiority are irrelevant, the international aspect of individual solutions need not be over-emphasised. My extrapolations are based on indigenism. which is a creative exploration of a specific culture. I deliberately avoid any allempt at universal applications for it contains elements of cultural seduction.

RECAP/TVLATION I have gone very far-afield in the introduction. To bring it back to focus I will quote the ideas of Octavio Paz, 00 the subject for he poses the dilemmas with a poigoance that is felt by all those pre-occupied with the quest.

" The culture of static parts is of the museum. It is not suggested that the West has ceased to exist - it will at least live through the USA, but certainly the world provides other types which the West has taught us all His long essay, Labyrinth of Solitude, is written as a to ignore or look on with contempt. Western culture as .poetic introspection on the tbeme of Mexicanism. He wants to tear away ' the masks that obscure thel face of the we have known it these years has been essentially a class culture; and the large number who had adopted it Mexican; to arrive at his true identity as revealed in his myths, language, mores and present patterns of behaviour. ha ve been conditioned to believe that the nature of culture itself is such. But many people today have begun Poetically he states that the Mexican must discover to think otherwise. They are our friends and their himself through a dialectic of solitude and communion, friendship will help us to rally. but like other thinkers who have struggled with the problem , he sees it r~alistically as well, and in its "So in future, Indians can only meet those who are bewildering implications. He realises that there may no wresting their human claims from unwilling hands and longer be an 'essential' face of the Mexican, no unique remaking their own culture in the process."J destiny, which is not inextricably linked with the people of other post-colonial and underdeveloped nations - and As these nations set out to solve their terrible problems, of man everywhere. Tt is not an essay written to conjure they may be forced to invent new means - in the way up a Mexican identity, but to question the possibility and Tndia did her concept of non-violence and Satyagraha, it lays down no idealogical dogma based on exclusivity. and indeed as have the revolutionary peoples of China, for discovering it. The vaccillation that characterises his North Vietnam and Cuba. in the last twenty years. Tn the approach and the doubt that hangs like a shadow over process they may point out the malaise in the established every assertion seem to me symbolic of the very state in values. in the fund of 'given' solutions. It is in tbis sense which the self-conscious and sensitive individual finds that their oWn search can be amplified, not only to tbe himself in most of these post-colonial cultures. rest of the 'Third World' but to the entire world. But just "At one time I thought that my pre-occupations with the significance of my country's individuality - a I D. P. Mukerji, Modern Indian Culture, pp. 215-216 pre-occupation J share with many others - was

â&#x20AC;˘

pointless and even dangerous. Instead of asking ourselves questions, it would be better, I felt, to create; to work with the realities of our situation. We could not alter those realities by contemplation, only by plungnig ourselves into them. We could distinguish ourselves from other peoples by our creations rather than by the dubious originality of our character which was the result, perhaps, of constantly cbanging circumstances .... " 1 "But tbe adolescent cannot forget himself -

wben he

succeeds in doing so, he is nO longer an adolescent and, we cannot escape the necessity of questioning and contemplating ourselves." 2

"The Rcvoluticn began as a discovery of ourselves and a return to ollr origins; later it became a search and an abortive attempt at a syntbesis; finally since it was unable to assimilate our tradition and to offer uS a new and workable plan, it became a compromise. The Revo!ution has not been capahle of organising its explosive values into a world view and the Mexican intelligentsia bas not been able to resolve the conflict between the insufficiencies of out tradition and our need and desire for universality."

"This recapitulation helps to define the problem of a Mexican philosophy - the conflicts ... (had) remained hidden until a short wbile ago, covered over by foreign ideas and forms that have served to justify our actions but bave also hindered our self-expression and obscured the nature of our inner controversy, Our situation resembles that of a neurotic, for whom moral Paz, Op. cit. p. 2

2 Ibid., p. 3

principles and abstract ideas have nO practical function except as a defence for his privacy - that is, as a complex system he employs to deceive both himself and others regarding the true meaning of his inclinations and the true character of bis conflicts. But wben tbese latter are clearly and accurately revealed to him, be must tben confront them and resolve them himself.

Much the same thing has happened to us. We have suddenly discovered that we are naked and that we are confronted with an equally naked reality." 3 Following from the above I am concerned with the quest usually led by a nation's intelligentsia and amongst tbem, tbe artists, for: (I) discovering tbe essence of tbe culture by an

understanding of its unique tradition, and its present characteristic manifestations.

(2) becoming authentic and self-aware by stripping the masks put on in defence against a confused frightening colonial history and tbe masks tbat tbe failures and deceptions of tbe post-colonial as well.

off and hide era

With the 'quick' of feeling Aime Cesaire expresses the quest: "I break open the yolk-bag tha t separa tes me from myself'" 3 Ibid., p. 157 4 Cesaire ( trans: John Berger and Anna Bostock) Return to M}' ~ative LaI}d, p. 62.

PART 1

CHAPTER

II

INDIGENISM AND THE ARTIST

General

Statement

r have tried to define the quest for identity within a nation as one for essence and authenticity. A collective identity is not simply deduced from historical, geographical and cultural fact s; tbere IS need for a transcen,ding vision.

The artist apprehends reality by means of his imagination and this is the very means by which an ethos may configurate in his created Form.

In order to delimit the definition of indigenism, the folk artist must be set apart in this discussion. We must consider artists who are not subsumed by the tradition but who are, as contempoary men, revaluating and expressing its essence.

The artist need not be a self-conscious 'indigenist' to fulfil its most qualitative aspects. The poems of Garcia Lorca are rooted in his land and its traditions, in the myths and experiences of the Spanish (and he draws particularly on the character of Spanish gypsies) . Yet Lorca never set up illdigenism as a conscious intention.

On the other band. since the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, indigenism has been the stated intention in the wo rk of several artists. Interestingy mUSiC, (and especially opera) patronised by the Europan bourgeoisie (w hich was a nationalist and progressive force in the 19th century) became a means of national resurgence. In most cases this meant an exploration into their folk traditions.

Verdi, Glinka, Smetana and Dvora k aLtempted to express respectively, tbe Italian, Russian and Czech cultural identity; Bartok in this century, the Hungarian~ through a superb use of its folk and gypsy music. Literature, more Lhan any other art serves this function over long periods of time. Amongst the poets in this century, Yeats was involved with the Celtic revival and included CelLic myths and symbols in his work. Many Latin American poets have searched into tbeir fndian past and asserted their identity vis-a-vis the civilization of Europe-as Pablo Neruda, in parts of his voluminous poem, 'Canto General'. In India. Rabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghosh

provided a literary counterpart to the first pbase of the Independence movement-selecting historical mythological themes as well as forms of language from the Indian literary tradition . The movement of Negritude, in pan-African literature is analogous to indigenism, and most ioteosly expressed by the Antillean poet Aime Cesaire. In painting the only concentrated effort toward cultural nationali sm is represented by the Mexican mural movement and especially the work "f Diego Rivera .

I should lik e to suggest that there is an organic relationship between the artist an j the pursuit of indigenism. For the artist the fundamental problem is of di scovering from the vast horizon of his chosen artistic language-verbal or Don-verbal, the form that can reveal the meaning to which he is committed. His pre-occupation is thus with the pOleflliu/ of his chosen langu age. How all language are bound up with the experience, memories and values of a peopl e; they are the principle manifestation of their culture. 1 The artist draws from the body of a language, his own inflected 'speech', using the term after Roland Barthes 2 , to mean tbe way a language is 'selected and actualised' by an individual for expressing a personal meaning. (It is therefore a metaphorical term, app licable to non路verbal expression as well). Tbe artist manipulates a language, to make it more flexibl e, more responsive for

Anthropological writings, emphasise the relationship of language and art to culture. as one of the fundamental moves in man's transition from nature to culture Language is the closest objective equivalent to the collective experieoce of a group. even as it is the means by which new members are initiated into the social and cultural values.

2

Roland Barthes, Elemellls of Semiology.

He says language is at

the same time a social institian and a system of values.

Barlhes

also refers to language in parallel term to the anthropologists' (Durkheilll's) notion of the collective consciousness, in contra-

distinction to speech which is its individual manirestation.

r

himself. As his ' speech' feeds back to tbe absorbant body of that language. he can ultimately effect the expressive capacities of the people.

An artist intent

upon tbe building of a contemporary culture that at tbe

an innovation in their usage. does not have the same

significance-as a similar attempt in poetry which is at least minimally bound to be the linguistic communication of the group.

same time absorbs the uniqueness of its own history. can

work througb its languages: to revitalise memories and values, to extend tbeir range for apprehending new realitles. In the words of tbe Maxican poet, Octavio Paz, a real poet is fed from the ' living language oj a community, its myths, its dreams, and its passions-that is, on its most secret and powerfullendencies. The poem/uses the nation because Ihe poet goes back up the 'stream' oj language and drinks in the originalJounl. In the poem. society Jaces the Joundations ~r its being and its original world: "

In the following arguments [ relate art to language, though I do not identify them. Tbe justification for doing this lies in tbat the artist's apprehension of reality is objectified into artistic form equivalent to tbe way in wbich man apprehend reality through words. To the artist these forms are a language by which he understands phenomena.

Here, with a brief diversion, I need to clarify my terms. The arts need to be separated from language proper (verbal and written language), because they are virtual symbolic systems wbere there is neither a vocabulary of fixed single units, nor a syntax anywhere Dear as conventionalised, to express meaning as in language proper. ([n tbis sense most poetry stands half way between language and art).

man to express and communicate meaning, yet usefully

According to Susanne Langer' the nonverbal symbols can be included in t.he entire field symbolic systems used by separated by the distinction implied in the term 'discursive symbols' and 'presentational symbols' to indicate the different experiences .

To come to the main theme. the artist's own tradition includes the vocabularies of the fine arts, folk and popular

From tbe point of view of my present tbeme, the problem becomes difficult as one moves from prose, poetry, to the arts of painting and sculpture. These latter do not always perform a language (communicative) function within a

arts. These together are a vast resource covering diverse

cultural group.2 As such, an imaginative handling or even

line, colour and forms; (iii) pictorial space, its divisions

areas of thought feeling. In each convention I include as characteristics, (i) the fund of images and symbols with ascribed meaning; (ii) tbe particular use of elements like and dimensions.

I Quoted by I . Franco, The Modern Culture of Latin America , p.l97 2 G. Charbonnier. (Ed .) Conversations with Clande Levi- Strauss. pp 57-61 Levi-Strauss points out that in the long tradition of the visual arts. it is Primitive art that fulfils the communicative function most efficiently within its group. as in effect it is a system of signs whose meaning is fixed. In post-Primitive societies and especially since the European Renaissance, tbis function has been lost: by individualism and representationalism; by the artist turning in upon the history of art for reference; and by the whittling down of the audience to elite patrons.

The given visual images may no longer be signifiers of conventional meaning but they are compounded of associative meaning whose references are generally contained within the given cu lture and environment. This

may be why visual symbols whose specific meaning has 3.

Langer. Philosophy in a New Key.

been lost, continue long afterwards because they beco me as it were symbols of memory.

communication to an audience who knows by tradition or can recall how to 'read' such a picture more naturally.

The use of traditional symbols in alien contexts, their

Tn examining art and indigenism in mutual relationship, I have emphasised the search for 'essence' within a given environment and culture. There is a twin aspect of the search for authenticity or collective self~awareness. This

attempted transformation by an individual, raises uneasy

question. r have discussed some of these in relation to the contemporary Indian painters, especially J. Swami nathan, in the last part of this essay. Here I would only like to mention that i( is better to speak of the metaphorical value of traditional images and symbols. It is as metaphors, making new analogies that they come to life again.

Traditional images and symbols may also be used to m~ke a critical comment on tradition - or the distortions in it.

In either case they can enrich the meaning of a given work

by the dimension of memory that underlies them. In modern Western art, this allegoric use of images, symbols and metaphors of the Greek aod Christian tradition occurs throughout and most inventively through Picasso.

The elements of visual art - line, colour, forms and space, are expressive in themselves. When they have been used

in a particular convention within a given culture, they can saturate the collective imagination of its people. The most obvious example is that of colour (similar and as powerful as sound). Colours on which a particular sensitivity has been fed, invokes a response that is like

communion direct and inexplicable.

The pictorial

'syntax' - the relationship of elements and images in pictorial space, is obviously most important ; in a similar

way as in lauguage proper, it indicates the mode of apprehending experience. It is easy to see the importance if one realises that the 'revolutionary' changes in modern art, e.g. Cubism and Surrealism, centered aro:und changes

in the image - space relationship [call pictorial syntax.

One of the first steps an artist can make vis-a-vis his tradition is to understand its languages and their grammer .

The use of a more integrally conceived gram mer may release the native imagination. It may also be a step toward greater

brings the problem into the field of social values. Here too tbe artist can act in a special role. Through his imaginative freedom he can transcend the conditiolling of his environment ; through his innate non-conformism,

the conditioning of institutional values and dogma.

His

alienation from established reality can take on a positive

role ; to strip off the masks of habit, repression andcorruption, to reveal perhaps a subtler, more profound reality.'

Even under established hierarchies, when painters were employed

by Church or Royal ty. it was possible to retain a freedom of conscience. Pieter Bruegel is unconventional , often ironic towards his sa nctimonious subject-mall er. (The crowds in Adoration of the Magi in the National Gallery , London). Goya shows his royal subjects for what they are, stupid or ruthless. (the portraits of all the characters of the allcien regime in the historical drama 01" the early 19th centu ry ). The poossibility for the artist to act as the conscience of a people increases as be becomes independent of direct patronage (rill it comes full cirele as pointed out by H. Marcuse in Ol1e-Dimensional IHall , in the post-technological stages of society, where dissent is absorbed bv technological achievement). There are very large number of modern painters. beginning from the end of the 18th century who have seen their work as embody in g dissent, sa tire or didacticism against the establishment. To name some: David.

DOUinier, Courbet, Manet; the Post-Im pressionists, particularly Van Gogh; Picasso in several phases, culminating in the 'Ouernica'; Expressionists and particularly the two Germans, Max Beckmano"and George Grosz; the Max.ican muralist; all the Dadaists ; Surrealists like Rene Magritte and Max. Ernst; Pop artists, like Kicnholz, Christo, so me works of Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein , Oldenberg and rom Wesselmann (although in the case of most Pop-art social criticism is read into what is .populi st and mimetic imagery. )

It may be argued that since trad itio n is transm itted througb habit, an iodigen ist search,-as it involves tradi tion, however un doctrinaire, strengthens th e moulds of hab it.

it may find the wo rds and the syntax necessary for its exteoded use.

Tbe polemic on the artists' role in his society (in which the role of an artist in a post-colonial culture is on ly a special if more urgent case) is discussed at some lengtb in Chapter IT!.

The survival of the tradition al VIsual a rts is dependent upon particu lar classes of patrons. The fioe arts need the patronage of the aristocracy, the folk and popular arts of the peasantry a nd the urban, lower middle classes, respectively. With the decline of the indigenous aristocracy, the fioe arts tend to die completely. The aristocracy is replaced by an urban, educated middle-class who tend to prefer tb e modern forei gn a rts and their native imitatiolls; and with a cul tnrally bybrid class of

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

'art' provided best by tbe popular cinema.

Wh en a culture is aborted at a given hi storical stage, as under colonisation, tbe subservient culture ceases to

The folk arts survive and can be as fresh today

evolve its own symbols of expression. Tbe majority of the

the world. The twin factors of their functionality and their conventionalised lan guage gives them their long life.

(In lbe case of art, habit meaning formalism).

Here Twill

onl y reiterate what I have discussed before; the indigenism

is an enhghtened re-valuation of tbe tradition, precisely to discover its dynamic aspect by going behind its habitual forms of bebaviour and expression.

the nouveau riche who want enter tai nment rather than

people continue in a cultural situatio n in which their

experience matcb sym bols only because both are frozen.

A small group by their own effons or by tbe vested interests of tbe colonialists to educate 'natives' in their own culture, do flow into modernity. Then their equation with their historical experiencee is made via and o nly via

the foreign cu lture-its languages and forms. With the witbdrawal of foreign rule the gap is clearly evident for tbe large mass of people not assimilated into tbe foreign culture (and tberefore deprived of any historical cbange) tbe gap may be as wide as that between tbe mediaeval and the modern consciousness.

My reference here is mainly to language and tbe arts and within tbese, specifically, tbe visual arts. The problem referred to above is not so acute in tbe case of language proper. Its continued usage in every day life is the proof of its adaptability to whatever cbange to whicb tbe majority are admitted. At any rate, there is potential in a living language, tbat given the need and tbe opportunity,

10

the

traditional, insulated peasant and tribal cultures all over

But for tbis ve ry reason, with any interruption-generally

industrial competition-they collapse very quickly. They disiotegrate even wben they 3\e 'pilfered' by tbe sophisticated for their own inspiration or use aod es pecially if these transformed forms are fed back to the sources.

With tbe rise of a lagre urban middle-class, the demand for popular arts increases and one finds that a readily adaptable popular idiom sup plants all o tbers. In India, e.g., tbe visual culture of the cities or towns and increas-

ingly the villages, consists almost entirely of glossily seductive a rid naive images of gods, heroes and film starsin the form of posters, calenders, illu strations and objects.

They utitlise a hybridised lang uage derived from traditional fine and folk arts as well as from any foreign visual material that is available. The popular films are an apotheosis of all this.

The decline of an indigenous visual language poses real problems for a contemporary artist. His own experience,

his consciousness, demands a vocabulary that may be absent in the aborted tradition. In fa ct, it is clearly only western art that has grown organically into modernity and therefore possesses the equivalent in languages of the changi ng historical experience. For example, the problems of dehumanisation and aHenation as arising io urban industrialised societies; of voi lence on the unprecedented scale of the world wars, are unique to ou r century

and require appropriate means of expression. rt is obvious that treditional symbolic languages, belonging to pre-technological societies, will not be able to embody these new experiences.

There are few generalisations possible in regard to this problem. In each situation we must consider what the specific inteDtions of a D artist are what is it that Deeds to be expressed; what is the character aDd range of the given traditioD, [ shall discuss these questions in reference to modern Mexican art, for after the Mexican 'revolution" I as the wave of cultural natioDalism swept the country, conditions were most sympathetic for a creative relationship between the artist and his indigenous culture.

During tbe 1920's tbe Mexican painters, like their contemporary writers and intellectuals, began to seek after their deepest, most ancient roots in their Indian civilisations.

Archaeology revealed to them the quality and distiDct character of an art that had been ignored for centuries.

They discovered as Jean Charlot, ODe of the mural painters describes,2 the splendour of Mayan sculpture with its

lines, volumes, bighly formalised to serve its metapbysical a nd magical purposes; and the virtuosity of its baroque stalae-with decorative spirals, volutes, curves. men, animals and gods intertwined to match the exuberaDt tropical landscape. The scu lp;ure of the Aztecs, the other great [Ddian culture was almost aDtithetical to the Mayan. It was self-sufficieDt, folded into itself DOt intending to convince or please: tbe egg-shaped stones wtibout base; sculptures tbat mimiced a bug or a fruit but remained stone or wood, as if merely sculpted by weathering. The remaiDs of paiDting were comparatively scanty. Early MayaD frescoes had tense, elongated figures and in the later, better preserved frescoes, (of the Temple of Tigers in Chichen lIza) complex abstract compositions as of the large battle scene, which particularly impressed Diego Rivera. Aztec paiDtiDgs were mainly codices divided in heraldic colours, with the squattmg, gesticulating pygmies 'written' all over them.

ID 1921, iD the opening manifesto of the Mural movemeDt, AlfoDso Sequeiros said:

"We must come closer to tbe works of the ancient settlers of our vales, Indian painters and sculptors, Mayan, Aztec, IDca, etc. Our climatological identification with them will help us assimilate the cODstructive vigour of their work. Their clear elemeDtal knowledge of nature can be our starting point" I Jean Charlot states, "Into this mould of pre-Hispanic art, understood in terms

of Iile plastic presenf, tile group oj muralisls poured whatever human /eeUng were dominant at tile social momelll .. ill other wortis, political indianism was the breath tl1at informed plastic Indiol1ism, " 2

1t is perhaps important to state here that the Mexican revolution failed in effcct or remained at any rate incomplete, particularly in regard to the problem of the Indians, This fact throws a shadow over the clIllllral efforts of the Mexican intelligentsia accompanying the so-ca lled revolution,

2

Jean Chariot, 1I1exicall Mural Renaissance. /920-25.

I

Quoted by Chartot, Ibid. p.1O

2 Loc. cit,

Yet one must admit that besides perhaps few examples, like the ovoloid, pressed-togetber body-forms of Rivera's kneeling figures, there is little visual evidence of this 'Indianism' in modern Maxican painting. There is reason for this, the MexIcan artists. were dictated more than any other artists' group in the 20th century hy the historical social developments of their nation. Their intention was to create epic art, showing conflict aDd action; and an art overlaid with moral didacticism. It bad to be a narrative art or on the otber band allegorical.

In eitber case the rhetorical gesture was important for that expressed the revolutionary fervour to which these works were committed. Maxican Indian art was powerful; it dealt with horror and deatb with a strange nervous energy but its forms were sealed by their own secret intentions,

tbeir saloons. These described every subject-beautiful women, charras, toreadors, engines and boats, with a direct realism , both tender and humourous. Tbey tackled besides, the common problems of mural painting in their own naive style-'soaring perspectives, optical deformation ,

multiple points of view, illusive architecture within architecture',!

The flambuoyance, amounting to bacchanalian excesses

were despised by most sophisticated Mexicans even during tbe intensive p~riod of indigenism. But the popular idioms interested the painters in regard to mood and social content, particularly as it allowed them to enter the world of the 'folk' to whom they wished to address their own art.

sealed against different usages. So These artists looked

Similarly, the art of the people was expressed in the

elsewhere in their own tradition-toward their colonial art

bizarre and touching ex-votos pictures, figurines and

both religious a nd popular. Whatever Tndian culture survived had long been encrusted with Spanish influence even as the latter had yielded to influences of the local culture. First of all there were tbe religious frescoes that naturally interested the contemporary mural painters.

Jean Charlot writes:

objects-that piled the wall s of every little Maxican ch urch.

Rivera, the first to be moved by them, said :

"The self-contained, self-sufficient Indian form could not help us paint murals that talked to tbe people.

On the contrary colonial frescoes were synonymous with plastic elocution. It solved the problems of preaching from walls and ceilings that were also our problems. Its voice rose splendidly in its oratorical flights, but it was also careful to ennunciate clearly so that the simplest soul could understand its

the Quattrocento, Henri Rousseau, the custom house employee, and in certain ways The Orient, and the frescoes of Chichen ltza ., .," 2

direction."

1

Then there were the pu/qlleria paintings-the brilliantly coloured murals of the people, painted on the walls of J Ibid. p. 27

"The anguish of our people caused slowly to rise up against the walls of their churches tbis passing strange flowering of retahles .. Unexpected comparisons come to mind - Trecento masters and those of the dawn of

Popular graphics of the street-penny sheets. illu.tratillg rhymed corridos or exciting news reports were flourishing

in Mexico City at the turn of the century. The best known of these printmakers was Jose Guadalupe Posada (died 1913) who turned out thousand of these illustrations.

One can include bim in the Mexican visual 'tradition', so

attuned was his work to his race and land and to his Ibid. p. 36 2 D. Rivera, Azulejos, I, 1922; quoted by J. Charlot, ibid pp. 33-34

'I

people's everyday human condition. He used all that was macabre in the tradition (particularly the caiel''''o - skull images tbat belong to the Indian as well as the Spanish tradition, epitomised in their celebrations of the 'Day of the Dead') to create a stinging satire on contemporary society and its villains. Rivera, and particularly Orozco knew his work from their student days.

In all these different streams, the artist found a savage vocabulary of images that quickened tbeir instincts as revolutionary and artists. For tbeir indigenous visual culture was built up of many strange layers:

were original was then Dot in tbeir sources and im:lgery

" A sublayer of Aztec ritual bloodletting plus a layer of Spanish asceticism .. .. . ."

is a direct continuation of European expressiooism,

beginning with El Greco and fusing with the frenzied spirit of Spanish colonial art in Mexican churches. In fact what these artists looked for in their indigenous art forms reflected ratber, their Europeanised vision. And tbis is also true of the eccentric sources they tapped in their own popular and folk arts. (Paris since the heginning of the century had been pervaded by the spirit and forms of the primitive, the exotic, the strange and naive arts of their own and otber traditions). Wbere the Mexican artists

1

"Souls sizzling in purgatory, witb a pope or a cardinal thrown in for good measure, windlasses unrolling tbe guts of rna, tyrs, eyes or breasts served on a plate, Christ after flagellation, skinned to the rits, bleeding on all fours in his cell like a wounded animal in its lair - such are still favourite devotions and popular

but in the role they gave to modern art I - for they linked tbemselves across centuries to the overwhelming didactic role artists bad played on bebalf of the Church. If their work appears at a tangent to modern European art, it is not because it is 'Mexican' but because it picks up the abandoned rhetoric of the European tradition and uses it for the new Mexican context.

They were all - particularly Rivera and Sequeiros- familiar with it, before tbey began their work in Mexico. Rivera drew largely from Italian painting of the 15th and 16th conturies. For example he stripped to essentials

I have discussed the Mexican example at some length because it illustrates how in fact the relationship between the .rtist and his indigenism (either ideologically or simply for the love of his tradition) must change. compromise or even reject the language if it does not suit his purpose. In short there is no such thing as a historical graft of languages, only an organic growth in which the individual artist assimilates the elements from all that is availahle to him.

As his own culture is immediately available, indeed

Mantegna's compositions in his travelling notebooks.

pressing, urgent and intimate, his organic growth must

sights in Mexico!"

2

On balance however, one must admit that for all tbe fervent iodigenism, the work of the Mexican muralists derives most obviously from the European tradition.

His

forms bear obvious influence of Uccello and he aspires, especially in his earlier, allegorical works to the monumentality of Michelanglo. Sequeiros, the most diverse of all, developed a giagantic surrealism. Orozco's art Ibid p. 15

.2 Ibid.

p.

16

be nourished by it and in turn, feed the emerging culture.

They also exercised direct influence. c. g., Orozco inHucnced Jackson Pollock. More generally. American painting of the 1930's and 'Left' (socialist realist) painting in Europe acknowledged the imporlance of the Mexican artists.

But this needs to be considered in further depth. As art and language are not only means of expression but mould our apprehension of reality as well, it is possible that an artist ( or critic) may take an ideological position against the traditiona I arts from the point of view of asserting his contemporaniety and his radicalism, rejecting tradition to look at the future.

Leon Trotsky writing in 1924 on the theme of literature and revolution,' dismissed all pre-revolutionary movements in the arts as dead or retrogressive. This included ultimately the Futurist movement, which celebrated the revolution and its vision of the future. Because all these movements were conceived by and had served tbe bourgeoisie, they would have to perish with these classes in order that the culture, as the society itself develops towards the classless, socialist ideal.

This is extreme position deriving

from Marxist concept of revolution. Even in non-revolutionary societies, whe re the scion with tbe past is not so

sharp, nor ideologically dictated, it is very usual for people to be wa ry about influences from the tradition.

It is generally contended tbat indigen ism,

catagorised as subjectivist, hermetic, fantastical, opulent

etc., (correspondingly, much of Picasso, Mondrian, Klee, Matisse).

It is a very different matter when an artist cautions himself, or rather, instinctively avoids what he regards irrelevant to

bis contemporary need, and when the sources are de-limited to him on other's criteria - usuall y art historians, social

critics and political ideologists. [n fulfilling their criteria the complex dialectics of the artists search between history, an j metaphysics, indeed between the facts and mys teries of his own co nsciou sness are short-circuited into lo gical

cul-de-sacs of current ideologies.

The artist's activity is more significantly a search into the

states of consciousness.

It is during th is search that he

touches upon, and illuminates historical and social problems. To return to the relationship between art and

indigenism in the context of post-colonial cultures it is true that tbe fear of escapism or retrogression is not entirely imaginary. Within a con fu sed and broken

(I) encourages nostalgia and escapism

culture the only secure identity seems tha t which is

(2) compromises the artists' modernity and their historical relevance.

established in tradition . I would therefore li ke to reiterate that tradition must be viewed and assessed from the point

(3)

of view of contemporaniety, in order simpl v that the anist's activity be organically related to hi s own conscious-

recalls contexts and beliefs that are socially retrogressive.

If tradition is sealed because it necessarily encourages hyprocrisy and observes new realities - then o ne wo uld have to state in logical continuation of the argument that

only art that deals with concrete hi storical situations, de-mystifies them and moreover, pronounces a c lear moral message in regard to tbem, is truly modern or contem]

porary. In short, that art must be historical, progressive and didactic. And by these criteria not only is traditional art rejected for its historical irrelevance but modern art

L.Trotsky, Literature aud Revolutioll.

ness . But I suggest that equally, the content of mod ernity mu st be assessed-路for modernity is not a set of unchangeable components- sealed and sacred a fait accompli. Particularly is this 1101 so in colonial cullures who luu'e arrived into the moden! lVorld through an artificial process-a process without unity or convi.:lion and in which only a very small percentage of the llalio11's populalion have participated?

Thus modernity, in these cultures, a hapha zard, eclectic

and at best incomplete phenomenoll has to be examined

(and by curious irony it is only here that it can be examined because they are still not overtaken by its startling achievements). It must be examined for tbe ili s and co ntradicti ons that exist in it and are displayed by the advanced nations of the west, and from the point of view of the needs and ideals of a particular people. [do not believe therefore, that for the artist or the intelligentsia of such a nation, the issue of indignism can be dismissed with posing an easy choice between traditionalism and 'modernism', between progress and retrogression.

And it is possible that precisely in these nations with their ancient cultures still surviving, with tlieir confused but open ended value- systems, where the realm of feeling is not cancelled by alienation and where indeed a kind of romanticism persists overcoming the diminished vision of advanced technological societies, that the artist may be able to crea te images of significance; images tbat are

both human and mysterious - enriching perhaps the ass umptions of modernity itself.

PART J

CHAPTER III

CRITIQUE OF CONTEMPORARY WESTERN ART runction

The following discussion is highly generalised. It takes up a number of critical approaches and individual artists, as also the contemporary cultural milieu within a short space. Perhaps this approach will be acceptable if the motive of the critiqu e is kept in view.

This is to evaluate

certain premises of modern western art, rather than its individual achievements, in order to extrapolate if there

of presenting work, sometimes supporting artists,

and detecting buyers and collectors from the bourgeios audience. Thus begins the importanee of galleries and collectors, along with historiall-critics. The alignment of art activity with art business goes as far back as the 17th century but by the 19th century it became close and inevitable.

IS,

or can be, any distinctness of an Indian artist, rooted in different cultural and aesthetic premises.

There are other factors that have increased the number and and variety of people interested in art and investing in it,

I have taken a biased viewpoint and an overall critical one (deliberately putting aside the fact of a large number of

though by no means understanding or appreciative of it.

Since the last century, the expandIng middle classes with

great works, each of which requires a slow and intimate

their aspiration to education and culture is one factor. The triumph of modern art is related to that of avant-gardism,

dialogue) in order to expedite the process of deductions in which r am here interested.

now accepted as the device for rejuvenating culture.

Modern arlists (taking the term back, at least to Impressionists) were a breakaway group-amongst the first

The writers I quote are generally ideologically inclined.

There seems now, perhaps more tban even before. a need

for a philos"phically or sociologically angled viewpoint on contemporary art. Since the last three decades, in a mutually accelerated process, art and criticism have become

increasingly formalistic, therefore a closely confined activity. One can understand anything if one looks at it in aesthetic isolation. impartially and conscientiously

enough, but this does not necessarily help in grasping its extended significance or its place in the tOlal framework of meaning-communication. [ propose that particularly in a chaotic and open-ended cultural siruation. as in rndia. an interpretive and evaluative approach is more fruitful.

SOME IMPERATIVES ON CONTEMPORARY ART An integral relationship between art and its audience is

to introduce the notion of 'modernism' as progressive and if necessary, an opposing force against oppressive tradition

upheld by the established elite. Modern art. has thus become a symbol of new ideas and a progenitor of future values. (There seems to be evidences however that painting may be losing this role to film). This encourages all kinds of intellectuals on the one hand and commercial speculators on the other to become interested. It is both prestigious and profitable to be attached to and if possible, detect the avant-garde in art; therefore br implication. the on-going forces within contemporary culture. Even Governments consider it necessary to make this affiliation.

Modern art is a testimony of their cultural modernity and must be promoted. But all these people now attached to art pressurise it directly and indirectly to carry forward the phenomena of avant-gardism. And as far as they arc

based on a shared system of beliefs - conventionalised iconography and language. With the breakdown of

concerned, it is more important that art be avant-garde

traditional societies this relationship becomes tenuous and

than that it be good: or even, for it to be advanced than

the role of the mediator or interpreter is created. By the 18th century the historian critic was already an emerging figure and wielding influence in creating art history. By the 19th century, with the decline also of assured patronage, there was need for 'democratic' institutions to perform the

to be art.1

prophet.

Hence everyone for their own reasons turns

But "prophets are notorious manipulators.

appreciate events is to attempt to control them .. , I H. Rosenberg, The Anxious Ob}ecf. p. 228 Ibid pp. 3()'31

2

2

To

Tbere is no natural contact between art and audience and yet it is essential for any art activity. Once tbe artist for bis own survival, and society supposedly for its own (cultural) survival, bave stated tbeir need and their inability to fulfil it, tbere is very little to prevent art business becoming a kind of monopolistic organisation. The function of demand and supply are manipulated simultaneously by the mediators, so tbat the art-commodity yields maximum profit.

The artist is deprived of his role and given success.

John Berger's words:

In

UWhether he seeks or despises success, whether his aim is to please or stanle, the bourgeois artist's conscious

or balf-conscious concern witb success takes the form of his having to foresee, whilst he is still working. the likely effect of tbe finisbed work according to quite arbitrary criteria-arbitrary because in no way connected

with tbe trutb be may well be trying to communicate.

The Bitch-Goddess prowls between him and bis canvas, between intention and execution. inhibiting him, making him caricature himself, or prompting unnecessary caution or unnecessary excess," I

I suggest tbat tbe situation intensified in post-war years and exploded. as wide-spread frustration amongst artists in tbe last decade. As a result those artists wbo will not exploit the system tend to become defensive, to withdraw into otber roles and categories or to opt out altogetber. 2 In this context, Marcuse's analysis of the state of art and 'culture' in advanced industrial-commercial societies is

most relevant. It puts tbe preceding argument in a comprebensive setting. He says.

"Today's novel feature is the flattening out of the antagonism between culture and social reality through 1 Berger, The Permanent Red, pp . 210-211 2 This tendency is most pronounced in the arts of painting and sculpture as they are unique objects and therefore encourage acquisitiveness and conspicuous consumption . Literature and music ' e.g .• can be elite activities but cannot be personally possessed.

the obliteration of the oppositional, alien and transcendent element in the higher culture by virtue

of wbich it constituted another dimension of reality.

This liquidation of two.dimensional culture takes place not through the denial and rejection of 'cultural values', but through their whole·sale incorporation into

the established order. througb their reproduction and display on a massive scale." I

This is the result of the higb rate of acbievement of advanced industrial society, where culture is, as it were,

superceded by reality where the desire and dissent that the mytbical gods and culture heroes embodied, is ~endered unnecessary by tbe (seeming) realisation of the ideal in actual life. Along witb advanced industrialism, a masl ·scale commercial communication makes available the ,

products of culture to large mumbers of people in their every day lives.

But,

"Tf mass communication blends together barmoniously and often noticeably, art. politics, religion and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realm. of culture to the common denominator - tbe commodity form, the music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.

On it centres the rationality of tbe status quo and all alien rationality is bent to it,"2

"Tbe capabilities of this society are progressively reducing tbe sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized and indicted. Higher culture became part of the material culture. Tn this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.'"

I shall not elaborate his argument furtber. For the purpose here, the focus is on the new status of the work of art as a mass consumed commodIty-and tbis invalidates it.

1. Herbert Marcuse. One Dimensional Mall, p. S8 2. Ibid.• p. 59

3. Loc. cit.

previous onc, of visuaHsing an antagonist or transcendent freality' .

LOSS OF IDENTITY: NEW ROLES THAT ARTISTS PLAY That art activity bas no significant role in modern society has long' been understood by the artist. Until tbe first two decades of this century this realisation built up a tension which was itself creative, but slowly this realisation was accepted and this very acceptance became the content of art.

Marcel Duchamp along witb the Dadaists brought the situation to its first crisis. Duchamp undermined the faith in art as a repository of 'values' and exeposed the falsehood of the audience responding to modern art, through his 'ready-mades'. He showed how everything in the category of advant-garde art was quickly assimilated by bourgeois culture. He then took the crucial decision of abandoning art activity as futile and irrelevant. This has tended to make art an uneasy activity for the artist, absurd or sometimes subversive for the audience.

[n a completely different (because positive) sense, Mondrian and Malevitch pushed toward a point where metaphysical speculation superseded the need for form and in logical consequence art could became irrelevant.

Subsequently, questions regarding the definitio n of art have been posed by artists like Dubeffet, Pollock, in their work.

But it is not until the generation after the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940's, that artists have fully accepted their irrelevance. They are the real heirs of Ducbamp's cynicism, for thougb they may not abandon the activity, tbey no longer struggle with contradiction on the grounds either of conscience or desire . They simply take the situation for granted and step ahead of it hy embodying a. content, the contemporary value (or 'un- va lue') of art. Amongsl the first of Ihese artists were Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. And in an almost opposite way but. feeding the same consequences, Ad Reinhardl.

Since Ibe last two decades many artists have responded 10 this declining role of art (notwitbstanding its success) by

consciously or unconsciously merging themselves with other 路roles'. This could be considered a re-definition of the artists' role, but without the assertion of their disti.ctne... which all tbeir previous roles in bistory has given them, and ind tbe choice of merger with categories that are mar. because they are more functional and commercially successful, the artist is near to effacing himself.'

Mass -Media and Pop-art Many artists since the end of the 1950's have identified themselves with tbe various mass-media . The sophistication of visual means, the techniques and resources behind them, make the advertising media formidable competitors for tbe visual artist. This has tended to demoralise many artists into becoming assimilated within the mass-media system, particularly via film; or to simulate them, in their own subject matter and language.

It is often suggested tbat the Pop artists are social commentators and their very simulations parody the given society. Certainly this element exists but an art based on parody as its only content finds itself in a position when it is parodying itself. The giant hamburgers and soft-wares of Claes Olden berg, .the Campbell soup cans, and multiple-idol -images of Andy Warhol, and the comic strip pictures of Roy Lichtenstein, however ringing in their first social comments, end up through repetition to parody themselves and the artist in the consumer society. The last stage of self-directed parody is the creation of disposable art with which the artist symbolically disposes of himself.

There arc two other factors that vitiate the social comment in an pop-art. There is an attempt to make popular iconography function in an elitist situation and it is never clear to whom tbe comment is addressed. Moreover by their :iUccess as art, these works become formal and stylistic 1 Individual artists may continue to create interesting works within this or for that matter any other situation . I am suggesting here a general analysis of trend rather than Qualitative judgments. I am suggesting bowever. that a persistence of this situation i5 on the whole and in the long run detrimental to significant art.

and are ofte n evaluated on grounds of design than of content.

It is Interesting to consider the examples of Ron Kitaj in this context because in a way his work acknowledges the comments made a bove. He is a 'super-eclectic' in his sources ; his subject matter, includes a patchwork-of world-wide rn his language, he combines journalistic info rmation . synthetic cubism, the irony and nostalgia of surrealist montages, th e calligraphic paint gestures of earl y abs tract exp ressio nists and Ihe streamlined patterns of modern advertising. Like the film maker Godard he seems most completely to be the artist-intellectual of the 1960's with his brilliant eclecticism he is a neutral commetator o n everything and represents thl! irresponsible position of the contempo rary artist. This is pa rticularly important because he inverts the premise he himself sugges ts that of social involvement. In such a case o ne can not speak ofa submergence of tbe artist's but perhaps of his integrity.

THE ARTIST AND TECHNOLOGY There are other artists who have sought to emulate the scientist - technician by creating forms and constructio ns that look like machines or parts of industrial equipment; and electronic technology to make kinetic constructions and more recently, whole environments wilh light and sound.

The purpose of such works can be seen as <a) homage to technology rather in the spirit of the Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists. Their contemporary heirs are e. g., Nicolas Schoffer and Robert Rauschenberg (b) parody ; some examples being Jean Tinguely, Pao lozzi, Trova, Cesar; \c) mystification and play, e. g., in the work of David Smith, Tak is, Peter Sedgley.

It is interesting to look upon such works in Mcluhan's terms; the artist as a visiooary-perceptor, anticipating the

cbanged environment through cbanged technology, by in corpo rating new sensory and mental configurations in his work. Ooe should consider for example, if the Mcluhenesque prophecy is fulfill ed by Nicolas Schoffer a nd his proposed twenly-five millio~ pound cybernetic tower to be constructed in Paris, Or by the worldwide projects of

the Experiments in Art and Technology group, headed by Rauschenberg and Cloover. Moreover one sho uld derive social and economic implications from such an example.l It is doubtful whetber McLuhan would venture to follow through tbese implications. One of the likely oppositional viewpoints is suggested in this statement by Ern.t Fischer: "False philosophic conclusions from the revolutionary discoveries of cybernetics . ... in certain individual instances may be useful as behaviorism is in science but which, as a whole, not only describes the dehurnanisation of man but actually invests this de-bumanisation wbich the character of inescapable finality.2 To return to tbe main argument, th ere is evidently a potential within the area of technology for the development of a new artistic lang uage. But before that , a unique intention will have to be invented. This is tbe sense in wbich tbe questions are posed above. Even from a simpl) pragmatic point of view, if the artist puts himself in the position of imitating or competing with the scientisttechnician, he will be at a miserable disadvantage. There is a huge amount of research and finance behind the scientist~technician which the artist is unlikely to command.

Moreover, the specific fun ction of any technical project gives its form a rationa l, highly finished and often in its perfect relationship of parts, an aesthetic value. Tbe artist eannot supersed.e this ; he can at best beco me a stylist himself. In order to use tecbnology at all, the artist must evolve an ideological intention, or let technology transgress into fantasy-to create a mys terious. magical and playful world, analogous to the functional, and possibly

challenging it.

1 There are yo ung Russian artists unofficially planning large (fairlike!

computerised environments of lights, structures and sounds .

Their intention is presumably to involve large masses of people in art activity. Their plans are restricted to diagrams and maquettes due to the official art policy. ]f more was known aboul their work it would be import ant to consider it on the basis suggested here: 2

Fischer , The Neeessily

0/ Art, p

200.

ART AND DESIGN ACTIVITY

MINIMAL ART

The relationship of the artist and designer within an industrial culture developed through the related movements of tbe Bauhaus, De Stijl, and Constructivism. At its

One may look at the work referred to above more sympathetically, that is, to regard abstract-minimal art as metaphorically speaking, hermit--art. Then these

inception this was a conscious and in ita social implications,

artists can be seen, not as reaching o ut towards tbe more

idealistic coming together of artists with designers (architects and product-designers) to tran sform the shape

affiuent categories of society but rather, as withdrawing

of urban environment for tbe benefit of the urban masses.

was taken up by artists like Ozenfant, Moodrian, the Supramatists especially Malevitch. It has been, ever since, one of the options for the artist. By its very nature, a dialogue with 'silence' (again metaphorically speaking - the blank space as silence), is cond ucted at the edge, as it were between mental and and mallifest activity. This precarious inter-play is most significant in its first stages.

But it allows ver) few variations. If repeated, it quickly

But the artist is now assimilated into the intentions and processes of commercial design activity. There are several reasons lor this: (1) there is a growing importance of egood design' in the life of the amuent consumer societies, manipulated by competitive industry and disseminated by an tbe mass madin; (2) The artist lives in a man -made invironment- in formally pla nned and built surroundings.

This consciousness, in conjunction with what [ consider tbe historical spending out of the energies of abstract art by about the 1940's, has tended towards what may be called a highly 'designed' .rt. A lot of contemporary abstract sculpture and painting is neither expressive nor conceptually exploratory. It is however in impeccable good taste.

In the current discussion among art school students about the merger of art and design activity, there is perhaps a desire for merger into a more successfu l, or at least more directly functional and m0re relevant activity.' There is

into more 'purist' activity.

This artist路hermit position

becomes an empty formalism, and manneristic in the

extreme. It is important that Malevitch fell into a silence (not entirely explained by the Stalinist policy) b} the end of 1920's: yet the 'minimalist' issues have been revived in different ways by the Americalls e.g ., Newman.

Reinhardt, Noland, Stella, and numerous other contemporaries all over the world. After Malevitch it is perhaps Reinhardt who most effectively baited silence, if only because he is relatively in th e chronology. Subsequent

tbe 'resurrection' of Bauhau s ideals in an overliteral way.

artists and art school students have worried over their blank canvas when it no longer allows either reduction or repetitIOn . This persislence, when it is not simply because of impoverishment, is because the artist adopts the role

It is important to remember, not only that the Bauhaus declined within a decade, but that even at its best, it

of a critic, where by he derives his positi.>n from a supposedly linear history of art and narrows his possibilities

produced very littl e fioe art of a ny significance.

more and more.

There are certain questio ns in regard to minimal art that

I must add that this 'o ver-identification' of art with design

bas very much to

do with the way in

which des ign activity in architecture, interior design and

industrial and graphic design has itself quickly followed trends in art.

Secondly, that most abstract constructivist

art, ( ordered and law-imposing) becomes ipso facto 'design' when looked at, even if it is not by intention.

need to be raised. I simply mention them here: (a) Is it only chronoJogy which gives value路 priority to the abstract artists of the 1920's? Supposing we had no historical perspective, is there anything inherent that suggests a qualitative difference between then and now? (b) It is our knowledge of the ideological intention of the artists of the 1920's, stated in manifestos and programmes,

that colours our perception of their work; is it then tbe lack of ideology that accounts for our criticism of contemporary minimal art? If so, is tbis a legitimate criterion, when in fact, there is not much difference,

formally ?

One claim, wbich is tbe closest to an 'ideology' tbat is made by tbe contemporary minimal artist. is that tbeir opeD, minimum statement, the lack of aggressiveness in terms of content (I. e., image, information) encourages the viewer's participation because be is induced into 'filling

in' tbe picture surface by his own imagination.

In

McLuhao's terms, this is 'cool' art. encouraging audience 'participation', However, it would seem to me tbat

participation presupposes invitati on, whicb in turn has to do with enigma or cballenge. It would be difficult to claim this for most artists included as 'minimal'. Both conceptually and formally, tbey are comprehensible and and unyielding (consider the middle period painting of Frank Stella). May they not become in the process, innocuous? x

x

x

All tbe examples taken above sbow tbe artist in a defensive position and one of the worst features of defensiveness is triviality.

"It is tbe triviality of so many contemporary works, not tbe small number of people who look at, or read them, tbat makes tbem so irrelevent to tbe modern world.

In sucb works all purpose is reduced to tbe minimum .. .. The artist, in other words, has been forced to hi. knees and there, tries to find significance in the scraps around him on tbe fioor.'·1 "One bas tbe impression tbat eacb artist bas desperately searcbed for some little novelty of his own and then been content to mass produce it and market it."2 Witb tbe younger artists, particularly art students, there is a growing impatience that tbe mechanisms of art and 1 John Berger, Permanent Red. pp. 323.

2 Ibid., p. 28

business, reduce art to a commodity; tbat tbe pressures of historicism set up imperatives for avant·gardism, There

is tberefore denial of tbe given situation and concomitantly, tbe denial of art itself. Tbus the debates on whether the the artist sbould make objects at all. As a logical conclusion we eitber bave an end of the category of 'artist' or a totally different role for him, as a perceiver,

a dreamer and not a doer. This last seems to be not only logical but the most real position in the circumstances. If we could have a state of silence, of a kind of ascetic indifference, it would at least be a self consistent state; "After all", says levi Strauss. B •••• painting is not an inevitable feature of culture; a society can

perfectly well exist without any form of pictorial art. So it is not inconceivable tbat after abstract art ...... (we may arrive at) "A kind of total detacbment, beralding the advent of an 'a-pictorial' era." l To returo to a more immediate situatioo, there is some

evidence in tbe drifting dialogues of artists and art students, of a desire for wbat can best be called a state of 'innocence' . A quite opposite reaction would be the assertion of an ideology (against formalism) but tbis is unlikely to bappen witbin the given system. An ideology in art would be derived from a wider standpoint, pbilosopbic or social. Countries witb long but interrupted traditions, wbo are only now emerging in to contemporary culture bave, even if by default, a more un-structured situation; a certain range of choices as to ideology, language and the organisation of art activity--wbat I have called art business. Here too the attitude in art will be directly related to an overall social and eultural pattern. Perbaps however, in these emerging nations, cultural rejuvenation,

including art activity, could be a parallel ratber tban a dependent factor in the formulation of a comprehensive outlook.

All these alternatives are based on certain major presuppositions; tbat tbe artist detacbed bimself from the G. Charbonnier (Ed.) ConversationJ with Claude uv;-StraU3J, p. 132

business which bas invested in the 'triumph' of modern art; that there is a return to 'meaning' (conventionally speaking conteDt) clearly distinguisbed from formal means of 'making' a painting tbough by no means referring to figurative art as we know it; that language becomes significant and yet as if new-born.

In the given situation, even in the case of dissenting artists there is very little to indicate any change in intention even when these are verbally claimed. There is either a a simplification and reduction in the vocabulary of language. or a pedantic return to figurative painting (Communist countries), or a romanticisation of tbe given idiom or style (in most Don¡western countries including large sections of Indian paintings). The problem resolves into the most fundamental on e in all art activity; of embodying IDtentions, especially the cbanging, cballenging intentions, within a significant, appropriate and expansive language.

THE METHOD OF ART HISTORY: ITS EFFECT ON ART ACTIVITY I would like to suggest that th~ encroacbment of historyconsciousness into the field of art has, tbrough its concomitant logic of cause and effect and of orogress, resulted in some of tbe present problems in contemporary western art.

It is unnecessary to reiterate that the social and technological development that characterise the modern world is a result of an inculcated sense of history. But it sbould be clear that this historic sense is important in areas dealing in facts and events. Tbey are unimportant, or mis.applied when we are considering e. g., religious, mythological and aesthetic values. Yet history, its assumptions aod processes, are posited as value. in art, accepted as such by tbe artist and viewer and become ruling criteria. I contend tbat tbey distort our understanding of art as a creative activity and lead to false pressures and obligations on the artist bimself.

I quote, as au example of the historical approach to art; a statement by Heinrich Wolfflin in the Principles of Art History: "The mode of vision, or let us say, of imaginative beholding, is not from the outset and everywhere the same, but like every manifestation of life, Iras its development . The historian has to reckon witlr stages of ;mag;mltioll . We know primitively immature modes of vision, just as we speak of 'high' and 'late' periods of art.

Archaic Greek art, or the style of sculpture in the west portal at Chartres, must not be interpreted as if it had teen created today_ Instead of asking, "How do these works affect me, the modern man?" and estimating tbeir expressional content by tbat standard, the historian must realize what choice of formal possibilities the epoch had its disposal .... '"

Some 01 the consequences of such an approach i.n art history are suggested below.

The Factor of Causation Causation in bistory, often referred to as determinism. is defined by the historian, E. H. Carr;

"as tbe belief that everything that happens has a cause or causes and could not have bappened differenily unless somethlDg in the cause or causes had also been different. Determinism is problem not of bistory but of all human behaviour. " 2

a

He adds however, "the logical dilemma about free will and determinism does not arise in real life. It is not that some human actions are free and other determined. The fact is that all buman actions are both free and determined according to the point of view from which we consider them ."s WolfHin, Principles 0/ Art History. pp. 232-233 2 Carr What is History ? p. 87 3 Ibid .â&#x20AC;˘ p. 89 I

Thus historical causation is a fact, but its re lativt.: significance in different areas varies and depends, o n the aims of the particular investigation. Pres umably this is what Carr calls the point of \'iew.

But Wolfflin e. g., regards works of art almost exclusively in terms of stylistic causation and devel opment. It leads t.o the assumption <a) Ihal arl works, in Ihal Ihey follow an 'essen tial' potier" of cause and effect, can be explained alld understood as s uch alld evaluated on the basis of chis underslandillg, and (b\ Ihal Ihere is development and progress in art, Oil Ihis hasis.

In this quest for explaining a rt , E. H. Gombrich introduces certain systematic proced ures. In the chapter 'Functi on and Form", ill Art alld IIllIsion and other essays, e. g. , 'Arts and Scholarship', in MediTation on a Hohhy Horse, he suggests that if we are impartial and conscienti ous enough, it is possible to decipher the iconogrophy of a work toy re-SOll rces to texts and myths, to deci pher the events and objects presented, by refe rences to th e cultural history of the lime. Then o ne must interpret them by internal evidence, by examining relationships between the images in the work of art : that is, by work ing backwards from th e wo rk and gathering the relevant in formatio n as to it s purpose in th e time and place of its crea ti on.

An ar tist's language of fo rms could be further understood if one knows the gamut of choices available to him (cr.

Wolfflin). for thi s wo uld bring out the unique 'gestalt' of his choices- his style. From such understanding would proceed according to Gombricb, evaluation of Ihe work. (Thus. e. g., after an investigation into tbe internal and implied evidence of classical Greek art, he concludes that in its intentions as well as in its actual apprehension and transformation of form, Greek art was a 'revolution路 in the History of art)', This appears to be an irrefutable approach because it is based on empiricism and rationaJity. I suggest, however, 1 Gornbnl.!h, The Greek Revolution. Arl and Illusion

that the point of view in art history and criticism most creative and theref4i)re IllOst closely related to creative activity itself, is not the excJ usive understanding of 'causes' ; that the assimilation or internalistion of a work of art is not achieved by these means. In trying to explain ood understand works of art in thiS way we are implying a si milar process in their creation From the historian'S need for understanding have Howed assumptions regarding art activity itself; e. g., that there are quantifiable influences from art history and environment, that they are discernible and clearly transmitted. The leads to a highly deterministic attitude in regard to the activity of art.

The environment and also drt history, however impinging upo n the arist, are subject to transformations on bases that are not always explicit. The artist's imagination and fantasy, his eccentricity, crt!ate the aesthetic dimension of the work. This is impossible to understand and explain by the meth od and terminology of those who deal with factual reality-the hi'itorian and the scie nti ~t. Therefore, I suggest that we dis tinguish between a critical and creative understanding of art works and use both at all times. By creative understanding 1 mean empath y, the 4 qu ick' of D. H. Lawrence; a simultaneous apprehension of the COnfil(llfa fion of factors which led te the creation of the work, Secondly. it mea ns tbe acknowledgement 01 the evaluative factor in all our apprehensions; a recognition, that we are seldom objective towards works of art. Here are two passionate and biased points of view, both rhetorical and poetic, to supplement the rationalist approach Arnold Hauser : "A work of art is a challenge, we do nOl explain it, we adjust ourselves to it. In interpreting it, we draw upon o ur own aims and endeavours, inform it with a meaning tbat has its origins in our own ways of life a nd tho ught . . .... 1 I.

Hau ser, Philosophy of Art Histor)', p. 3

And Baudelaire: "I sincerely believe that the best criticism is that which is both amusing and poetic : not a cold mathematical criticism which, on the pretext of ex plaining everything, has neither love nor hate and volunta rily strips itself of ~very shred of temperament. . . ... the best account of a picture may well be a son net or an elegy. But th is kind of criticism is destined for a nthologies and readers of poetry. As for criticism, properly so-called, I hope the philosophers will understand what I am going to say, to justify its existence: c riticism should be partial, passionate and politica l, tbat is to say, written fr o m an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons." 2

In proportion as the historian-critic becomes important -

and he has become indispensable - it would seem that he turns prophet. Criticism is not only retrospective, but also prospective. The historian-critic extrapolates via the jactor of causation, il1to the future. Thus we have manufactured 3rt movements, not only commercially, but

academically and professionally! The historicist method based seemingly on invincible rationality eclipses our appro"ch to art and the artist's imaginative freedom.

TH E CONCEPT OF DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS IN ART I What follows, derives from the discussion above,

direct consequence of historicism and rationalism is a

belief in historical development of art.

If these seem slig htl y irresponsible, I shall co unterbalance by pointing out the dangers of putting too much emphasis on explanation s of art.

Claims of understanding the meaning and style thro ugh a series of ra tionally comprehensible choices, deduced from a given work, overlapping with the historica l development

A

Wolfflin, in the

statement quoted in the beginning does no t recognise a

simulta neous assimIlati on of art history. Following his method, the art historian would be able to understand Picasso, but not Henri Rou"ea u, both painting in 1907.

The notion o f devel opment in art history relies upon some essentialisiog criteria of the histo rian-eith er personal

preference or a theory.

of a bstract art , has resulted in art criticism as mere

description of perceptual data. Thus for all kind of works there is a predominance of fo rmalist criticism. Clement Greenberg and his followers, Fried, Lawrence Alloway, and

The historian-cd tic rationalises a work or movement, makes a linear connection between successive works and names a mainstream. As he exercises so much influence,

recently Susan Sontag are all in thei r own way 'against interpretati on' because it has to do with extraneous conslderalions. Any over-all viewpomt co ntaining e.g.,

the artist tends to do what 'logically' fo llows with the obligation of solving the historically appropriate problems, of finding such 'solutions' that take forward artistic

phIlosophic or sociological attitude is considered ipso jaclo irrelevant. (To understand Kenneth Noland in this way may be justifiable but it seems curious that the Pop

achievement. Anal.ogically speaking. the critic as masterartist and the artist as artisan is not so very far-fetched,

artists who scream out thei r subject-matter have not been examined successfully from some comprehensive point of view- in their case, app ropriately, a sociologica l one). In

explaining the work on its own terms, without any outside reference, the creative as well as the critica l eva lutati on is

abandoned in favour of decripti on and analysis.

2. C. P. Baudelaire 'Salon of 1846' Art in Paris (1845- 1862) , p. 44

parliculary in the last few decades. And yet in art, there is nothing in the shorl or the long run to prove the rightness or wrongness of the choices tbe artist makes.

The obligation to do so is merely inhibiting. The artist tends to opt out of making any real choices, for themes The attacks on the word progress in art have been many and violent. As a concept related to art it is largely discredited but its milder substitute-the notion of d:velopment, continues to operate even if implicitly in dialogue on art.

and forms are progressively denied to him as extinct. He simply variates upon the given themes, falling into mannerisms aDd academicism. This is evident in much

"The greatest danger for history, and one to which it has

been constantly exposed .. .. is that it should become a mere history of forms and problems . . . . These problems and tastes are real enough; they are neither inventions

contempurary work.

nor methodological fictions, and any scientific art history must face them and work them out. ...

The works of art, however, are not brought into being in order to solve these problems; problems turn up in the

HFor the artist, the replacement of tradition by historical consciousness compels a continual choosing among

possibilities. The decision to follow one aesthetic hypothesis rather than another is a matter of professional life and death.'"

Without the containing factor of tradition which acted as an antidote to progressivist beliefs, the historian-critics have been instrumental in creating the imperatives of avant-gardism. It is not denied that in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this was a progressive force. But its generative qualities have been submerged since, by its alliance with the industrialcommercial structure witb the twin econom ic considerations

of obsolescence and novelty. We have now the heir "f modernism, 'the cult oj the new'. Clement Greenberg in Art and Culture suggests avant-gardism as the prime mover in contemporary culture . But it should be Slated that an acceleration of the avant-garde principle, in that it disallows any system of valu .. to emerge or be transmitted, undermines culture . For presumably, values, however impermanent are necessary in the cultural social

life of a community.

I wish to close my argument with two statements by Hauser: 1.

H. Rosenberg, The

A.xiou~

Object. pp.30-31.

course of creating works to answer questions having

little connection with formal and technical problemsquestions of world-outlook, of the conduct of life, or faith and knowledge.'"

It

Artistic creations are more linked with their own lime

tban they are with the idea of art in general, or tbe history of art as a unitary process. The works of different artists do not have any common aim or common standard; one does not continue another or

supplement another; each begins at the beginning and attains its goal as best it can. There is not any real progress in art; later works are not necessarily more valuable than earlier; works of art arc in fact incomparable. That is what makes truth in art so very

different from truth in science; . .... " z With reference to contemporary art these seem more normative than factual statements. This may be a measure of the 'impo.verishment' of contemporary art, which I took as my premise in this chapter.

I Quoted by E.Fischer, The Necessity of Art, p. 151 2 Hauser, Philosophy of Art History. p. 36

PART II CHAPTER IV

IMPLICATIONS OF INTERNATIONALISM IN CONTEMPORARY ART

A critical attitude toward contemporary International art follows from the arguments developed till now.

May point of view, stated in simple terms, is tbat Internationalism as a cult~ imposes upon tbe individual artist and especially one outside tbe Western metropolis, a set of false assumptions and imperatives.

Internationalism, it is reasonably argued must follow, when disparate cultures are familiarised by tbe communication media of advanced tecbnology ( Mcluban) and at tbe same time unified, by tbe common culture of advanced industrialism. Internationalism is then, an imperative of the modern world; it also becomes in effect, the mesure of modernity, or of the progress toward modernity. Thus modernity, progress and Internationalism are treated as interdependant concepts.

All three are controversial, but particularly when transferred to the realm of art whicb seems to me to belie their assumptions, or at least, to resist their deterministic effect.

To those, not possessed by the promises of material progress alone, modernism has a deeply controversial content. Because it is in the realm of values, it must be constantly questioned and examined. Th'e point is not to deny it, but to arrive at the fundamental concept of it. In art, modernism embodies a confluence of ideas derived from different culture: yet until now tbe forming will has been of tbe Western man, conditi¡ oned by his own cultural history. As the supremacy of the West begins to be challenged modernism must be understood not as an inevitably conditioned pbenomenon but a set of facts and values in the process of transformation by the will of non-Western peoples, till now excluded from the modern world by historic circumstances.

One may further argue that tbe very use of these terms, modernism, Internationalism and especially progress,

are misapplied to art activity. The content of tbese terms, or their underlying values bave been determined by political and industrial-commercial developments at a specific historic time in the West. If art is considered a tneroly contingent activity to the above supposedly more basic activities determine tbe shape of culture- it will be measured by the value of secreted by these activities, especially the value of progress, But if it is recognised tbat wbat with the exercise of creative imagination we are able to push against the boundaries of lived reality and aspire toward an ideal freedom, then art, the prime product of this imagination takes on a unique role, In the pursuit of art" the determinism of history is cballenged and by the same argument, the definitions of modernism and progress. Stripped of these two arms-modernism and progress-internation a!ism is a mere dummy without content or direction. w

â&#x20AC;˘

To go on to the notion of Internationalism itself, we must begin by questioning the optimistic assumption that in the contemporary word it represents. tbrough the effects of advanced technology, a synthesis of different cultures, For example Mcluhan, tends to disengage media technology from its source and operators.

He assigns it a paramount role-of bringing into a just coincidence the superior elements of past ( and neglected) civilizations and the sensibilities of our electronic age.

He anticipates a truly synthetic culture of the future and a new, intensely aware and responsive man. The International culture and the International man?

If the synthesis is to occur through the effect of advanced technology and its consequences of express communi¡ cation, it must also be reckoned that tbese carry the motives and values indeed wholesale ideologies, of the operators who belong to particular cultures and classes.

Having seized aod subordinated through a series of historic intiatives, vast numbers of people, these

,

,

groups perpetuate their su premacy, precisely through the 'manipulation of a\lvaneed technology. (fhe contellt o( Internationalism does not devel op through some Dotion of International justice 'but by exertion lof . specific interests. True lnternationali ... m must assume some measure of political and economic parity; 'until

then-it remains a treacherous ideal.

The,argument in favour oUnternationalism that will ap peal to many people not thin king in futuristic terms is that

itis a ,substitute, in contemporaljY terminolog y, 0f the lon ~ standing idea of universalism. But there is an imp Hlant distinction to be made and 1 ,will follow Herbert Rea<1 , in his very fine f(",nulltion of this distincti on. In.,

this ; one of the most effective of which is the network of l e.OlOUS Internati onal exhibitions. One caD identity different categories of vestrd interests: co mmercial art .d ealers operating on an .International ....a rt market ;

official ageDcies of different countries projecting their national culture into the wor ld scene; welknowD critics, selecting and evaluating contemporary works on a world-wide basis, And though eacb group may appear to have different functions, indeed different aims and i-ntegrity, there is, between them a remarkable coincidence of choice.

From the poiDt of view of the art dealers, with tbeir branches in the importa9t world metropolis, the .art work

speech entitled the 'rProblem~ of InternationaHsm, in 'A rt

is like a commodity, subject to similar means of

given at the , Cultural ,Congress of Havana in 1968 he said: ' Universality is a J question of depth of the depth

International distribution and sale, They will tend to encourage a standardised (recognisable) style tbat yields

of the artists vjsion Tand sympath y, Internationali sm IS a question of width-of the extent of t.he aud ie nce to

at th e same time, co ntinual innovati o n and no velty .

Their buyers, the affluent consmopolitan bourgeosie, want art that is stimulating il) being Dew and advanced. But it

wliich .the arlist ' is 'expected to appear." I

pa-rt of his experience or val ues aod which precisely

should not be obscure, DOr disturbing in a way that challenges their secure cultural status or conversely, their areas of igDomnce aDd impoverishment. ' (Alth'ough it may be argued that even this can be overcome in the'

through this intimacy, gains insight into the root experience

advanced commercial societies where all eccentricities

of men.

are tamed by those who caD buy them) .

Internationalism, on the other hand, is a selr-co nscious

From the point of view of the state cultural ageDcies, interested in projecting an image of their country, art

UDiversaHty . is . achieved by the . anist as a conseq.uence of hi. depth- invol.vement with a theme that is an integral

intention which must enter, through an anticipation of the taste of a vast: audience, into the subject matter

and style of tlie work.

Following upon a general discussion on Inernationalisl11, I' would like to suggest that there are interests groups that promote an International style-or more correctly a mainstream of International avant grade art.

They

also set .up the criteria and the machinery to valtdate H . Read, . The Problem of Intern ation ali sm in Art " Th e

M agazille. '"stitllte of Comemporary ArTS, ( No.7, October 1968), p, 2.

wo rks must be eminently exportable. The most important cons ideration is to Glppar adl'anced -assuming that- if advancem.ent is quantifiable in the realm of science, technology and economics, it is also, in art. The other consideration, especially with the neglected ..non-Western . cultures, DOW taking a position in the world scene, is to express a unique cultural identity. But they are Dever

.

indifferent to the first consideration of appearing advanced (or modern). Therefore the cboice falls upon works that embody typical characteristics of the culture (e.g., myths and symbols) but transform these into a contemporary idiom-also immediately recognisable as

such, in terms of techniques and style. On the whole however, the first consideration wins. International exhibitions become arenas where different nations test their respective ad va ncement-the under-developed ones with sume anxiety, following tbe criteria of advanced art, set by the galleries and critics of the progressive West. *' But .:Jdvancement in art assumes that there is some selected mainstream that is continually developing in terms of its own logic or/and in correspondence to the times. This role of selection and judgment is performed, even more crucially and with wide spread effect, by the critics.

The category of critics (including curators of museum ,) I am referring to are those who organise International exhibilions, review for International magazines and sit on International juri~s. Even the most sincere and sophisticated critic amongst them, required to select and judge from vast numbers of disparate works, is likely to seek a solutton by which these works can be compared with some measure of rationality and objectivity.

The solution is to apply formal criteria , ignoring or suppressing the content, which, because of its experiential-Ideological roots is likely to be problematic if th e critic is unfamiliar with these.

'I

Harold Rosenberg in his book, The Anxious Object quotes a press release from the 6th Biennale at Sa o Paulo: "Brazilian culture, cannot afford to remain indifl'erent to the progress of present techniques and the evaluation of arti stic creation. " And he adds: "To fall behind in the progress of technique in painting wo uld be equivalent to falling behind in elec tronics .

A nation that did so would be making pu blic confess ion of backwardness." Rosenberg. The Anx iO IlS Object, p. 20-21.

I am proposing that an International art scene, on a scale such as at present, can only be conceived or comprehended, on the basis of some unifying factor-and this is necessarily the formal-stylistic factor, It is of course difficult to identify the cause and the effect in the development of this phenomenon. Was it the preoccupation since the early years of this century, with the formal qualities of art and the subsequent emergence of abstract art tbat made possible tbe contemporary rnternationalism in art? Or was it the growing pressure of Internationalism on other accounts (politics, technology and commerce) that conditioned the sensibilities, and the value-criteria of artists and critics, inducing them tO, seek a means-a stylistic convention-by which Internationalism could be claimed in art? 01 It is probably necessary to assign a cause and effect relationship as both factors have worked reciprocally. Internationalism and formalism have accompanied each other and have, for all the claims of avant-gardistn made art conformist aDd conventional. Where content is retained (as e.g., in Pop art) it is contained within an area of immediate recognition and effect, ensured as in the case of Pop art by its identification with the familiar images of commercial mass media. I have argued so far to suggest that art that circulates in the International hot circuit, displays a primacy of style over meaning. This makes it more accessible but at the same time lamentably impoverished. 路1

The extrac tion of formal qualities of an art work dates back to the turn of thi s century. when for the Ilrsl time . the independent and ex plorat.:lry. ro le of 'language' was acknowledged along with the consept of 'significant' form . This was a natural consequence of the 19th century developments in art but it was also a consequence o f the ; opening out or areas of non - Western (and pre - Renaissancee) art which in order to be comprehended needed mpre 'universal ' criteria. On the basis of an aesthetic apprehen sion of form the Western art c ritics were able to embrace. within their own terms. Primitive, Ori ental and Wes tern medieval art. Onc e admitted into the Western sensibility, these arts affec ted in turn the values and direc ti on of modcrn Western art.

PART III CHAPTER

V

CONTEMPORARY INDIAN PAINTING

The discussion of issues in Indian painting begins from the period after Independence-from 1947 until the prescnt.

H is preceded by a background of Indian painting in the first half of this century. The work of the tbree painters I examine in some detail, belongs to the post-Independence period

movement regards itself as a pioneer in creating an art

style that is modern and Indian but all of them are unable to go beyond grafting subjects and styles.

political freedom, that affect rbe cultural situation and

During tbe 19th century, the miniature tradition bad deeayed, along with the feudal- aristocratic culture that bad supported it. By 1870, the last of the miniature scbools from the Punjab hills ( north-central foothill, of the liimalayas ), had become stiff and fludd. But since the late 18tb century, on the demands of the English, a curto us idiom had been developing (in northern towns like

raise the kinds of issues that are relevant bere. Witb Independence, th ere emeTges a new self-confidence.

Delhi, Lucknow, Patoa) . Indian artists were commissioned to paint picturesque subjects of rndian environment, the

The year of Independence is an app ropriate threshold for my purpose, There is a confluence of factors at this time, some co incidental, others related to the event of

Cultural identity has no longer to be proved to the foreigner; it has to achieve an internal conviction aDd be at par with all other free and forward looking nations. Tied up with thi s, is the search for identity of every reflective man.

A more complex struggle begins-of building a distinctive but contemporary culture and no 'solutions' conceived during colonial times seem

appropriate.

[0

that sense

political Independence is a relevant historical fact particularly in tbe discu"ion of cultural issues.

In section I, I have tried to build a framework on the question of indigenism-its motivation,

'definitions',

problems and possibilities. In discussing issues in contemporary Indian painting there is no intention to impose theoretical postulates or carry out a historical analysis from an ideological point of view. Bul the theme of indigenism does form the broad perspective ; it will condition the selection of issues and value and also the choice of the three painters discussed later in detail.

BACKGROUND (1900-1947): STRUGGLE FOR INDIANNESS. There is no body or continuity in Indian painting of the first half of this century. It is marked by a series of painfully self-conscious starts; eacb painter and

native characters, flora and fauna. This they did in a combined style-mixing miniature techniques with Englisb drawing and water colours techniqu-es, which they were

taugbt. or copied from examples available in India.

These hybrid works known as the Company SclY601 could achieve an eccentric appeal in their treatment of subjects and pictorial elements. But by 1860 or so, even this adaptation of Indian art was terminated.

19th centurey is the period of (Britain's) colonial consolidation.

After the 1857 mutiny (first' war' of Indian Independence) India passed from the hands of the East India Company to tbe British Home 路G overnment. This was all along accompanied by a policy of cliitural entrenchment, most effectively carried out by a shrewd educational policy. A mocking of all aspects 01 Indian culture had continued throughout; now a constructive' step was taken.

I

Privileged Indians were given English education, to

cultivate them as: .. Indians in bl00d and colour but Englisb in taste, in opinion. in morals and in intellect. "I

This

educational policy was immensely successful; it bred a whore new middle class which was employed by the Engl ish in clerical ( some professional) jobs. It is true that a small section of this new bourgeoisie over-stepped their role.

Thomas Babington Macaulay; from I~ 34 Law Member of the Governor-General" Couoeil.

Like their European counterparts they became progressive -socially and politically-and finally turned upon their masters as Nationalists. But the large majority remained conservative and loyal to the end, and slavishly imitated their masters.

from Maharajas, British residents and the Indian middle class, particulary the latter, he later began to: get his work oleographed on a mass scale. Ravi Verma is a progenitor of today's universal1y popular calender and po,ter art, depicting gods and goddesses (leaders and film stars) and in that sense his kind of work is most

Although all aspects of Indian culture were derided the traditional crafts which had mace India famous were sought to be preserved and mcoilied, to serve English tastes. The policy for encourage ment of arts and crafts was similar to that followed in England-through the establishment of Schools of Art with a large number of miscellaneous courses in applied arts. Between 1850 and 1875 such institutions were opened successively in Madras, Bombay and Lahore. The results, not

widely 'consumed' in india.

surprisingly. were dismal.

It was not possible to Tf'vive

In the late '19th century in Bengal. quite different situation was developing-there began a reaction against

the slavish imitation of English life, or rather, the superficialities of English life. The Tagore family, respl endent with wealth and knowled~e. had greatly contributed to the so-called 19th century renaissance of Indian culture-a movement which later became politicised.

There were severa1 artists in the familY. The poet

crafts that were at the same time bein~ systematically destroyed by industrial competition from foreign goods.

The training in painting and drawing. given by third rate art masters produced abject works.

Rabindranath Tagore overshadows all other but his nephew Ahanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) was a sensitive painter. Tn 1897 he met with the new Principal of the Government School of Art at Calcutta. E. B. Havell, who

In the meanwhile, Yictorian tastes pervaded the middle classes; their cities, their homes. took on the appearance of a provincial Yictoriana. The new art, academic and maudlin, found easy popUlarity with this class.

admired the Indian artistic heritage. 1 He felt that it was being destroyed at the hands of i~norant Europeans and proceeded to make chan"es in the Calcutta School of Art. Hf" bef:!an by denouncing the imitative academic training of English art schools (abolishing the practice of copving from antique models) and encouraging what he considered the true oriental that is, an intuitive-spiritualist attitude tocyard a rt. [n Abanindranath he found a talented

The career of Raja Ravi verma (1848-1906) examplifies the state of Indian sensibility at the end of the 19th century. Ravi Verma belonged to a feudal family of Kerala and was patroni<ed by the Maharaja of Trivandrum and later of Travancore. He learnt the technique of OIl painting and a stolid academic realism from VISiting English painters. He began by painting portraits but his fame rests on his mythological paintings, in which a predictable synthesis of disparate collUral elements took place. The epic characters seemed like Incian middle class actors, dressed and situated in theatrical decors. They were painted in oils, with the learnt virtues of shading. prespective etc. The popularity he attained was overwhelming.

To meet the demand

was unique amongst his countrymen in that he knew and

painter but more than that. someone refined. introspect ive

and steeped in Indian culture. Together they envisaged an idealist revillal of Indian paintinll such as would make a continuous lineage from the past to the present, from

tradition to modernity.

The nature of the Bengal revivalist mo vement should be seen in relation to the personal attitudes of Havell and Abanindranath as well as in the social context of that time.

Hi .; . well-known bo ok Indian Sculpture and Painting was first published in 1908

The National movement was developing strength; section of it became militant lifter the Partition of Bengal, in 1905. The Swadeshi movement accompanied the heightening political struggle for freedom, Starting with an economic grievance and the boycott of foreign goods, it spread to every sphere of activity, including the literary. For example several Bengali writers, most importantly Aurobindo Ghosh and Rabindranath Tagore, played a very important role in intensifying n~tional cultural fervour through their essays, stories and poems. In this climate the concern for Indian . artistic heritage mounted. Between 1900-1920 much was spoken and written on the tradition of Tndian art that had for so long been ignored Of derided-the most important scholar and spokesman being Ananda Coomaraswamy.

The realisation of these aspirations in terms of a contemporary style came from Havell and Abanindranath and carried the sensibitity of these two men. A banindranatb, a .sensitive, hot·house artist, secluded from the trammels of national struggle but swept by its sentiment, strove to revive the golden age of Indian art, its quest for beauty so different from the western and its mystic spirit. He collaborated with Havell, whose aesthetic background steeped in pre-Raphaelism, generated its own kind of mysticism. The ideals of Indian art as derived from euant works and aesthetic treatises were interpreted from these points of views. Tbe choice of sources, Buddhist art and Mughal miniatures, is itself revealing; both are suffused with • highl y cultivated and ddicate emotion. It was this aspect which seduced them and they embodied it in mythological characters, idyllic lovers and peasants. They ignored tbe bold voluptuous contour of the Ajanta frescoes and the inventive structuraIisation of pictorial space in Mugbal miniatures. Nor was their essential spirit, their intentio n understood. nie brush and wash techniques learnt from (visiting) Japanese artists was adapted to create the misty dream-like scenes-and the so-called Oriental spirit and style, became a mere excuse for sentimentality.

Although the Bengal ~chool is often hailed a, the artistic achievement of the Swadeshi movement, it had no connection with fhe nation building events of that time. It was mucb more like the various 19th contury revivals in Europe-a means of escape from a harsh and rapidly cbanging reality.

"The Rengal School repeats the characteristics of European art in the ·early 19th century, putting Gupta classicism in the place of Graeco- Roman. Mughal- .: Rajpllt romance in that of Gothic-Renaissance. Hindu·· or Muslim devotion in that of Christian, and Indian 'drawing room' peasants in that of Troyleans, Breto~s, ' Dutch fisherman and Italian Lazaroni and brigands."l Although from tbe very beginning R~bindranath J"agQre had strong reservations against the revivalists, in?luding his nephew, they were instituted from 1920 in his university at Sbantiniketan. By the late 1920s the movement was a target of attack, but its progenies abounded for many years afterwards continuing the 'tradition' both in style and sentiment. lamini Roy (1887- 1972) a fellow Bengali rejected the the rarified atmosphere of tbe Bengal School and began to look at the folk art of his province, with which he had been familiar since his rural childhood . H< first responded to the Kalighat painters, heirs of the Paruas (travelling v.illage artists who sing or narrate the epics as they unroll the painted scrolls depicting the story) . . Some of them had, since the 18th century, migrated to the city of Calcutta and sitting at the steps of the great temple of Kali, they made quick images of gods and goddesses, animals and secular heroes (including scandalous characters of the city), as souvenirs for pilgrims. ThiS activity 'continued until the 19305 and absorbed western influences from the city.

There is a startling vitality in Kalighat painting, the language is abbreviated for the purpose of a large and Herm a n Coetz 'The Great Cri~is From "Traditional" to Modern Indian Art, Lalit Kola Contemporary . (No.1. June 1962) p. 14

rapid production; yielding to a quick natural rhythm of the wrist, it is also heightened in the process. It employs wide curves, enclosing simplified body-volumes, dark contours, shaded on the inside with unbroken washes, and vivid details of face, clothes and jewellery (the latTer sometimes in silver paint). lamini Roy simulated tbe Bengali folk and bazaar artists in style but also interestingly, in that he later ran a studio (that operates till now) which produced large number of standardised pictures after the 'style of lamini Roy' . In doing this be was not only extending the distribution of art to the ordinary Benga li home, he was attempting to re- establish conditIons of large and rapid production which characterise the style of much folk and especially Kalighat painting.

After 1931 he abandonee the Kalighat influence and went to its more archaic source, Pat paintin g of the Bengal villages, which was more harshly angular and bold.

There was a desire to contract out of the artificial milieu o f the cities and away from all traces of Westernisation.

(He also began to use indigeno us co lo urs for total identification with the village painter). The subjects varied; for many years he had painted Sallthal figures.

He now painted series of Christ figures. Hindu mythological characters and images of various animals.

Unfortunately the results of Jamini Roy's seemingly interesting experiments seldom reached beyond decorativeness. The attempt was self- defrating. The appeal of folk art for a medern artist lies primarily in its language devices. But with the folk artist the language is an unconscious factor-it is at least not problematic. (except in so far as he must learn it as skill) and he maintains a seemmgly paradoxical relationship between conventionality and vitality. But for Jamini Roy, as for most painters simulating a traditio nal source, the

language or style became a dominant factor- decorative or mannerist in the extreme . Nor was Jamini Roy able

to bend the style for saying something different, of his own.

In other words he came too close to the traditional Source and at the same time could not match or transcend it.

Another young painler Amrita Sher- Gil (1913-1941) saw herself in a pioneering role in the development of Indian painting and in effect became a point of transition from revivalist Indianism to what may be called 'modernistic' art.

She came from an aristocratic family,

with a Sikh father and Hungarian mother, and spent large parts of her childhood in Europe . She was trained as a painter in Pari s (Ecole des Beaux Arts) and returned to India in 1934 with an awareness of European pain ling (though rather circumscribed in taste to the postImpressionists), and disciplined but academic art school trammg. In India she waS drawn from a kind of romanlic sympathy I to the land and its people. Although she essentiaiiy remained a sophisticated alien, over the yea rs, she acquired a strange tenderness for her subjects,

paritcul arly th e village women of the northern hills and plains, where she mostl y li ved.

Amrita's Subj ects, shrouded in a melancholic silence characterized her interpretation of the Indian reality.

Undoubtedly she proj ected her own temperament and ambiance to th e m; a passionate temperament nurtured in bourgeois romanticism . Later recognis ing her sentimentality she began to wo rk on her pictorial means,

simplifying and stylising her forms, so that they could contain the feeling, without as it were, speaking them out aloud.

She wrote on returning to India :

"It was the vision ofa winter in India desolate, yet strengely beautiful-of endless tracks of luminous yellow-grey land, of dark bodied, sad faced, incredibly thin men and women wh o moved silentl y looking like silhou tess and over which an indefinable melancholy reigns . It was different from the Jndil voluptuous, colourful. sunny and superficial, the India so false to the tem pin g travel posters that I had excepted to see."

Amrita assimilated

her

influences consciously and

systematically. After visiting Ajanta, she began to mould the limbs with a new plasticity, a wonderful unity of contour and mass, and to intensify the colours, giving

them a deeper glow. The environment in which the figures sat about or moved became very important in the later years. Under the influence of Indian miniatures, the environment exuded the intimacy and hot silence of Indian summers.

Amrita's significance in Indian painting lies in introducing an interpretative

dimension in her characters, in realizing

their poignant and real life-quality. And in revaluating the role of stylisation within the context of Iudian art, making it vital and full-bodied, against the brittle attenuations of the Bengal School and the decorativeness of Jamini Roy. Her actual influence after ber death was superficial as it provided a ready made style for the mediocre painters. The group of progressive painters at the end of 1940s looked directly at modern Western art and at more contemporary sources. But one of the only relevant antecedent 10 Indian painting, would certainly have been Amrita Sber-Gil, wben and if they care to look back.

In the last fifteen years of his life, tbe poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), began unexpectedly to draw and paint. He bad no formal training, although he bad done some tentative work earlier. He had closely watched the developments in modern Indian painting (tbe Revivalist movement) and expressed his views -often unfavourably, as he considered these painters trapped in false ideological sentiments.

During his frequent trips to various parts

of tbe world, he had encountered a variety of art works and was aware of the modern painters of the West.

In bis last years he started to scribble witb his pen working in and around bis manuscript-poems, building linear rhythms and arabesques and out of tbem, mysterious sbapes. It was a new medium and it allowed him to

look beyond bimself and bis higbly cultivated art of poetry. He invented a new vocabulary of brooding Flandscapes, birds, animals, and haunting faces apparently -;;;-correspondance with another hitberto hidden dimension of bis imagination. The execution was clumsy and the outcome eccentric. Yet because of bis poet's imagination,

there was a familiarity, a personal immediacy in tbe images which made some of them startling and unique, Of al\ Indian painters it

WetS

Tagore interestingly, who was

unconcerned with synthesising the Indian and the Western spirit through a stylistic solution in art. Perhaps because of his already established reputation as a poet, be could afford to be irresponsible and instinctive in bis painting.

r

A Ceylonese painter, George Keyt (1901-) who lived in Bombay from 1946-49, came quite close to tbe breakthrough, which other, much younger painters accomplisbed at about the same time. He was already : a mature painter by then; his style, an overt synthesis of elements from ancient India and the modern West. He painted themes from Indian mythology and Sanskrit literature (he was bimself a poet), with a certain simulated voluptuousness of cIassical Indian (Ajanta) and Ceylonese (Sigiri) painting; but the distortion and formalisation was derived from the post-Cubist figur.tive works of Picasso and Braque. Superficially considered, bis was tbe most appropriate solution to the 'prohlem' of modern painting in a non-Western culture-and in

some paintings be achieved a bold unity of sources.

But like his predecessors, he approacbed the problem of synthesis too self-consciously, and the solutions remained artificial.

INDIAN ART AFTER INDEPENDENCE: AN ALLIANCE WITH THE WORLD The Bombay Progressive Artists' Group was formed in 1948. It consisted of young artists wbo attracted around

them others recently out of art school.' They created a lively and intense milieu in which some Europeans (the more important of them~ Auslrian and German war-time immigrants) played an important role, of patronage and of making available through reproductions and discussions, examples of modern Western art. Although the Calcutta group had been formed earlier in the 1940's, with similar intentions and other groups were formed afterwards particularly in DoIhi,2 Bombay reta ined the initiative throughout the 1950's. In the .arly 1950's several of these artists wcnt to Europe. Souza, Raza and Padamsee settled there but their influence on the 1ndian art scene continued through their flequent visits and exhibitions in India.

Between Bombay and Delhi, tbese artists saw themselves as the avantgarde ; a breakaway group, rejecting the immediate past of Indian painting. The legacy of the Bengal revivalists wbose influence still survived in the cultural bureacracy of India was rejected without qualms. The achievements of Amrita Sher-Gil and to a lesser extent of George Keyt, Rabindranath Tagore and Jamini Roy -the first dissenters during the 1930's and 40's-were recognised. But essentially they came together to deny the values of Indian painting of the first half of this century and these were summed up as cultural revivalism and cultural synthesism. There was no manifesto nor a shared style, therefore it cannot be called an avant -garde movement. But in their denial they shared attitudes; they wanted 10 s ubsti/Ule 'art?

The more important amongst the founder members were: Francis Newton Souza, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza and Ara. However, when referring to the important Bombay arti sts during thist ime it is usual to include Akbar Padamsee Mohan Sarnant Gaitonde and Tyeb Mehta.

• •

2 It was called the Delhi ·Sh ilpi-Chakra'. The better known founder members were: Sanyal, Kulkarni, Bhagat, Kanwal Krishna and P. N. Mago Their younger and more important associates, Ramkumar and Satish Gujral.

Jar ideologies and believed in rhe 'freedom' oj crearive activity; they w~re for modernism against traditionalism and desired a rapport. with artists and intellectuals on an international (i.e .. nOIl-nal lonalisl ie) plane.

The only way of getting our of the compromISIng, pseudo-ideological situation in which these artists found themselves at the end of the 1940's, was by rejecting its very basis-Indianism. They retracted into their personal psyche-the refuge of every modern artist.

The geographical location and its social-cultural imperatives were considered relevant only to the extent that the p<yche makes its own ecological adjustments.

The problem of linding an appropriate 'language' and tranforming it by individual senStbility seemed to preoccupy most of these artists. It seems natural that a contemporary language was sought in its place of genesis-modern European painting.

The precise sources are always difficult to discern. In India in the first few yedrs of progressive activity, the acquaintance with European painting was miscellaneous-through odd reproductions. Once direcf contact with Europe was established a flood of sources opened up.

It is illuminating to mention the Western painters with whom the work of significant Indian painlers is consciously or unconsciously, related. In some cases it is useflll to point out analogies even when no influence can be established. However, so much of art history and criticism is concerned with establishing priorities and hierarchies that one is wary of mentioning names 01 well known painters-any one seen to be related to them becomes ipso facto secondary. For example, PicaS! who has yielded much innuence, looms over modern art as a prodigious giant, yet to regard all those whQ have been influenced by him as secondary is impoverishi. and miSleading. To take one example; such an approach, would destroy the significance of de Kooning's

early paintings, simply because they are disceroably linked to Picasso of the 30's. By concentrating too much on stylistic elements-which are after all means towards a personal statement- one can obscure the

individul sensibility and vision-tbe subtle uniqueness of works of art.

It mus! however be acknowledged

that the Indian painters found their personal statement by identification with attitudes and slyles in Europe. With Picasso, especially in his post-Cubist period almost every younger artist identified, and more so o utside Europe, where

other references were Jirnited. From India, Souza is clearly inspired by Picasso. But tbe sources of his savage expressionism are also to be found in his GoaneseChristian background; i~ the sadistic images of Christian mythology (as are perhaps only to be found in the Catholicism practised in the Spanish-Portuguese colonies) Souza is a very important figure in Indian painting.

Although he left India soon after the Bombay Progressive Group was formed his expressionist idiom influenced

many younger Indian painters. In the case of Akbar Padarosee, wbo also migrated to Paris, references to Byzantine images and amongst tbe moderns to Rouault and Constant Permeke are revealing- altbough his own statement achieves a quite monumental intensity. Husain, who may be said to have a broadly expressionist idiom is dealt with in detail in a separate cbapter. Tyeb Mehta, both unique and impo rtant in his own right, was

influenced in his early career by Souza aDd Padamsee, while his later development can be seen analogously to several post-Abstract Expressionist figurative painters

especially Francis Bacon, who was directly accessible to him, during his stay in London from 1959 to 1964.

The one Indi"n painter, Satish Gujral , who went beyond Europe to Mexico, brought back Orozco's savage expressionism.

Nicholas de Stael was an important influcnce particularly 00

Raz3, wb o bas lived in Paris since 1950; also on

several others who moved into abstraction by the late 50's. Although American abstract expressionism was well known, Indi an abstract painting was akin in sensibility to contemporary French abstraction, its formal organisation and texture. This applies to the later work of Sama nt, Gaitonde, Ramkumar, Salish Gujral and Krishen Khan r.a.

The influence of Klee pervades Indian painting. Even when the works do not overtly look like Klee's there is an intense identification witb his attitude toward art and particularly his lyric use of colour and line. Hi. influeoce on Gaitonde and Samant, is very noticeahle.

By the end of the 50's, there was a fairly active art scene in India. A body of work had been produced; European sources had been mediated and personalised by individual painters. The flow of influences came not only from the West; there were lively cross-currents between Indian artists and tbese also led to creation and rejection of new idioms .

•

•

•

If one adopts an outsider's retrospective view point about the ch oices made by the artists of the 1950's; some of their means of liberation appear to have been short-sighted.

A creative autonomy was desired and any form of social and national ideologies were shunned. For example it is remarkable how aloof their work is from the newly gained Independence, the break-out of the Partition riots. Even the two painters Ramkumar and Satish Gujral whose paintings had been, in content, socially oriented, had by the end of tbe 1950's, moved away towards abstraction. On the other hand , the premises of modern Western art were were entirely accepted, and it was Dot always realised

that concomitant to any language there is imported a value system as well. Undoubtedly in the visual language wbere there are

nO

precise symbols as words, nor systematic

conventions of using syntax i.e., a low specificity of meaning-

relationsbip of forms to serve expressive as well as struclUra

the burden of a value system is not transferred on to the

functions in his own work. And yet his own work belong. entirely to the mainstream of Western philosophic and perceptual thinking through which he 'suppressed' the

same extent.

It is nevertheless present, as a brief example

will show. The Cubist 'revolution' in visual language included among other aspects, the creation of a new syntax -new ways of relating forms in space. The pictoJial polemics of the Cubists by which they overthrew past conventions are to be seen in perspective of Western art

history. Those who borrowed the innovation in language borrowed as it were the post-Renaissance history of tbe object-space relationship. For example, the Cubists' concern for co-relating the object with the subjects' (artist's and

meaning and function of bis source. As a result, he extend' the boundaries of the Western artistic tradition and yet is

never deflected fro nit.

[n order to so bend an already

existant language there seems to be neces.sary, besides the personal awareness mentioned above, the support of a vital and continuous cultu ral traditio n, such as tbe modern

Western tradition especially in its truimphant phase at the beginning of this century.

viewer's) comprehension, assumed in the first place an

importance of the object per se and a dic 'lOtomy between the subject and the object. And their method of analysis and synthesis posits essentially the 'value' of rationality, however re-defined. (Contrast with this, tbe non-analytic, poetic image in Indian art; and Primitive art in wbich tbe formal rationalisation is contained within a powerful metaphoric concept).

It is possible that there is a complete identification of an individual artist with the intellectual and emotional attitudes of anotber culturo, through educatioA or direct participation.

Then the artist grolVs into the language through his own experience; tbere is no language-meaning dichotomy as hoth are personalised. Of the Indian artists of the period, Akbar Padamsee most fully realised himself through his participation in the European tradition. His images are un-eclectic, uniquely personal. In a relationshIp less integral, the borrowed language or style imposes itself upon

One consequence. of tbe Western alliance in art is that

Indian artists are now judged by the criteria o'f Western art history, one of the most important ot which is il1no vation.

Within modern Western culture progressivism

is a fundamental value; progress takes place through a systematic avant-garde, defined by its iconoclasm and inventiveness.

Having entered the arena of Western

art there is little choice for the Indian artists but to be hitched to th ' se criteria and indeed these are mercilessly applied to them. The most frequ ent criticism at home and abroad, besides that they are derivative, is Ihat th' are 'behind times'. Yd avant-gardism, especially in the form of cultural adventurism, neither suits the

Indian temperament nor fits into the method of change evident till now.

There is a possibility of bending a language to one', own needs, of making it yield different meanings than for those it was originally intended. The prerequisites are in extraordinary awareness of the language-meaning relationship and an unrelenting intention. Picasso looking

[f the Indian artist wishes to evolve his own pattern of change h. would bave to take a pOSItion outside contemporary western art, and as an outsider, use it rather than belong to it in the way modern We, tem artists have, the Primitive anj the Eastern traditI on, It may be possible to take a position against unwanted criteria if indiVidual artists dislocate as it were, languag( and style from their time路 bound development in Western art and relate organically to these. This is

at Primitive sculpture, used their conventionalised

in any case more possible outside the main art centres,

the artist and sometimes tricks him out of his own vision.

where the artist can be protected from at least the

social pressures, that its nourishment comes from

commercial pressures fo r change.

like-minded people, wherever they are; tberefore that it can survive on the rarefied diet of high culture, irrespcetive of the given state of culture and society surrounding them ' .

It is im portant in critical ~ritiDg on art to emphasise that the choice of ' style' by an artist is made on the basis of its expressi ve need, not its newness, Moreover that in any organic relationship with content, a style would undergo continu o us trans/ormation, But in a consumer society, we ten d to bring to creative activity as well. its criterion and terminology, and to speak of obsolescence rather Ihan transformation.

•

•

•

said earlier tha t some of the choices made by rndian artists seem to be short-sighted . But in order to understand them, the artist's positio n must be seen from within the total social cultural situation.

In India, the intellectuals, among.t them writers and painters, have tried to stand at the frontiers of contemporary consciousn ess, straining to discover, beyond

the con,traints af the particular state of society their identity and their potential. The rndian painters in the 1950's pushed aside the confused ideologies- nationalist, socialist and traditionalist, to win their creative freedom,

but compared to their Western counterparts, who also work in a kind of romantic exile, Indian artists have suffered from many handicaps. In the West, the artist is fed by a full stream of thought ( philoso phic, psychological, scientific).

Modern Indian artists not unlike their fo reign counterparts, settle in big cities because their education and their only a rt aud ience is to be found there. (Tt is the paradox

of all non -traditional a rt tbat even as its subject matter and langua ge are de-localised. its audience becom es restricted to an urban elite). These artists cut off fro m rural and provincial India, are in the citie~ ,

surrounded by a vapidly materialistic bourgeoisie. As a desperate measure they are merged into a small group, generall y constutituted of Western educated Indians and rorei~n

art.

]0

India, he is a lone 'moaern',

feeding off from distant sources.

It is no wonder he

remains undernourish ed.

N o r is this situation easily solved by migrating abroad. The process of modernisation may be similar everywhere but the content has mul tiple cultural variations; and the artistic manifestation is transformed by that particular culture, their temperament and sensibility, their ideals. The emigre artist still misses

this support, which could give his voice strentth and uniqueness. It is in this respect that cultural indigen ism a ttempts to d ig up the soil to make it fertile again.

residents who are a t least sympathetic to their

T hus whatever their linguistic region, their social

and eco nomic background, the modern Indian artist by mere choice o f hi s profession is part of an artificial

'culture'. n e may rebel against it and in sult it but he is e nclosed by it as o ne in a desert oasis In such a situatio n th e sense of ali enati on is relieved only by an

imaginary 'brotherh ood' of kindered spirits-the rew artists at home ard others abroad, even those with whom the contact is only through books. These artists then, for m a kind of utopian elite, believiog that art transceods

These beliefs a re to a la rge extent frui tful ; they have been held by many artists throughou t histo ry. But their spec ific character

ca n be seen in perspecti ve of another post·colonial culture, e. g., in t h~ co mpa rative development o f a rt and li te rature in Latin Ame rica si nce the middle of the 19 th century. In the Latin American s ituatio n as well , there is an uneasy movement alternately drawing arti sts. wri ters and intellectuals to tbeir 'roots', to the ivory towe r, to the intern ati o na l ·c hallenge'. But in eve ry case there is an und erlying an xiety about identity, an anxiety shared by every mode rn but heighte ned in the case of where the culture is split at many levels .

colonials

NEW ISSUES: BACK TO THE ROOTS? Tbere is a shift in the Indian art of the 1960's towards indigenism. It is possible that this may simply be a reaction against the West-orientated avant-garde of the 1950's which is now referred to as ' the establishment".

On the other hand some of the best works suggest tbat this may be a fresh start towards the kind of indigenism that is fruitful in the artistic 8S well as social context-a search for essence and authenticity witbin tbe morass of contemporary Indian culture.

So that one does not mystify the new developments with notions of a renaissance or OD the other hand revivalism, it is necessary to be clear about the causes of the cbange.

Over these years Indian artists have become thorol'ghly familiar with Western art. In many cases it has been practised to excellence. If at one time it promised liberation it seems more like a bondage DOW, particularly as it has become evident that accusation of second-handedness clings to the best of the artists. There is thus a pragmatic re-evaluation of Western art by Indian artists, and a certain impatience against it. (The situation is 8 little like tbat of New York painters of the 1940's who were released to their own 'genius' only after they had overcome tbe awe of the Europeans through proximity with the emigre masters ).

Moreover most Indian artists find it difficult to be inspired by contemporary Western art of the last fifteen years where tbe remaining 'romanticism' has beeD eliminated and the lhe Group 1890 ( the name is arbitrary) was formed in 1962; it published a manifesto and held a large exhibition in 1963. The group Questioned the 'established' Indian art - its assumptions and results . However the criteria and quality of its membership was nebulous. Its main function lay in giving a platform to younger, or hitherto less known painters and sculptors.

Although these artists criticised the West-oriented artists or the 1950's, they did not proclaim 3n alternative ideology.

artist more or less accepts his subordinate and mimic role within society. I do not use the term romanticism in th speCific sense of the 19th century movement or Iheir later manifestations in the 20th century. I use it afle~ Habert Marcuse l to mean an attitude in which art is deliberate! alienated from lived reality, where it aspires toward an idea reality and opposes the functional and the rat ional values, imposed upon individuals for the smooth running' induitrial society. Marcuse argues that in advanced technological societies of the West, this romanticism is submerged as bOlh ideals and protest become redundant in view of the increasing level of material achievements. At the same time the culture becomes Cone-dimensional'. In India the cultural consequencet of an advanced induslrial - co:nmercial society, of whid Marcuse speaks, are only just beginning to appear in the cosmopolitan sections. Unlil they overtake us, a romanticism lingers, fed by a deep and full stream of Indian idealism; mysticism, both of the Hindus and the Muslims; as also the typicall y Western, the alienated and rebellious romanticism, which affocted the Western educated inlelligenlSia from the 19th cenlury.

Indian artisl thu, finds il difficult to identify with recct contemporary art of the West especially of tbe last two decades, during which the consequences of tbe technocrali culture, ushered in by World War If have bec,Jme obviou His puzzlement or rej ection is againc;t the products of this culture-the art products. It cannot be claimed that there is yet, a critical diagnOSIs of the total situation, or the assertion of an alternative position. What is recognised is that there is an impasse in the alliance of Indian artists with theIr Western contemporaries.

Some of the concrete factors that set off tbe indigeni,t search in Indian art, it must be acknowldged, are still inspired by the West. Pop art suggested new wa)'! of relating to the local environment. There is a correspondence in dates-the beginning of the 1960's1 H. Marcuse. O"e路dimCttsiollnl Man.

e

between the indigenist tendencies in Indian art and the world-wide publicity to Pop art. I shall take this up in reference to' Bhupen Khakhar, one of the 'representative' artists of this new group.

are beginning to question the underlying ethics of their advanced civilization from different points of view.

This support of the Westerners can however become dangerous if their search into the East motivated by their own often juvenile needs b.comes a substitute for our

It is po,sible that the sal vaging of folk arts and crafts and textiles, which is definitely a post-Independence phenomena and effective especially in the last 15 years, is one of the peripheral factors in extending the visual

own, or turns into a narcissist indulgence in our ancient

awareness of artists toward the traditional visual

language. (In pJst-revolutionary Mexico, indigenism included a programmatic revival of the folk arts).

Also the patronage to classical dance and music, publications on Indian traditional arts contribute to the cultural milieu. The Indian tradition though extinct in urban life is more readily ac;essible thr.Jugo research and publicity. (The commercial exploitation and som'times the nationalist-revivalist fervour in respect of the traditional arts are a corrupting factor both for the traditional and the contemporary artist and there is unfortunately enough evidence of this corruption in both spoeres) .

c s.

lt can be seen that at this stage indigenism in art, where it exists, derives its character fro .n misc~lIanei)us factors.

These are generally the result of a reaction against the Western cultural hege nony whicl! passes as Internationalism.

There is no ideology either Nationalistic or Socialist, accompanying the reaction. This is not perhaps to be regretted. The absence of a politically formulated, ideological position m ly be a measure of an aritist's authenticity qua artist. However to go beyond a mere reaction there needs to develop a Weltanschaung, a

philoso phic-aesthetic porspective, within which the artist's work attains significance.

There is need for a re-appraisal, which questions not only the premises of Western art and the so-called International art but of art and culture altogether, in reiationship to our sooiety. Such a re-appraisal is encouraged by the younger generatIOn in the West, who

tradition. In the field of painting, there is already the tendency; take for example the aflbrescence of Tantra 'art' and mystic-erotic symbolism designed to fit within tlte modern idiom of abstraction.

There is at present, very little evidence of a comprehensive cultural consciousness one might expect the artists to combine with writers and other intellectuals to challenge the moribund tradition and on the other hand the spurious modernism of Indian society. But this collaboration is minimal. Partially this is because of the barriers to communication in this country. People are separated by different languages and only those who are educ.ated in English can inter-act with each other. The EnglIshspeaking sections however are the most un rooted and perhaps the least equipped for fruitfully transforming the social-cultural situation. The role, if any, of the artists and intellectuals is to exercise what remains of the Indian .deal and wiIl-and of the Indian sensibility, and of regeneration ..

To counclude-the effort towards indigenism, if it is not merely a pseudo-renlissance or a revival must be mOle

than a stylistic change in the arts; if it to be radical it must break through the parasitical nostalgia that clings to Indian culture-as well as the complacent and imitative cosmopolitanism. Its validity-by its inherent postulates-would be a gr ~ .lter significal/ce, and hopefully a wider communicability.

I.

Concurrently challenging the art-distribution system as operating through galleries, which bas trapped art between elitism and commerce?

PART III CHAPTER VI

M. f. HUSAIN (1915--)

Husain was born in Indore, in the Bohra community of Muslims. During the earlier part of his life, be was like his family, actively religious. Although in recent years, these ties have loosened, his Muslim background, particularly in all its cultural manifestations, is deeply enduring and unmistakable. Economically bis family belonged to tbe lower levels of a provincial middle-class. His larger family still does and most members are only partially educated. Husain himself did not go to university but sporadicall y attended tbe local art college in Indore. In 1937 when he was 22, he moved to Bombay to become an artist. He painted cinema hoardings for an earning and lived in tbe city slums. A little later he lived with bis wife and children, in a small Muslim 'ghetto'~ wbere community life was intimate and with o ut privacy or comforts.

It took several years before bis paintings began to be exhibited in the exhibitions of the Bombay Art Society and be ra me into contact with other Bombay artists. He became associated particularly with the younger, more vital

amongst these and beca me a founder member of tbe short- lived but fervent, Bombay Progressive Artists' Group.

Most of tbese artists bad to struggle for several years, financially. But by the end of the 1940's th ere was an active milieu, compr ising the cosmopolitan'-;ntelligentsia of Bompay, wh{) r ..ganded 'the.se artists as tbe bohemian . , .' _ ; . avant-ga rge. Qf.l))oderl1 .(nqian .c.4 lture, ... . , .. . â&#x20AC;˘ . , ..'

In this milieu, a few Europeans who were war-time exiles from Germany aDd Austria and had beeD interested in modern art in Europe, became very influential. Dr. Langb ' mmer, himself a painter (althougb mediocre) influenced by Kokoschka, was closely connected witb the activities of Indian painters througbout tbe 1940's. Dr. Rudi von Leyden, a German-educated Dutcbman, working in advertising, was Bombay's best art critic and he belped to launch tbe Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, in 1948.

Mr. Schlesinger from Vienna, an admirer of Austrian expressionists, bought the early paintings of tbe artists and in a sense supported Husain in bis difficult years in Bombay .

In 1955 Husain was recognised by the cultural bureaucracyat Delbi and given an award at tbeir All India Exhibition . After 1953 be went abroad frequently and since then he has shown his works in several cities of Europe and in the U.S .A. He was one of the first modern artists to be patronised by public institutions in India, as well as by wealthy private collectors. It would be correct to say that his paintings were amongst the first in contemporary Indian art to become 'objects' of profitable investment.

During the early years in Bombay, bis life pattern remained entirely tra ditional and religious. H is family, except for tbe younger members, are still very traditional - a part of the enclosed muslim community of urban India. Yet, as I have mentioned earlier, quite soon Husain was

considered one of the foremost representatives of the bohemian avant-garde in Bombay. And since then he has come to embody nearly all tbat the Indian bourgeois audiences care to know about 'modern art'.

orthodoxy and poverty, or his later popularity.

In that

sense continuous travelling is a systematic escape, even as it is his inspiration.

Not unlike

his Western counterparts he has been avidly assimilated into the sophisticated circles, intellectual or otherwise,

irrespective of his class and creed, his anti-intellectualism and personal eccentricities.

For a long time now, he has flirted with the city-sophisti -cates and the commercial gallery-men. Unfortunately, in the last years it seems he is becoming their victim. It is difficult to say whether this surrender which he seems to have instinctively dreaded. comes when his artist's inspiration

He is temperamentally a nomad and travels constantly witbin and outside India. He is completely at home in tbe village and small town in India and makes an unselfconscious connection with its environment and people.

If anything does set him apart, it is his conscious mannerisms of an 'artist' (to whicb incidentally the unsophisticated public respond, rather as to film stars ).

It is with a ricb memory and an affection tbat he returns to his roots.

And this we must remember, is Dot u"ual

for most Indians who have graduated to cosmopolitanism.

It is at least partially due to his Muslim background, for Muslims tend to be more tenacious of their roots.

Husain has a curious relationship to circumstantial reality: he is always at its outer edges, though I do not mean tbis in the sense of an 'outsider'. It is a kind of detachment, not alienation. At least partially this seems to be an intuitive shrewdness on his part- a way of not being submerged by circumstances, whether it was the earlier

is spent-and success becomes a substitute for it-or whether the worm lies in the cultural environment represented

by a seemingly progressive bourgeoisie with no values and an indiscriminate taste for prestigious 'culture' that denudes

tbe artist's quest. x

x

x

x

The 'topic' which has preoccupied Husain is, the characteristicJeatures oj the Indian people, inter-acting with their traditional environment. The subject matter of his paintings has been very varied but lies within these broad intentions. Before I take up his subject matter in relation to the theme of indigenism, I will mention the sources of his pictorial language.

Language sod Styl. : Husain's language was, in the beginning, entirely eclectic; often several modes existed side by side without a

transformation into what could be called his personal style.

One is tempted to refer to European sources but one must be cautious : in tbe early years, access to European painting was merely througb reproductions and it was indiscriminate, depending on chance encounters and suggestions of friends. Tbus one can speak of influences on Husain from Europe only on a general level; tbe Cubists and the Expressionists but more probably botb as treated

by Picasso, wbo was the legendary bero of 'Modern art' were scanned everywhere witb great curiosity, and particularly outside Paris. Tn the above circumstances, the assimilation of European art was visual and not intellectual. Husain has never in fact been intellectual about influences but tbere is tbe difference tbat in later years, through travelling abroad and though personal relationships with foreigners, he shared to an extent, Western modes of thinking and feeling.

There was an existing stylistic I anguage in modern Indian painting whicb was more influential in tbe early works of tbe younger painters, including Husain, than is generally admitted. Tbe most positive aspects of this language flowed from Amrita Sher-Gil and George Keyt, both of wbom were self-consciously syntbesising the East and tbe West in artistic terms. Tbis generally meant, .Indian subject matter in European modes. Husain was familiar witb the works of these two and their variations by other Indian painters.

After 1953 be began to travel abroad and a flood of sources became available to him. A general influence of Picasso is evident througbout. He says he became interested in the work of Bernard Buffet and Marino Marini, during his first visits to Europe. The visible effect of both is ( fortunately) rather limited except in so far as Husain has alway. been inclined toward an acute graphic stylisation, an attenuation of forms amounting to manoerism, which both these a, tists glaringly display. It is more likely that one

can 'place' his image-language from 1955 to 1958, bis most mature period, by reference to an artist like Rufino Tamayo, (altbough Husain is unlikely to have seen his work then) himself influenced by Picasso. The interesting point is that if they have affinities tbey occur because of shared intentions and circumstantial parallels, rather than any conscious inHuence.

If two artists belonging outside tbe mainstream of tbe world art centres (e. g. Paris) have developed along even sligbtly similar intentions, they tend to acquire, in relationship to

a shared source of inHuence (e.g. Picasso) greater affinities between tbemselves tban witb tbat major source of inHuence. As tbeir steps toward distortion and stylisation proceed from the same source, tbl"ir trajectory is similar.

Compare Husain witb Tamayo; tbeir work does not look alike, yet seen togetber they reHect a new Iigbt upon each otber. Because of tbeir immediate antecedents both wisbed to free tbemselves from an ideologically oriented 'indigenist'

painting, but the preoccupation lingers in both and rhey tend to paint 'native', archetypal (or otherwise typical) characters. The language and style are openly borrowed from contemporary Western paintings, especially Picasso.

However there is ao attenuation of the language; in

both cases the colour is heightened to an exotic pitch, and tbe contour becomes manneristic.

This extreme stylisation

betrays that the content, often overtly indigenous, is not always sufficiently evolved to transform the borrowed language into a new and compelling idiom.

In Husain's paintings after 1959, the loose rapid brush stroke of the Abstract Expressionists becomes more apparent. Tbe solidity of forms which he had developed between 1956-58 is fragmented but be does not employ the new technique to make an

emotional statement that

justifies it. (Consider in contrast De Kooning - the corrospondence between his intention and technique). The scurry of brush marks suggests a simulated passion and finds their rationalization in the banal repetition of galloping horses. Only occasionally, in tbe expression of a quick dramatic moment between his characters, does this

vocabulary speak for itself.

,

.

In the structure and comoosition of images, Husain does not use an indigenous visual 'language' - tbat is one

belonging to the Indian tradition of fille arts, folk or popular arts, His colour, which is bold and clear, is tbe

Iqse, t element in his vocabulary, to tbe tradition.

But it is

Dot useful to continue to regard his language as eclectic and read it in reference to its \Vestern sources: over the years

he bas personalised it so that it is best understood in terms of its own conventions. In his best works be has bent tbe language of his iDdigenous subjects to a remarkable extent and it becomes difficull and unnecessary to disengage tbem from their unity.

At no stage was Husain's work Daturalistic. He deliberately alienated his characters from the people in rcal life and typified tllem. Moreover, he 'staged' them in relationship to each other at the pitch of n dramatic moment. Further, he stylised the individual aspects of the figure-tbe eyes, bands, toes, as well as elements of the language itself- the line iu particular~ arriving at a stylised realism which is far more enlightening in terms of th ~ chosen subject matter, than naturalism.

Subject matter : The paintings tbat have survived date from 1947.

Till tben his work was more or less naturalistic. From 1948 he began to assert his own personality botb in tbe cboice of subject matter aDd language. The former became an extension of his own life; his involvement with his

painted 'cbaracters' waS personal and immediate, for be painted ~be life and activities of people-mostly women

and children-in the crowded and poor section of his own

visual 'prototypes' to hi. images.

environment.

realm of lhe fantastic - even more so than literary fables,

Expressionism at this stage was a natural

aDd direct extension of himself even as the subject matter was. He often used the prostitutes of Bombay as models-

Cbagall's are in the

because painting provides the possibility of superposing and juxt"posing disparate images. ADd yet fantastic as they are, Cbagall's images, particularly amongst the earlier

their raw, awkward bodies suggested an expressionist treatment. Besides, modern artists liberated from

paintings have a coherence, a considered symb olism and

academicism and the demands of idealisation, have very often found Expressionism the first step in gaining a

a much more carefully considered formal language tban Husain's. Chagall's most faotast ical images take on an

passionate self-identity. Tn Husain's case, this expressionist mode was soon tempered by an increasing objectivity

artistic credibility much greater than Husain's more restrained ones, because even a whim is treated by him with a much greater imaginative vigour.

witb regard to his subject matter, and further by an increasing stylisation of language, which put a distance between emotion and expression.

Already the 'characters' of these paintings were seen as types and archetypes and tb is tendency increased during tbe following years. Also, they were seen in relationsbip to symbols and metaphors drawn from tbe Indian ( both Muslim and Hindu) tradition, Iitorature and painting.

Tbe use of symbols aDd metaphors-like the imprint of the bird in a cage, the crescent

mOOD,

the snake-were not always

systematically, or eveD purposefully treated.

Tbey acted

In tbe next two years, between 1953-55, tbe rural landscape and its people were 'de-bumanised' by Husain, he extracted as it were, the content from bis subjects, both figu rati ve

and symbolic, and treated them as visual 'signs'. This has been called his 'folk' period. but imprecisely. Folk images deal with traditional myths, which are so well known that

they can be abbreviated, and the language is conventionalised. This produces a kind of handwriting whose justification, as it"s vitality, lies in the very process of 'mass' production. As both these factors were absent-

whose images, symbols and metapbors give visual form

and there was no attempt to compensate for tbeir loss Husain's paintings ( also collages and wooden toys) of tbis period bave only a picturesque value. Tbis I"pse into

to the Iewish (Hasidic) myths and folk lore. Tbe

picturesque ness is not an unusual aspect of indigenism.

picturisation is personal and eccentric, especially as in the

A large painting, 'Zarneen' done in 1956 was a very . interesting attempt to bring back an interpretive quality

as suggestive images unfolding more or less random

aSSocIatIOns.

In tbis compare Husain to Marc Chagall

absence of a visual art tradition in Judaism, tbere are no

to indigenous subject matter ( but without imposing a psychological dimension on the rural characters themselves, to which they are alien). The interpretive meaning was suggested not so much by the 'adjectives', as by the very 'syntax' -- the relationship of images in configuration. This

compound meaning of the images. frequently in Husain's paintings.

This lapse occurs

is a device particularly appropariate when tbe meaning

first time 'universal' ; the figures bore no local identity.

is allegorical rather than literal. As such the device is often used in Rajput miniatures and folk narrative painting like that of the Patuas of Benga\. Tbe picture

nor the landscape. They were psychological 'types' in the same way as in a lot of 20th century figurative painting; they were related to each other not by natural contingency

After 1955, there was a major change in Husain's subject matter as well as language. The themes became for the

surface is divided ioto compartments and each contains

but as dramatic characters.

separate images ( figurative or symbolic); tbe meaning is suggested if the viewer is able to 'read' the picture imaginatively, by making instant connections between

visited Europe often aDd made personal friends, in London, Rome and Prague . The tension between the Indian and tbe foreign stimuli created a phase of introspection. Till then he belonged unquestioningly to the Indian soil, now he felt he could sink roots in alien cultures and feed on them, This led to the desire for expressing a shared buman

images.

Moreover, the problem of the dimension of time

(simultaneity and continuity) is solved by a non路illusionistic and strictly pictorial method as the means of configuration are available only to the painter.

destiny.

This was the time when Husain

Where Husain could overcome stylistic confusion,

tbe paintings of this pbase were very expressive.

Tn 'Zameen' the picture surface was compartmentalised

and each flat ' pace contained a siogle image (figure or symbol) wbich was l1sually abbreviated, referring to aspects of village life-a cart wheel, a work basket, a tree, a cock, icon-type figures. There was a pictorial inventory of village life. But unfortunately, the images remained on tbe level of an iventory. The artist's attitude towards the theme was undeveloped in terms of the meaning he intended to convey. The viewer was unable to arrive at any

Husain returned to India after a very sbort absence-tbere can be no doubt as to wbere be 'belongs'. If having gained a reflective vision he could have taken on a more

committed role, the subsequent pbase would bave been the most significant. I do not mean a role dictated by any social ideology, but which be could have arrived at through bis sympatbies and his insight revealing tbe nature of the Indian experionce. In his best painting from this period, there is evidence that he toucbed the quality of this

e.perience more intimately than other Indian artists.

There are several paintings of village women draped and huddled together at the close of day and there is in tb.ir stance and gesture, a kind of waiting tbat dissolves time - turns it into destiny, into tbe endurance of destiny that is so peculiarly Indian. He could equally well recall tbe drama of rituals and festivals, briBging out a rustic earnestness and bumour, and tbe staccato grace of tbe participants. A painting sucb as Between the Spid" and the Lamp is the most remarkable painting of tbis phase.

The next phase, beginning from about 1959 was uofortunately tbe beginning of a dispersal of bis talent and energy. J He jumped from one series of themes to anotber: tbe Ragmala and tbe Nritya series, series on religious tbemes, about bis travels botb inside and outside lodia ( also two recurring subjects, bis self-portraits, and galloping horses) more recently Ramayana and tbe MahaMarata, and tbe astronauts on the moon. All tbe themes were overtly' Indian'; in fact these paintings are a compendium of all characteristic aspects of Indian life aod culture.

By this time however, and increasingly since Indian subjects were exploited to make paintings. Some of tbe paintings are During this phase he has also done several murals in various techniques including tile-mosaic; the subject matter and language remain almost exactly the same as in his paintings.

good and most of them competent but tbe characters have little content, or reality. Here indigenism qualitatively understood comes to ao end: it shows its other more seductive face-tbe picturesque.

Accompanying the dispersal of themes since 1959, there bas appeared a looseness in the convenrions that made up his style. Wbere for example, tbe outstretcbed band, Hexed toes or tbe awkward gestures of the body were controlled, as of a wittily constructed and realistic marionette, tbey now tend to be mere mannerisms of a cardboard figure.

Similarly, wbere the snake or tbe moon were symbolically related to tbe subject, tbey appear now as space-fiilling devices. Tbe elements of tbe language bave suffered most; tbe tautness of tbe line and brusb-strokes bave become meaningless Hourisbes of bis band writing. And tbe colour, altbough wider in range and seemingly daring, far less subtle and unexpected.

I seem to suggest unrelenting decline. Tbere are individual paintings wbicb bave still tbe unexpected configuration, the 'quick' of bis imagination. His venture into films, tbe first of whicb, called 'Tbrougb the Eyes of a Painter' was sbot in tbat store bouse of magical images, Rajastban. held a promise of recalling bis cbarmed relationsbip to Indian life. But be has not developed a new vision or a new idiom for bis later films.

,'

"

, I

; I

" . ,

Husain's artistic weakne~ses are related to the fact , that• r, • ,

Husai"o's failure to re'ach this essence has also reduced

h, failed to discover a deeper relationship witlj his images, and " l '. ' . beyond them, to the s,ubjects, (he people he painted. He had • 1 • • genuine s~mpathy for them and apprehended thei~ nature like no other In9ian painter. But, h',.yielded, after a stag~ to picturising tbem. In this sense he did not fulfil the qualitative as~~ct of i.ndigi'nism; and ~oreover limited himself as an artist hecause his relationship with 'his Indian subject matter was crucial tp h!s temperament an'd vision.

A reference to Satyajit Ray may be relevant : with Ray too tbe quality of artistic statement is dependent ( however much he Irefines his . cinematic techQiques . and his aesthetics) up.on the.. authenticity of the characters in their environment, on bis intimate participation And this ;'n turn , is dependent , in their lives at a psycbological and social level - tbeir . dreams and travails, their style and tbeir movement, Tbis, participation, inqidentally, doe,s not exclude Ray froro cosm,o politan life nor from commercial success, It

ultimately the significance of bis role in modern Indian culture, I am not accu.ing Husain for not sbowing a radical 'c ommitment to the cause of tbe Indian people.

.

,

I . .

need not have done so for Husain.

This would be a meaningless imposition, because there

is notbin'g in bis life or ~ork (.bicb suggests he ~ould

be inclioed'towards a political or even social involvement.

I bave not evcn suggested th'at his paintings could have engaged in social .criticisms, One can only ask of him wbat his \own ' ,work promised; autbentic understanding . of the traditional - the' typical' - Jndian, in tbe whim and ritual, t,be planner an,d gesture of his everyday life.

Having ~ecognised it with sometbing of a brilliant intuitiQn,. having embodied in a series of · lucid and

rnemorabl~ irt;lages. he let go of it, too soon and too H~ did develop ~~ idiom, oriiioal to an extent,

e~·sily.

but not powerful enough to give expression to the [ndi~n identjtY,' whi'ch I be 'sough! to chracterise thiough6ut ' '.-

bis

i~agery ' ~. I.

"o' .

.

~

!

.

,

,

, . ••

f' . ..

;,

'j

CHAPTER VII

BHUPEN KHAKHAR

( 1934-

Bhupen Khakhar belongs to a middle class family of Gujarat who bave practiced .mall busines. in Bombay for several generations. Bhupen went to Bombay University and trained as a cbartered accountant. He has continued to practice tbroughout -though recently on a part-time basis, to support himself as a painter. In Bombay he associated with the local writers and painters and painted as an amateur himself. At the encouragemcnt of his artist friends he moved to Baroda in 196. and joined the Fine Arts Faculty of tbe University of Baroda.

It is relevant to mention some reature. of the urban Gujarali culture in wbich Bbupen Khakhar has grown up. Western India developed an indigenous mercantile class - and an urban middle class, earlier and by a ditTerent process than other parts of India. In Western India, the new cia .. was not the express product of western education; their identity developed througb a different mutation of factors compared to their counterparts in Bengal or Punjab who were specificially reared by the British a. a bureaucratic Englisheducated middle class, to serve their colonial administration.

In Gujarat there was a greater carry-over of tradition to tbe urban setting and this combined in curious ways with the new commercial setting. ( For example, the objects of conspicuous consumption of this prosperous middle clas. were hybrid and gaudy, not imitative and sophisticated after Western tastes and values). Tbe life-style and aspirations of Bbupen" family were cbaracteriilically petty -bourgeois as they were indigenously urban.

) In Baroda wbere Bhupen has lived for more than a decade there is a regional coherence typical of Gujarat. As a provincial city it is always a little under the shadow of cosmopolitan Bombay which is close by. But the provincialism is lightened in Baroda because of the presence of a large university. If tbere is not the fluent excbange of information as in cosmopolitan cities there is the advantage of a certain intellectual concentration ; ideas are avidly sbared in tbe university milieu. Tbere is a considerable Gujarati literary tradition and tbe Baroda artists and writers have been collaborating to bring out little magazines for many years. If there is some frustration for lack of recognition, tbere is the advantage tbat the artilts escape being glamourised and assimilated into tbe big-city sophisticates- the bureaucrats, and executives, the foreign diplomats and the gallery-men who constitute the paltry audience in the cities.

Until 1963 Bhupen's work was tentative, largely based on tbo styles of his Indian contemporaries. He started with variations of Expressionist imag~ry but there were already certain drawings, whicb anticipated hi, (naive?) linear stylisation of the following years. Then there was almost a sudden break in 1963. This was the result of different influences, particularly the influence of a British painter who brougbt tbe new 'Pop' sensibility to a small circle of artists in Baroda. It was through WesteI'D Pop Art that Bhupen began to look at tho virulent popular culture of Iodia.

There is an overwhelming manifestation of popular tastes in India: it is visible in the pictures of gods and goddesses, film stars, nationall.aders; in shop signs, theatres, temples and restaurants; in the manufacture of cheap industrial goods. There in an orgy of visual images that clamber upon each other and seduce their audience with a surreptitious eroticism. The culmination of all this is the Indian film industry which provides a clue to the taste and aspirations of the urban (and increasingly the rural) public.

Bhupen's response to this popular culture was based on certain opposing factors. The inner lanes of Bombay are gutted with its display and his own home environment had absorbed its products. - cheap plastic-ware, synthetic textiles, as well as handy, mass-manufactured images of the Indian religious pantheon. But even though he grew up consuming all tbis, his later education and his milieu of artislS would have taught him to deny it as vulgar. All Indians who have educated their aesthetic taste (on Indian or Western stimuli) ridicule tbe local popular culture or ignore it. Concessions to it are made in terms of amusement or an accidental aesthetic appeal.

It seems to me

that Bhupen as an artist was persuaded to respond to popular culture only on the assurance of Western Pop Art. And that is the sense in which he is most close to Western Art. Once the prejudices of a cultivated taste

In 1963 he began by collecting pictures of gods and goddesses and he cut tbese up to collages. He linked the collage elements with careful but eccentric drawing. When the cut-outs were used to make larger paintings, the images looked like effigies of religious villains.

Tbe first sustained pbase beginning in 1965 related to two main sources; the icon-images of wayside temples and

hand-painted sbop signs.

There is a long tradition in India of capturing

3n

elusive

divinity or propitiating a spirit by the act of anointing.

A wall surface, a stone, a tree truok, or an upturned pot are smeared with red paint to mark them as auspicious and

an offering of food, flowers. and incense are placed before the spot.

This crrates, as it were, an ' insrant' temple.

At other places images of well-known deities ( Hanuman, Ganesh, Kali) are' sculpted' on a wall surface. painted and enclosed in wayside alcoves. The hypnotic focusing point of the image are the glass eyes, stuck upon the splattered and vibrant colour-surfaco. They arc the eyes of tbe 'numen' that resides in that consecrated spot.

Bnth in subject-matter and idiom Bhupen's work of this pbase is very close to this traditional source. The iconimages were almost literally recreated, - though often made more bizarre.

were overcome, he responded with a thrilled imagination

Greater individual variations took place iD tbose of his

to what was around him and his subsequent development is surprisingly free of Western influences.

paintings that combined eiemeDts of collage with flourish .. of paiDt in the manner of band-painted sbop signs in tb.

streets. These latter paintings were incidentally reminiscent of Rauscbenberg altbough nowbere near as complex and inventive as his.

Bhupen evidently derived a good deal of sheer sensuous pleasure in re-creating the.e types of images. But once these works were shown in sophisticated galleries of Bombay and Delbi, a social comment began to operate, raising all manner of CUriOUI questions. And Bhupen has always been conscious about the indirect sociological aspects of his art; in fact he would like to question the sanctity of his sources; he enjoys the iconoclasm and baits the passive tastes of the bourgeois audience with his vulgar paintings.

The second phase in Bhupen's work, beginning in about 1966 i. less directly derivative. These paintings contain very little collage or relief, and landscapo, figures and objects are minutely painted. The images are conceived additively, that is, one figure suggests the other, and tbis induces the viewer to ' read

I

the picture slowly and care-

fully. But there is no additive meaning. In fact there is no carefully intended meaning; the intention is merely to juxtapose the bizarre curiousities of our hybrid culture.

In tbe.e pictures efaborate perspectives are used. With the pictorial aids of garden lay-outs, rows of buildings and courtyards, he makes these perspective displays impressive.

But every liberty is taken with the point of view, i.e., in any one picture may be a combination of the eye level view.

with an ariel view. The most consistant practice is to shift what is behind, to tbe plane above. the picture plane is highly schematised, laid out in bright, Bat, colour-areas ; the individual figures and object. are distributed in the overall design and although their relative .izes are arbitrary ( generally tiny) compared to the vast 'landscapes', their placement is meticulous.

The manner of painting, although detailed. is not refined.

People are painted stiffly, posed as in old photograph â&#x20AC;˘.

In fact they look like clumsy and amateurish copies of old photographs. Other objects ( bus, aeroplane, hou.e etc.) are conventionalized into simple pictorial signs in the manner of naive illustrations. All multiple unit. like bricks, steps, stars or raindrops, are as if counted and painted carefully. But they are painted in a deadpan way; there is no poetry in their repetition as there it for example in tbe Indian miniatures. Only the leaves of trees and bushes are painted lovingly and with delicate care.

One is tempted to regard tbis work as naive on the basis of its conception, aod maDDer of execution. But there is a double edge: Bhupen is constantly punning on certain types of indigenous naive painting and it is difficult to define the extent of his own naivete as it shades into and identifies with tbe naive sources. One must always remember Ibat his paintings of this phase are nol so much a bout people, objects, and landscapes in India, as ahout how all of these are represented in popular pictorial

conventions. And further, though individual elements in Ihe painting are naive, the over-al1 'aesthetic' is very

are two aspects of these; lhe tbeatrical and wbat I call, 'iconic'. In every part of tbe country, mythological

sophisticated. The particular kinds of relationship between the source and the pun, between th e manner of painting details and the complete configuration, makes

dramas are cnacted out in the open air, against backdrops

it incorrect to call his work naive.

I will mention a few sources that have influenced this phase of his paintings'.

An important source is the miniatures

from Rajasthan and Ihe Punjab hills. But he has always been especiallv drawn to lhe late and so-called decadent miniatures as e. g., of the Dudh School and to paintings and illustrations done for the Britisb afler the 18th century wherein both the subject matter and the language were completely hybridized . In the pictorialisation, naluralistic elements-picked up from prints and skelch books of the English-were introduced. Amongst newly learnt devices, perspective was the most impre ~ sjve and it was assiduously displayed by tho inclusion in the picture of great natural and architectural vistas. The results were sometimes very appealing, usually eccentric and comic.

In the paintings done for the British the su bjects in demand were picturesque representations o f nature and life, done again in a semi-naturalistic manner, retaining however, certain aspects of the miniature convention.

Another set of important sources are the illustrative paintings of tbe bazaars ( which can also be traced back to the naturalistic inBuences of Western pain ling ). There

of hand-painted 'scenery' suggesting grand illusions of vanisbing city streets, buildings, gardens and distant horizons streaked with tbe setting sun . Villagers get their photographs taken posing stiffly before such screens. It is the same language of illusion wbicb is used with some variations in newly built temples and in restaurants and

theatres. Then tbere are the icon-images of gods and goddesses, national leaders and film stars that are oleographed on glossy paper and circulated in thousands. If portraits, they are distant versions of a photograph now gaudily coloured and set in an imaginary I scenery' ( sometimes several wonders are put together j 'Motber'

India, tbe Buddha, Mr. Nebru, the Taj Mabal); they are desire images frontal and leductive- - and they are to be found on almost every wall space in the urban areas.

A third source he has used is the cheap illustrated maps of Indian holy cities. The map is a compendium of all the city-sights including the more modern ones like a zoo or a court building. The maps have little guide value because the spatIal relationships in them are almost arbitrary-

but the pilgrims take tbem as souvenirs.

The illusliations

are naive 10 their representations but cunning in their designs, making fanciful patterns of the roads, rivers,

gardens and buildings within a schemalised format.

1 hroughout tbis phase Bbupen's paintings are deliberately eciectic but it would be correct to say that he does not so much take from these sources as he refers to them with

a humour and an aesthetic tbat is entirely his own.

•

•

•

•

The paintings from 1969 begin to be different. There is a greater personalisatio n of his so urces and tbe deliberately borrowed popular idiom begins to be infused with a strangely melancholic mood. Moreover, the subject matter which may seem in the first instance nonsensical,

beings in a strange loneliness. Bhupen's environments have a melancholic aspect and they can also bave a sligbtly sordid aspect.

Those who are unfamIliar witb the mood of tbe Indian landscape-with its stylisation in the pictorial tradition may tend to see Bhupen's use of space incorrectly; in terms of surrealism, because several of Ihem ( Magritte aod De

Chirico for example) used tbe device of relating figures to vast illusionistic landscapes, thereby creating spatial mirage. for their fantasies. However any such influence on Bhupeo is peripheral aod he is DOW concerned, in fact, with

has more elements of considered parody tban before. His usc of the indigenous language- still between the miniature and tbe bazaar styles, now yields both a mood and a content distinct from that which these styles serve in the pictorial traditions as .uch.

eliminating all elements of obvious mystification from hi. paintings .

In these paintings one of the major concerns of Bhupen is with pictorial space. He moves away from a twodimensional, diagrammatic space and towards a 'landscape space'. But this is by no means naturalistic- the landscape is schematised andornamented. This tendency suggests two indigenous references : the actual landscaping of provincial parks ( and the way these are represented by naive artists in pictures and illustrations) and secondly, the treatment of Indian landscape in certain schools of miniature paintin ( especially KishanSHh and Kangra)

clumsy, slightly comic.

where the vast and romantic lands capes capture human

These paintings do suggest reference to Henri Rousseau.

As in Rousseau there is a touching eagerness in

his characters; tbey are posed frontally and theyare Like Rousseau there is a remoteness

about them, emphasized by the way tbey are .et with magical fixity in vast and curious landscapes. The actual handling of images may also be compared; for example, the figures and objects tend to be crudely painted while all foliage is painted witb precious concern. More importantly tbe resemblance witb Rousseau is in the way technical inexpertness is turned into artistic cunning and results in astonisbingly beautiful pictures. It must bowever be

remembered tbat Rousseau was always attempting to paint sophisticatedly, to be envied and admired by. the virtuouso

Masters. Shupen explores-and exploits-what he certainly knows to be crude and often' vulgar'. Between parody and naivete, Bhupen's work is obviously self cODscious and sometimes contrived; Rousseau is always magnificently original in his fantastical vision.

•

•

•

•

I should like to point out that his work is definitely addressed to a sophisticated audience, people with' taste', wit and a sufficient distance from popular culture to enjoy its parody. The paintings depend for their impact on the viewer recognising the puns. They are, by their very Bature, , other-directed' in the same sense in which most

Pop art is. And as in Pop art there is the problem tbat in attempting to present populist imagery in elitist contexts, there has to be an over-reliance and even an element of pandering towards tbe very people wbose • good taste' is being questioned, an unintended amusement for tbe fashionable audience of curiosity-hunters. In India, tbe artist more or leas knows his audience aod paradoxically,

tbis can become dangerous; paintings can too easily become games with fellow-artists and friends and the familiar members of an upper-class audience. The success of sueh work as Sbupen's would lie in making their audience uneasy, and this bappens but rarely as yet.

I mentioned in the beginning that being in Baroda had relevance to Bhupen's work. Not only has the milieu

sustained bis indigenous roots, it has stalled his commercial success. It seems perverse to regard this as a positive factor but one is aware of the ways in whicb popular demand can force up a spurious originality, and particularly in his kind of work, which is likely to become fashionably popular .

Another consequence of Bhupen's being in Baroda is that there bas emerged an indigenist pre-occupation in the students of the art college. This i. of course not his influence alone; several of his colleagues there have influenced this turn and Shupen has been nurtured on tbese ideas as well as fed them.

SEQUEL: Bhupen's work of the last tbree years hao changed considerably. Both in theme and pictorial composition, this can be considered yet another phase. I bave discussed already, bow from tbe beginning he had taken up tbe bizarre aspect of the Indian environment and employed the popular and hybrid idiom in lhe Indian pictorial tradition for his OlVn use. He has been effective hecause his own sensibility belongs to this very cultural milien and he is as mucb attached as ironical of its vulgarity. But witb all its curiosity and humour, the bizarre can become simply attractive. I have also suggested that his paintings have at times tended to remain at the level of titilation for sophisticated art lovers.

This new phase begins by his considering a new place ~nd perspective for tbe buman figure in his paintings.

From a position of remoteness in the vast picturesque landscapes they have become sizable, staring at us from the foreground.

The landscapes are painted with the same concern but have receded to the background.

But it is tbe attitude toward tbe figure that makes the difference: Bhupen has increasingly become interested in

their type, class and psychological content. He has always parodied the petty-bourgeois culture, but in the earlier paintings one was too conscious of the whim of 'the artist in the choice aDd presentation of 'scenes'. We arc now made aware of the characters and their life situation ;

we are made uncomfortably familiar witb the slightly seedy and pathetic, and yet entirely mundane aspects of their lives. There is still humour, tbere is also satire, but these are overridden by an amused and intimate sympatby 'for the style and aspiration of the chosen characters, and for their solemn illusions.

These paintings are painted in a maDner that is DOW characteristically Bhupco's own, a convention he has made out of the crudities of his subjects. his own taste, his

rather dubious technical skill ( particularly for painting ' human figures) and his amazing ' pictorial sense. He is not always successful in carrying off this cODvention to his advantage - then the pictures arc much less appealing than his earlier works aod distasteful Of clumsy to 00

purpose. (At such times one is reminded of his storie â&#x20AC;˘ . that deal deliberately but no t quite purposefully. nor in literary terms quite successfully, with tbe sordid and the ' absurd exploits of petty bourgeois householders). But ' when he is successful the paintings are botb touching and startling for .starting from this crude naturalism he arrives at a peculiar combination af wit and pathos. If ¡

they make one a little embarrassed of one's sophisticat.ed tastes-just generally embarrassed- that is entirely a part of the intention. It is now that his paintings have acquired a disturbing relevance in social terms-within the pseudomodern culture of urban India.

â&#x20AC;˘

CHAPTER VIII

J. SWAMINATHAN (1928- )

Swaminathan was born and brought up in Simla. He had just finished school when he ran a way to Calcutta to join the national struggle for Independence. He was a political activist from 1943 to 1953, first in the Congress Socialist Party and then in the Communist Party of India. During this period he read widely and wrote in different political and literary journals, with equal fluency in both Hindi and English.

On settling in Delhi, he resumed his interest in paiming, which he had enjoyed since school days. He came to know the painters in Delhi and sporadically attended classes at the Delhi art college . From the late 1950's he began to paint seriously and regarded himself as a n a nist. During 1958-'59 he went on a scholar>hip to the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He first exhibited in 1960 but it was not until 1964 that he held his first one-man sh ,w, As he beca!"e involved with the Indian art scene, he Slaned writing articles aDd was for some years the regular art critic for Link. During 1966 he edited a little controversial magazine on contemporary art called Contra. During 1968-70 he worked as a Nehru Fellow on the theme, The Significance of the Traditional Numen to Contemporary Art. In this study he has formulated his belief in the vital relevance of the folk and tribal art of India to contemporary consciousness.

Marxism and his political involvements have given him a wide perspective on cultural question ; these have also

provided him the intellectual facility to propose or demoli sh ideological issues. But gradually, over the last 10 years be has retracted from communism and from social ideologies, and if he speaks in political terms at all it is from a loose and rather predictable anarchist position. Swa minathan' s intellect shifts he tween intractable contrad ictio ns a nd th ese tend to remain merely intriguing until he disciplines himself in writing. Then his ideas a re often original with the quick of the im" 'ination and the subtle dialectic o f an argument. In recent years he has repeatedly expre"ed his preoccupation with the metaphoric quality of the primitive consc io usness. and on the other hand. the abstract magn ificence of Hindu metaphysic. And he claims or wishes, to draw his aesthetics from thege indigenous sources.

In his work between 195) and 1965. he drew upon tradit ional symb Is. rooted in Indian religion and myt h (the SW3!Hika. the Om. th e lin ga m. the s l1a~e . the imprint of

palm I In India thÂŤe ancient sl'mbol s. are not out of use for Indian religion is practised at several levels from pure metaphysics to popular worship of familiar idols t.

But for an increasingly large population in the urba n a reas the traditio nal symbols a re no longer symbols In Catholic cultures. religious sy mbology is still mean ingful but it probably does not proliferate in the every day lire orpeopJe to the ~n me extent as in India. But in Catholici5ed colollies e. g in Latin America a parallel to the fl1dian situation ex ists.

of simple

faith,

they

have

a

kind of half-life

they are ~ virtual' symbols.

Swamioathan has been aware of these ambiguities and most

versatility that the symbol has developed. In Swaminathan's painting of this phase, there is a recognition of these factors.

I

probably he has used symbols because they exist in this twilight territory of meanings. In using them he has tried to question the assumed dichotomy between what is traditional and modern. Thus his symbols carrying a weiglH of nostalgia, become as it were, symbols for

many questions that cannot be satisfactorily answered. The context in which the contemporary artist exists and paints his

remembering.

easel picture is far removed from all those ingenuous places

There is a second aspect to the use of symbols. I have mentioned that in India they appear everywhere, in temples on the walls of dwell ing and as decoration on objects of use, like pottery and textiles. They mark festive and auspiciou s occasions but they are also scratched on walls as casually as graffiti. At every occasion, besides communicating their meaning, they have a formal life as well; there is a manner o r style of expression or what one might call pictorial 'handwriting' de termioed in each

case by the surface and the tools used. The pictorial characteristic is also determined by tbe experiences of the artist - how often and how rapi dly he repeats the gesture of maki ng the symbol. A contemporary artist's borrowings from traditional symbology are vital to the extent that he recogn ises the connection between the symbol and its special ecriture. And to the extent that he relates its meaning function in the tradition with tb e formal

But the interpolation of traditional .symbols in contemporary painting, however imaginatively they are used does raise

where the traditional symbols appear. Even if rhe artist can sim ulate the faith of iconmakers, he cannot ignore the fact that their meaning-function is inevitably linked to a cultural context which assumes the viewers' understanding.

What then is tbe purpose of transferring symbols from one to another context? Does the mere transference give them new meaning? Should they be consciously transformed by the contemporary artist, does not the symbol expire when it is thu s transforrred ? Looked at theoretically, the odds are overwhelmingly against such a wilful For example when using the symbol of the snake he employed a rapid calligraphic movement of tbe hand to inscribe tbe image into thick paint, simulating the formal character of that symbol as it is inscribed on soft mud walls. When using the symbol of the hand, he dipped his open palm into paint (traditionally it is lime, cowdung or earth red) and pressed it against the canvas ( as traditionally against a wall). to simulate tbe sponteneous and eccentric character of the image in its original envirocment.

, use of traditional symbols I , In India whe re bistory is as it were subsumed by a traditi on tbat continues till today, the use 0 f symbol may not be anacbronistic but it is n'o t ultimately fruitful. In a rapidly cbanging society even a barricade of traditional symbols performs finall y no more than a decorative function. x

x

x

x

Since 1967, following a transitional pbase of abstract painting -which he called 'colour geometry'-Swaminathan has developed a more personalised imagery in wbich there is a unique use of metaphor . Ho wever he still makes references to the Indian mythological and literary tradition; he attempts in fact to develop a pictorial convention tbat is at one and tbe same time attacbed to and independent of the tradition.

It may be contended that modern artists have bee n open Iy eclecticreferring to disparate sources and superposing their plunders in a single work. But this cODtentieD must be looked at a little closely. Modern artists have been affected by (a) differe nt visual modes of apprebending reality (Primitive art ) . (b) different stylistic conventions- their special pict ori al mode ( Primitive art, Persian art. Arabic and Oriental Calligraphy ).

But seldom have fully made symbols been imported and if at all. then with tbe specific purpose of commenting on their content, the valu"es that are being symbolised.

Here a digression is in place. The relationship between symbols and metaphors is very close; in its origins the symbol generally derives from a metaphoric concept. (A metaphoric concept becomes a symbol when a cultural group agrees to convenlionalise its meaning, and if it is visual, ilS form .) T he mela pbor tends to be closer to the appearance and attributes of a tbing tban an abstracted sym bol. Moreover, the metaphor is a concept whose pictorial real isation need not be fixed, whereas in the symbol tbe form is in separa ble from its concept and meaning, and an imagi na tive interpretation only distorts or obscures the symbolic meaning.

It is difficult to clearly distinguish between metaphors and

symbols in a long mythological and literary tradition.

But it seem s reasonable to .ay that those metaphor-symbols tbat are a part or the poetic tradition will allow for a transplant, and a transformation of meanings in different envir"onments. The metaphoric meanings are not revived so much as re ~created in a new syntactical context. What~ ever memory clings to them is welcomed by the selfconscious borrower and forms a part of his very intention of borrowing.

It is also worth mentioning tbat it is in tbi s century that

the metaphor is re-instated to the power that it generally holds in the primitive and folk arts or other pantheistic traditions. In modern ari as for example in tbe case of

â&#x20AC;˘

t

Klee reality is not so mucb referred to as replaced by a self-complete world of metapbors,' Since 1968 Swaminatban bas consistently use:! certain images: of tbese tbe mountain (or a range of mountains), tbe tree and bird occur in several paintings. In Indian mythology and literature, tbe mountain as a metapbor for ascent to higber consciousness, is used tbrougbout.

The tree is a life-symbol as in several otber traditions.

He paints the peacock and the parrot, which are again ( along with the Maina) life symbols. Metapborically they are also birds of love. Their natural characteristicstbe lonely splendour of the peacock, tbe speed and vivacity of the parrot-are also used in literature, both literally and metapborically.

Vaishnav poetry, painting became an illumination of lyric verse. Poetry and painting sbared each otber's cbaracteristics: vivid imagery in poetry, lyricism in painting ( culminating in the last great school of the miniature tradition-the Kangra School of the 18th and 19th centuries), In the miniatures the

essence

of the lyric permeates the

pictorialisation of the sky, the bills, the flowering troe., various animals and birds, and moulds their .hape and rhytbm. It permeates tbe pictorial elements,like line, colour and space so that the entire picture is, as it wtre, a composite metaphor for tbe lyric theme. Tbe words of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, written for some quite different context, are pecuiarly appropriate here :" .... to

reduce tbe lyric to its element the metaphor., , . " .. Tbe Indian painter achieves this beautifully,

However, it is not merely tbe choice of these metaphorsymbols but the attitude toward tbem, that is giving bis painting tbis connection with Indian art and aesthetics; it is Swam'nathan's understanding of the intimate and reciprocal

Swaminatban's images are likewise, forms of poetic feeling, they are neither naturalistic nor analytical; the form perceived by tbe eye and understood by the intellect as it

connection between lyric poetry and painting that is

were, recreated in the imagination to embody besides the

important. In mediaeval India, with the' afflorescence of

physical presence, cbe entirety of its metapboric, its poetic quality,

Ortega Y Gasset, Dehuma"isation of Art, P. 34 In establishing itself in its own right tbe metaphor assumes a more or less leading part in the poetical pursuit. ... Before reality was overlaid with metaphors by way of ornament; now the tendency is to eliminate the extrapoelical or real prop and 'realize' the metapbor to make it the res poetica . . .. . . "

There is anotber aspect to be considered in tbe Indian artistic tradition, tbe metaphor not only enhance. meaning bul also embellishes the form of the poem or painting. Metaphor is one of the important alamkaras (fignres of speech, meaning

literally, embellishment) in Indian Poetics. I Mediaeval lyric. deligbt in tbe proliferation of references to the lotus, birds of love, the mOOD, the flowering trees. All creatures of nature mirror tbe state of feeling of tbe principle characters but these references also serve a purely ornamental function In tbe corresponding pictorial illuminations ( the miniatures) these images serve again the double function of enhancing the mood and ornamenting tbe pictorial space ( for example a crescent moon is etched sbarply against a nigbt sky; twioDing birds arc vivid in dense 'foliage; sliver fish and lotuses float in grey ponds. ) Swaminatean does not use many images, nor is there a profusion of decorative details. On the contrary, tbe basic images arc simple and sct in large co)our路spaces. But he uses a peculiar device of placing with exquisite care, a 'miniaturised' image. At first it was tiny formalised temple with flag; in recent years it is usually a bird, within a vast mountain-scape. Apart from tbe metaphoric meaning of the image, its from and placement is ornamental ( in the sense tbis word bas been used above) rather like tbe placement of a jewel, by which tbe entire painting gliners.

Embellishment means more than decoration and ornament Ion although both terms are included within it. The latter terms are generally associated witb degenerate art styles, and refer to tbe superfluities of Form. Coomaraswamy has at several occasions pointed out that at least until the mediaeval period, as there was no distinction between artist and craftsman, there was an tntegral relationship between form and ornamentation.

Such 'devices' as Swaminathan uses are quite evidently dangerous as wel l, for the metaphors cao easily become cliches, the ornament, mere decoration. Also the pictorial realisation of a 'vision' is diHicult : on the one hand, it can get trapped io p~int-matter: on the other, it can remain on the level of an ephemeral sentiment.

Swaminathan has always used tbe medium of oils. Since 1968 be thins tbe paint to ligbtness and transparency and applies it to lhe canvas with rags, using tbe brush only very occasionally, for finer details. The images appear on the canvas dematerialised as it were, like an apparition.

Tbe colours are bright and lucid but tbough tbeir intensity varies, the composition is not in terms of tonal contrast.

The choice of colours is unusual; he may . use colours like pink", yellow, green and violet in a singe painting. Not only are the colours nooreferential in terms of nature, they do not seem to belong to a conventional vocabulary of pallltlng. There are however I wo referents: miniature paintings, particu larly of Ibe Kangra School ( where for example, a pink and green may be used togetber with tbe fresbness of spring) and Tantra paintings.

It is the concept of space wbicb provides the cues for 'reading' a picture. Swaminathan's paintings can mostly be divided into two broad categories: those where he works within the flat two-dimensionality of the picture-.urface and where tbe images are related diagrammatically; and those in which tbere is an allusion to an imaginary, a

â&#x20AC;˘

psycbic-spiritual landsca oe. 10 paIntIngs of tbe first

r quote

category, cl!ference to Tantric paintings

KarandikaI:, who invokes almost identical images as Swaminatban's paintings.

and folk wall -

paintin gs is belpful, particularly as in botn ( though different from eucb other) the disposition of images in space is very often simple, symmetrical, yet in detail, eccentric. In the latter category, the space is an environment WhCIC a vision is 'realised', and as such it must neither be naturalistic nor

formal. And eventhough in some of these painiings th e different spatial attitudes overlap in a way that tbe vision i. trapped in banal devices, it i. generally Ihe paintings. of this latter category tbat are more original and important.

a verse by a contemporary Marathi poet, Vinda

"Today the birds are of the sky, and the tender parrot leaves of tbe mango tree quiver with desire to fly in the blue.

Today prayer is as big as the soul the god as big as the temple the flower as big as the god. " , SEQUEL

The individual images arc curiously ' innocent' as if they have had no previous existence. Yet there is no surrealistic

.urpri.e nor any disturbance at their appearance. And it is only tben one realizes that the imagtS so fresh in appearance do have Dot only literary but traditional visual referents.

Tbe temple and tbe flag ( Sbikhar and Pataka ) or tree occur in naive folk paintings. The delineation of the bird resembles certain precisely formalised and exquisite images in Tantric paintings. I Amongst all the images it is the rock, transfixed

in tbe sky that is a consciously modern metaphor. But even tbat has no ominous significance; it bas tbe simplicity of tbe artist's fancy such as a folk artist may display witbin a set of conventionalised images.

Ajit Mukherjee Tal/tra pp 133-139.

Art;

Swaminatban's work has been cbanging during the last three years. Although he uses th e same motifs, tbe spirit is less free and pristine than before.

He bas become tecbnically more apt in obtaining tbe transparent and textural effects be wants. In tbat sense tbe cbarge that was often made against him, that be does not 'palm' well, is no longer valid. l was never convinced by tbat criticism; on tbe contrary I believe that his slightly unprofessional handling of the materials was appropriate to his peculiarly 'inDocent' vision.

For many years he u.ed a restricted number cf images.

There were the mountains and birds,

refer to reproduction on

sometim~s

a tree, a

2 Extract from' Tremendous as Onkar, the Mountain' Trans. (com Marathi.

â&#x20AC;˘

lake, a rock suspended in the sky. The picture gave form to an ineffable vision and tho images were essentiaUy metaphoric in Ihat they had the vividness but not the materialit ¡ of things in nature.

In tbese paintings, the picture space was that of an apparitional landscape, but not naturalistic. He created a

space of sucb silent expanse - it seemed the echoes would ring out with tbe clarity and pitCh of a bell.

Now he has begun to multiply tne number of birds in a composition, perched them on clouds and trees and

mountain peaks. The space is cluttered aad the bird bas lost the lonely .plendour it had when it was reflected in tbe mountain lake. Now the images work as motifs arranged on tbe picture surface for variety and effect. The compositions which had been simple and symmetrical have became more obviously difficult. Tbe mountain images wbicb still constitute the basic structural unit in the paintings have to perform acrobatic feats. poised tip to toe in far-flung postures.

But wbat is most disappointing is the choice of new images.

Besides a whole variety of birds, including an eagle, there are spiders and beetle. and grasshoppers, placed precariourly on precariously designed mountains.

I bad earlier suggested that his images. fresh and original as they were, had a metaphoric quality which made them ¡.ruly lyrical and which in turn rooted tbem, imaginatively

in the Indian tradition of lyric verse and painting. Tbe fact that he has introduced a menagerie of birds and insects puts

such an interpretation in doubt. But the real pity is tbat the later paintings, whatever premise they adopt, are, despite their virtuosity, so much less magical.

A retrospective view form a point in a painters' deve1opmcot which is not entirely favourable to him, may make one doubt the very premises from which tbe painter conceived his work in the first place, espacia1\y if tbere is not so much difference in hi s content and imagery <as in quality) between his earlier and later phase. Even in tbe ealier paintings of Swami, there was the danger that metaphors may become mere motifs and the simply composed paintings altogether decorative. But it is now wheD the painting. are otensibely more inventive that they seem to be worked from a formula.

The earlier paintings were inspired by ao original vision; these later ones are io spirit and cODception, formalistic.

One may make a more complicated argument and on retrospective consideration I am inclined to belive it. His earlier paintings, whether we interpret them in purely

aesthetic or in spiritual terms sbowed too conscious a preoccupation with beauty. Swami would probably call it bliss < ananda). Sucb a state of beatitude which is p resumeably achieved by a transcendence from the conflicts, tbe grim and sordid struggles of buman beings, is a passive state. < But art in the refined form of bum an praxis; it

â&#x20AC;˘

embodies the contradictions of human existence and raises

them to a new level of consciousness. If one admits for a moment the possibillity of a mystical transcendence above the common human lot, tben it is also admiued that in its first wonder it can inspire ao art-form.) That is, tbe transcendent position is an essentiCtliy omniscient and a

completely tranquil one.

And after the flÂŁst wonder of

revelation the artist drawlOg his images from such a spiritual

experience ( which may be renewed but which is by defimtion complete and unchanging) is likely to become selfimitative and decorative, to fall ioto 3n artistic cODvention.

Such a convention may formally preserve an original inspiration but it has little to do with the dynamic of human existence, ( wherein art must be regarded as tbe refined form of praxis, embodying the cOlltradictions of existence, raising them to a new level of consciousness ), An artist

who claims communism wIth Realily ( witb a capital R ) may pUI blmself In the danger of lo,illg that vulnerabihy at tbe beart of experience out of wbich a work of art is born.

Tbe work then loses botb its spiritual and its human dimension and becomes merely an arte fact of an aesthete.

I wonder If Swammathan feels con lent in tbat position.

.'

•

•

• ,

•

.

•

I

,

"

•

•

•

, , •

,

.'

•

-

•

•

!

."

..

• ~

"

•

•

'.'

I

•

• •

PublisQed by Gulam Sheikh' for Vrishchlk Publication, 1 Residency bungalow, Uriiversity office compound, Baroda~390 002' .,' Printed by A. N. Joglekar. at 3. A. Associates, Bahucharaji Road Baroda 390001.

•