Modernism in India: Art and its time during Post Second world war, by Samit Das
In a country as complex and vast as India, notions of culture and history can be difficult to grasp. Few historical accounts exist or have been preserved in regional languages, and a visual journey across the country remains open to interpretation. India was and, despite the age of globalisation, remains a unique treasure trove of creativity, expressed in its many and diverse cultures, languages and religions. Some see it as a vast living museum where traditions are preserved yet evolve, while for others it remains the land of exoticism and mysticism par excellence.
In India, creativity finds innumerable forms of expression. The elite may call them “art” but often, for those creating them, they are an expression of their lives. Whether we agree or disagree with religious belief, it involves activities that can also be seen as a form of art. Given these diverse perspectives, what is Modernism in Indian art? How do we grasp the subtleties of the new visual perspectives that Indian artists bring to their age old myths and traditions, or their manner of embracing new visions and techniques, to combine them with the influence of their specific Indian culture? This exhibition, titled Punashcha Parry (“Resonance of Parry”, phonetic spelling of “Paris”), is an attempt to explore and revisit the idea of so-called “Indian Modern art”, and the very idea of Modernism in India. The title is borrowed from artist Nirode Mazumdar’s eponymous book, a memoir from his years in Paris published in 1983, which became very influential in India but was not translated into French or English until now.
What is considered modern Indian art has existed in India since the early 20th century and first appeared in Bengal with painter Abanindranath Tagore, but it has never been clearly elucidated or understood. In a move away from the academic genres previously promoted in India, a new style of imagery emerged in what was known as the Bengal school of art. However, because of Abanindranth’s involvement in the Swadeshi* movement this school was largely misunderstood and reduced to its nationalistic aspects. In reality, the Bengal school represented a reformation process that focused on every aspect of art, visual culture and education. It was neither a narrow expression of nationalism, but a modernist approach that promoted other genres of new Indian art, combining both religious and secular elements.
While in the West Modernism generally describes an urban tradition and a search for a new visual culture, largely influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the social changes taking place at the time, Modernism in India cannot be so closely related to the metropolis, cities and urbanisation. In the Western world, modern urbanization occurred very differently from the way it did in India and the Indian concept of the urban does not correspond to the notions it is associated with in the West. The history of urbanism and architecture in India, from the Indus valley civilization (3300–1300 BCE) to the successive kingdoms and their royal patronage onward, is deeply interconnected with that of visual arts — a large number of architectural references are depicted in art forms over the ages. In the late nineteenth century, the Kalighat Pata paintings* became a source that recorded clear evidence of urban art in India. They were mostly made by Muslim artists, who did not all belong to the higher casts, although they depicted Hindu mythological stories as well as social incidents.
I believe that a consideration of Modernism in India involves thinking in terms of time and periods. This notion is not the same as the derivative term modernism in world art, as it is envisaged in the West. If we were to try to see it in this light, it would not do justice to art in India. India is a land of many layers of communities and States, castes and religious beliefs. Every genre of visual art consciously or unconsciously includes all these factors and an appreciation of the evolution of Indian art needs to take the specific context into account while moving away from categorizations of art into high and low. Dalit* and lower casts are also important to include within the idea of Modernism in India. The history and course of Indian art are complex subjects and art in India should not be approached from a hierarchical perspective. The development of imagery is intertwined with oral history, mythology, legends and archaeological excavation including in its most ephemeral forms, and any attempt to understand the evolution of art in India requires an encompassing approach to the country’s living traditions.
We must also, of course mention the great contribution made by the Indian Theosophists to the idea of Modernism in India after the Second World War. Personalities like Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi and Annie Besant had a huge influence on the artists of their time. Printmaker and sculptor Krishna Reddy was deeply marked by Krishnamurti’s philosophy and his art would be incomplete if we were not to quote this thinker. Krishnamurti said that “in nothingness, there is everything, energy. The ending is a beginning”, and all Reddy’s prints involving viscosity are clear reminders of these words.
After independence, Indian artists started looking towards the West, and Paris of the 1950’s was naturally considered one of the most attractive cultural capitals of the time. Punashcha Parry looks at a few of the little known Indian artists who studied and worked in Paris during the 1950s and until the 1970’s. They came to Paris for a variety of reasons, some to explore their own forms of expression through the vibrant art world of the West, others benefitting from French government scholarships, but all of them remained deeply rooted in their own culture. They were not seeking to make a mark as Indian artists creating Indian art, but wanted to take India to the wider world. For the most part, they do not seem to have managed to gain access to major exhibitions in the right contexts, or to have been recognized while they were there. Their artistic journeys were not simple, and demanded a great deal of inner strength to live and create in a world so different from their own. Their journey was one of transcending borders and recreating links with the essence of human culture that Rabindranath Tagore expressed so aptly in the following words:
“When we talk of such a fact as Indian Art, it indicates some truth based upon the Indian tradition and temperament. At the same time we must know that there is no such thing as absolute caste restriction of human cultures; they, human cultures … ever have the power to combine and produce new variations, and such combinations have been going on for ages, proving the truth of the deep unity of human psychology. It is admitted that in Indian art the Persian element found no obstacles, and there are signs of various other alien influences. China and Japan have no hesitation in acknowledging their debt to India in their artistic and spiritual growth of life. Fortunately for our civilisations, all such intermingling happened when professional art critics were not rampant and artists were not constantly nudged by the warning elbow of classifiers in their choice of inspiration. Our artists were never tiresomely reminded of the obvious fact that they were Indian; and in consequence they had the freedom to be naturally Indian in spite of all the borrowings that they indulged in.”*
Some of the artists I had the opportunity to study as part of my research with the Pernod Ricard Fellowship are featured in this show. They include Krishna Reddy, Nirode Mazumdar, Akbar Padamsee, MF. Hussain, Zarina Hashmi, Leela Lakshmanan, Francis Newton Souza and Jean Bhowanagary. All of them lived and worked for prolonged periods in Paris at some point in their careers. In addition, none of them want to be portrayed as Indian artists although they were all influenced by various elements of their Indian roots. For Nirode Mazumdar, it was the essence of spiritualism; for Krishna Reddy, the theosophists; secularism in Hussain’s case; or Islamic scripts and the concept of home for Zarina Hashmi. Zarina’s childhood home in Aligarh and the garden her mother had created there became the starting point of her journey through a series of drawings and graphic works.
The artists who appear in this exhibition studied a variety of subjects and were trained in different areas, but there is a point where they all converge on the same platform.
Padamsee, M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza were looking for inner beauty and strength, not only seeking to create external patterns or forms, and one can perceive a certain grotesque beauty in their works. Theirs was a process of building up layers, where art works never remained solely on the surface of the canvas but drew the viewer in to explore the depths of life. A conversation with Leela Lakshmanan, who played an important role as film editor in Paris, and Jean Bhownagary’s films reveal the idea of India in those days and the importance of looking back and accepting the idea of social responsibility. In Jean Bhowanagary’s work, we find the idea of post-independence Indian culture and ambition, while Akbar Padamsee explores the deep psychology of middle class expression. During these early days of independence, they were also involved in a continual search for their own identity amidst the far reaching changes taking place at home. Paris, stimulating and provocative, was the power capital of the art world at that time, but this very intensity gave rise to its own challenges in the search for a new imagery to make their own.
Through their works and their experiences in Paris, the exhibition explores the concept of Modernity in Indian art, taking the form of a single long thread, as a journey through archives and visuals. Our reading of these artists will suggest a different approach to the art that emerged in the transformational days of nationalism, India’s independence and the early post-independence period. Conceived as both an artistic and art historical project, Punashcha Parry also includes my own work, which I consider an integral part of my process of research, as it has been inspired by these artists’ journeys, allowing me to extend further thought through my own visual vocabulary. The exhibition thus embraces a subjective perspective, with the desire to share a wider view of a journey that unfolds through my work and that of the artists presented in the show.
This journey of Modernism in Indian art, and particularly in this group of artists may best be expressed by Annie Besant, in this quote where she speaks “not as an Artist but as a student of what may be called the Philosophy of Beauty, its nature, its derivation from the Supreme Self, its expression in beautiful things, its relation to Humanity in its evolution, its influence on National and Individual evolution, the Ideal of all Art, not only of its partial realisation in the Fine Arts. The Shilpa (Art…) also paid attention to (the arts) which concerned the crafts of the working craftsman, as well as to those which dealt with the major Arts, Music, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, wherein great achievements meant exceptional genius in the Artist, the Priest of the Beautiful.”
I believe a consideration of Modernism in India should pay particular attention to the Ancient approach to beauty, and the contrast between the Ancient and the Modern, so clearly expressed by Annie Besant* in her text Indian Ideals: “Is Beauty a mere matter of convention, whether modern, each embodying the method of the Age to which it belongs: The Ancient way of Knowing, the Knowledge of THAT by whom all things are known, the descending from the Universal to the particulars, from the Idea to the forms; the Modern Way of Knowing, the study of the particulars by the process of observation, classification, induction, hypothesis, verification by experiment, and finally the assertion of a law.”
*The Swadeshi movement, part of the Indian independence movement and the developing Indian nationalism, was an economic strategy aimed at removing the British Empire from power and improving economic conditions in India by following the principles of swadeshi and which had some success. Strategies of the Swadeshi movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic products and production processes. Source : Wikipedia (N.E.)
*Kalighat painting or Kalighat Pat originated in the 19th century Bengal, in the vicinity of Kalighat Kali Temple, Kalighat, Kolkata, India, and from being items of souvenir taken by the visitors to the Kali temple, the paintings over a period of time developed as a distinct school of Indian painting. From the depiction of Hindu gods, god, and other mythological characters, the Kalighat paintings developed to reflect a variety of themes. Source: Wikipedia (N.E.)
*Dalit, meaning "oppressed" in Sanskrit and "broken/scattered" in Hindi, is a term for the members of lower indigenous aboriginal communities in India which have been converted from a tribe to a caste by Sanskritisation. The term is mostly used for the ones that have been subjected to untouchability. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and thought of themselves as forming a fifth varna, describing themselves as Panchama. Dalits now profess various religious beliefs, including Buddhism, Christianity and Sikhism. Source: Wikipedia (N.E.)
*In “Art and Tradition”, in The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, May-July 1935. A revised form of The Meaning of Art, a lecture delivered at Dacca University in 1926.
*Annie Besant, born Wood (1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. Source : Wikipedia
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