User:Maheshwari.priyanka99/Modern Indian art

Paintings of Company School The eighteenth and nineteenth century India witnessed a new genre of painting popularly known as ‘Company School’. It was so named because it emerged primarily under the patronage of the British East India Company. The officials of the Company were interested in paintings that could capture the “picturesque” and the “exotic” aspect of the land, besides recording the variety in the Indian way of life which they encountered. Indian artists of that time, with declining traditional patronage, fulfilled the growing demand for paintings of flora and fauna, landscapes, historical monuments, durbar scenes, images of native rulers, trades and occupations, festivals, ceremonies, dance, music as well as portraits.

The Company School paintings display an amalgam of naturalistic representation and the lingering nostalgia for the intimacy and stylization of medieval Indian miniatures. It is this intermingling that makes the Company school so unique even though the paintings neither had the accuracy of the photograph nor the freedom of the miniatures. The artists of this School modified their technique to cater to the British taste for academic realism which required the incorporation of Western academic principles of art such as a close representation of visual reality, perspective, volume and shading. The artists also changed their medium and now began to paint with watercolor (instead of gouache) and also used pencil or sepia wash on European paper.

‘Company Paintings’ were first produced in Madras Presidency in South India. This new style of painting soon disseminated to other parts of India such as Calcutta, Murshidabad, Patna, Benares, Lucknow, Agra, Delhi Punjab and centers in Western India. The introduction of photography in 1840, however, brought about a new dimension to painting. Now the emphasis came on producing works which could capture “objective reality”. Indian art practice underwent a remarkable transformation from the 1870s onwards. Several factors contributed to this shift. One was a swing in public taste, which veered towards naturalism following increased exposure to European aesthetics. The founding of British art schools in India greatly accelerated this process.

Begun in mid-19th century with the aim of training craftsmen, art schools found themselves increasingly admitting students from more educated and more well to do backgrounds. They focused their attention towards fine arts rather than the industrial arts that the British rulers wanted Indians to learn. And they ingested the lessons of perpetual – representation of the object as they appear- leading to a naturalistic mode rather than conceptual art of Indian tradition, where an idea, or an idea is sought to be represented. Academic expression of realism is sought to be represented. Academic expressions of realism became the new mantra for a whole generation of artists trained in the art schools of Bombay and Calcutta. These artists were not only trained in naturalistic representation of figures and objects, but also in the skillful use of a relatively new medium – oil.

Around this time, even as the earliest students of academic art like Pastonji Bomanjee were undergoing training at Sir JJ School of Art in the 1860s, a phenomenal artist was emerging in the south, in distant Trivandrum. Raja Ravi Varma was born to an aristocratic family related to the rulers of the Travancore state. The other prominent academic realists are Manchershaw Pithawalla, Antonio Xavier Trindade, Mahadev Vishvanath Dhurandhar, Sawalaram Laxman Haldankar, Jamini Prokash Gangooly and Hemendranath Majumdar. In the early years of the 20th century there was a renewed upsurge of nationalist fervour. In the arts this resulted in the search and revitalization of Indian cultural history and spirituality, albeit one that was expressed not through the pictorial vocabulary of the foreign rulers but by reviving indigenous techniques and material.

The nationalist project in art was led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) and some enlightened Europeans such as EB Havell, the principal of the Government School of Art in Calcutta from 1896, and Sister Nivedita, an associate of Swami Vivekananda. Moving away from oil painting and subjects that were popular with both the British and Indian intelligentsia, Abanindranath looked to ancient murals and medieval Indian miniatures for inspiration both for subject matter as well as indigenous material such as tempera. The philosophy of a Pan-Indian art that he developed found many enthusiastic followers and this came to be known as the Bengal School, The style developed by him was taken up by many of his students and others who formed the nationalist art movement often called the Bengal School, even though the style and philosophy spread well beyond the borders of Bengal. They sought to develop an indigenous yet modern style in art as a response to the call for ‘swadeshi’ to express Indian themes in a pictorial language that deliberately turned away from western styles such as those practiced by Raja Ravi Varma.

In his rejection of the colonial aesthetic, Abanindranath turned to Asia, most notably Japan in an effort to imbibe and propose a pan-Asian aesthetic that stood independent of the western one. Japanese stalwarts like Okakura Kakuzo left a lasting impression, as the Bengal school artists learnt the wash technique from them, innovating and modifying it to better suit their own needs. The themes most often seen in the Bengal School include misty and romantic visions of the Indian landscape, historical scenes and portraits as well anecdotes and incidents from daily life in the countryside. Many artists charted individual paths even though they used the techniques and material popularised by the Bengal School. Notable artists of the Bengal School include Asit Haldar, M.A.R Chughtai, Sunayani Devi and Kshitindranath Majumdar. Calcutta Group In 1943, erstwhile Calcutta bore the brunt of a terrible famine that ravaged Bengal. The famine, which killed millions, was said to have been triggered by the wrong policies of the ruling British Government. This unprecedented devastation steered several artists into looking a new at their visual language.

A group of young artists decided to reject the lyricism and the romanticism seen in the work of earlier Bengali artists. Six among them formed the Calcutta Group. The founder members were sculptors Pradosh Dasgupta, his wife Kamala, painters Gopal Ghosh, Nirode Majumdar, Paritosh Sen and Subho Tagore. Others like Pran Krishna Pal, Govardhan Ash and Bansi Chandragupta joined later.

This group of artists expressed the need for a visual language that could reflect the crisis of urban society. For the first time in modern Indian art, artists began to paint images that evoked anguish and trauma and reflected the urban situation. Rural scenes were no longer purely idyllic, and the formal treatment of the paintings began to reflect the influence of European modernism.

Progressive Artists Group, Bombay By 1947, restless stirrings among the artists in Bombay led to the formation of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). The members who joined the group were Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Syed Haider Raza, Krishna Hawlaji Ara, Hari Amba Das Gade and S. Bakre, a sculptor. Besides these founder members others too inclined with the group in their choice of aesthetic values and approach to visual language. Engagement with pure form became their creed. The artists close to the PAG were Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta, Bal Chhabda, Vasudeo S Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and Krishna Khanna. The NGMA has several paintings by most of these artists representing significant phases of their artistic development. Other artists of this period to have stretched the idioms were Narayan Shridhar Bendre and Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar.

Young Turks Beside the Calcutta Group, there was another group called the Young Turks, among whom P. T. Reddy was the prominent member. The Young Turks encouraged by Charles Gerrard, principal of Sir J.J. School of Art held their first exhibition in 1941. Then there were Bhabesh Sanyal and Sailoz Mukherjee, who left Calcutta. The first went to Lahore and the second came to Delhi in search of employment. These artists find prominent place in the NGMA collection. In the early 70s, artists have used narrative devices in many ways to transform the mundane into the magical. They locate the mythic into a world of memory. They use fantasy to express personal fears and anxieties, often giving them a dream-like intensity. KG Subramanyan’s Goddess at Goalpara at the NGMA is a witty pastoral image where the four armed goddess is seen chasing the buffalo demon. On another level, A Ramachandran endows the temporal with a sense of timelessness. In Incarnation, the beautiful tribal woman, framed by the blossoming flame of the forest tree, stands on a turtle, also a self portrait of the artist.

Another artist who brought a metaphysical dimension to his images was Bombay-based Prabhakar Barwe. In Blue Lake at the NGMA, the fish form floating on the surface of the canvas and its skeletal reflection hint at disjunctive references from a dreamscape, and the realization of ultimate reality. K Khosa’s work is steeped in meta-reality. A Happening is clearly located in an imagined Kafkaesque world, in which the real takes on an eerie, unreal quality.

Madhvi Parekh’s mythic world bristles with folk and tribal imagery of Gujarat. For Gogi Saroj Pal, the mythic image is the expression of a personal mythology. It is linked to the construct of women in a patriarchal society.

A personal mythology also informs the shadowy image world of Ganesh Pyne. The experience of angst pervading the layers of existence harks to an umbral presence. In the late 60s and early 70s, Jogen Chowdhury brought into the public domain personal erotic fantasies that burgeoned with a life of their own in a nocturnal ambience.

Both Amit Ambalal and Dharmanarayan Dasgupta introduce a whimsical note into the fantasy images.

The strong mythical or fantasy content in the paintings of artists of the 70s and the 80s continued to be explored by the artists in the next decade to give a new thrust to visual language. By the middle of 1980s, contemporary Indian art began to chart a new direction. The discourses that dominated the art scene of earlier decades slowly faded away. The younger generation of artists engaged themselves with new concerns. They explored fresh concepts (and the concept acquired preeminence, so that the artist’s idea became germane to the work leaving him free to commission helpers to complete the project). Post-modern ideas left their mark. They experimented with new media, material and techniques, they rethought the scale of the work attempting site-specific three-dimensional installations and they were prepared to negotiate with both global and local stimuli. Themes involving gender, environment and urban crisis began to surface in images. The vibrancy of popular culture worked as a major trigger in image-making. Some of the younger artists, even when they were working with representational forms eschewed narrative elements even as they gave vent to whimsy. In sum, contemporary art tore through the silken veils of the exclusive private gallery ambience and donned an assertive dynamism, a colourful vitality.

Work of Sudhir Patwardhan, Vivan Sundaram, Veena Bhargava, Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani, Paramjit Singh, Manu Parekh, Manjit Bawa, Rameshwar Broota, Jatin Das, Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpana Caur, Amitava Das, Chittrovanu Majumdar, Jaya Ganguly, Jayashree Chakravarti, Rekha Rodwittiya, Rajeev Lochan, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Subodh GHupta, Anju Dodiya, Hema Upadhaya, Chintan Upadhaya, Riyas Komu, Probir Gupta, Anandajit Ray, and NS Harsha in the NGMA collection beautifully capture the eclectic spirits of contemporary art practices. The beginning of modernism in Indian sculpture can be traced to its adaptation of western academic art traditions in the early 20th century. Sculptors who trained in the academic realist style at British art schools worked on secular subjects in a departure from ancient and medieval Indian norms, where myths and deities formed the major themes. Sculptures were now created to cater to the demands of the newly emerging upper and middle social classes. The innovation of Indian sculptors can be seen in the intense and exaggerated realism during this period.

The next phase of sculptural development is represented by artists such as D.P Roy Chowdhury, Fanindranath Bose and V. P. Karmarkar who were influenced by the dignified and monumental works of the French sculptor Rodin. It was only in the 1940’s and 1950’s that Indian modern sculpture developed a unique indigenous language; best represented by the works of Ram Kinker Baij. He looked afresh at both western and traditional Indian norms, amalgamating them in a modern context. In a distinctive style, he experimented with unconventional material such as concrete, gravel and cement, looking to the rural landscape and tribal communities for subjects.

The 1950’s were marked by experimentations with wood and stone, in which the essential character of the solid block was retained. In the next two decades, sculptors utilized a variety of techniques to create new relationships between material, theme and form. The sculptures celebrated the spirit of humanism and their work was also infused with a sense of the spiritual that is reminiscent of classical sculptural styles. The search for pure form induced by European aesthetics added a new and interesting dimension. Experiments with unusual material, sometimes in combination with traditional material, had intriguing results. Apart from the classical traditions, folk and tribal sources had a profound effect on the artistic imagination.

The sculptures in the NGMA collection by artists such as Ramkinkar Baij, Debiprasad Roy Chowdhury, Sankho Chaudhuri, Pradosh Dasgupta, Piloo Pochkhanawalla, Adi Davierwala, Chintamani Kar, Amarnath Sehgal, Dhanraj Bhagat, Meera Mukherjee, Piraji Sagara, Raghav Kaneria, Nagji Patel, Himmat Shah, K.G. Subramanyan, Balbir Singh Katt, Latika Katt, Jeram Patel, Nagji Patel, Jagdish Swaminathan, Satish Gujral, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Madan Lal, Sabari Roy Chowdhury, KS Radhakrishnan, S Nandagopal, PV Janakiram, Ravinder Reddy, NN Rimzoh, Pushpamala N, Valasan Kolleri, Prithpal Singh Ladi, Karl Antao and Sudarshan Shetty narrate the story of the history of modern sculptures in India in a holistic way.

The NGMA’s sculpture collection is amongst the richest in the country. The Gallery is further enhancing the collection with the acquisition of contemporary works that blur the boundaries between sculpture and installation. British intervention in art education in the 19th century created hierarchies in art practices. Oil paintings rose to the apex. Graphic art made through processes of reproduction and technology-based photography was looked down upon.

A growing printing and publishing trade in Calcutta created a demand for the illustrations and so woodcut prints flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Similarly, in Santiniketan in the 20th century, a vigorous publishing programme of Bengali Primers for children saw the encouragement of the graphic medium. The Santiniketan masters actively experimented with engravings, woodcuts and linocuts. Both at the Government School of Arts at Calcutta and at Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan, printmaking facilities became an important part of art education. Later, the art schools, as displayed by the works at NGMA, at Baroda and Delhi also built up their printing process considerably. Although graphic art initially fulfilled the need of publishing, before long it excited the artists with its potential as a medium. The NGMA has built up a discerning collection of such works.(ngma,NewDelhi)