The Art Catalogue #1
What is Modern Art?
I won’t deny, I feel really proud whenever I tell people what I do. “ I work in the art sector”. The obvious follow up is, “are you an artist?” to which I say “no, everything but.”
They proceed to ask questions, what type? Half driven by curiosity and half by wanting to make small talk. I tell them “mostly modern art but I like contemporary as well. I like how limitless it is. But Indian modern is different to the Western definition of modern” and then I look at their faces and know that I have lost them. Art jargons can be very confusing and intimidating to people who might have a passing fancy to it. And this keeps many from walking into museums and art galleries. “I don’t understand art” is a very common misnomer. But the fact is, we have art all around us. From wanting to decorate your work station to the upholstery we pick out for the furniture, matching it with the curtains mind you, humans have an inherent need to be aesthetic.
So to help you better understand, let me take you through some of the most basic concepts and terms that make up the art world. Kicking off this series with a term that eludes many: Modern Art
What is Modern Art, or more importantly, what is Indian Modern Art? ‘Modernism’ was a cultural trend that kicked off in the mid-nineteenth century during the industrial revolution and the term remained applicable till the first two decades of the twentieth century. In the arts, it was a rejection of the classical style of painting and adopting newer and innovative methods and mediums to practice art. Modern Art became an umbrella term for several art movements within that time period, i.e. Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and many more.
Or simply, art made between the 1920s to 1980s.
Indian modern art came at a much later time and under different circumstances, although the parameters remained the same as the west. If modernism is a rejection of the past then modernism in India came in multiple waves. Groups of artists across the country established different canons of modernism.
First Modern Master: Raja Ravi Varma
Although before the stipulated time period, Ravi Varma is considered the first Modern master of Indian art. What was initially heralded as ‘modern’ was following the western practices as we can observe in the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906). ‘Ravi Varma’s position as a transitional figure from the pre-modern to modern has been attributed to his ability to learn oil painting and to use it for Indian subjects.’(Gayatri Sinha). The end of Ravi Varma’s reign coincided with a rising political movement in the country, the need to bring back a sense of national identity, to be seen more than simply an economic churn machine for the British. Calcutta became a centre for reform in arts, culture, literature and politics.
Second Wave of Modernism: Revivalists and Santiniketan
An immediate successor to Ravi Varma was the Revivalists, termed so because the artists rejected the western style of painting taught at government schools that were established by the British in the late nineteenth century. Led by stalwart Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) artists like Asit Kumar Haldar, Nandalal Bose, M.A.R Chughtai and Sunyani Devi reengaged with the past styles, extracting inspiration from the forgotten art of Indian miniatures and tackling subjects more relatable to people. They even encouraged interaction with other Asian cultures, especially Japan to bring back a sense of pride within an Indian and/or Asian identity.
Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore approached this matter differently. Witnessing the First World War made him realise the ‘virulent inhumanity’ nationalism could unleash. He wanted to move out of the nationalistically charged spaces of Calcutta and establish an institute for students who would be exposed to Internationalism. In 1921, Rabindranath Tagore set up Visva Bharti University in Santiniketan and invited Nandalal Bose to run its department of fine art, Kala Bhavana. Nandalal Bose with Ramkinkar Baij proclaimed as the first modern sculptor, and Benode Behari Mukherjee were the first out of Santiniketan paving the way for modernism.
Modern art in India did not have a linear progression and hence to a greater extent could not be chronologically mapped out. It was a simultaneous development in different regions putting forth their own distinct meanings of Modernism. Away from Bengal, an Indian-Hungarian was taking the Indian art scene by storm. Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), daughter of a Sikh father and Hungarian mother, was trained in European academic styles at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She began by marrying western styles with Indian subjects eventually moving on to a more personalised rendition of how and what she saw of India. Sher-Gil passed away at a young age of 28.
Around the time Sher-Gil left us, the Second World War had begun and Calcutta unwillingly found itself part of it. Lives were severely disrupted and many young artists were witnesses to the atrocities caused as a by-product of the war. The Bengal Famines of 1943 was one of the worst the world had ever seen, and artists like Somnath Hore and Chittaprosad Banerjee travelled from village to village cataloguing the effects of famine producing remarkable prints.
Third Wave of Modernism: Bombay Progressives
During the war in the 1940s artists groups emerged in Calcutta (Kolkata), Madras (Chennai) and Bombay (Mumbai). These groups ‘doubted the wisdom of striving for indigenous modernism that bypassed modern Western art’(R. Sive Kumar)and developing an idiom more in line with the western modernistic methods while taking cues from their immediate surroundings. The Bombay Progressives was the last to be formed in 1947 by F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, H. A. Gade, K. H. Ara and S. K. Bakre, and other artists like Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Krishen Khanna, V. S. Gaintonde, Akbar Padamsee, and Mohan Samant etc. who were associated with it. Most of these artists left India for considerable durations and visited either Paris, London or New York exposing themselves to markets much bigger than what India offered. They ‘desire[ed] to enter the international circuit of modernist culture’ yet ‘retain self-identity through forms of local distinctiveness’. Struggling to establish a post-colonial identity by creating art relatable to an international audience without seeming derivative.
Fourth Wave of Modernism: Baroda, Delhi and Cholamandal
By the 1960s a new crop of artists had come up who were living a much different reality of India that was being marketed as a land of oriental mysticism propagated much more by the Beatles who came to India to meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Artists were looking to break free the colonial hangups and establish an identity independent of the western influences. In 1966, a book titled Tantric Arts by Ajit Mookherjee came out marking a didactic change in the arts. The book comprised of varied tantric symbols and their manifestations in art forms and geometric symbols pertinent within the tantric realm. This book started a phase of Neo-Tantrism where G. R. Santosh, Biren De, Sohan Qadri, Jagdish Swaminathan explored the different aspect of Indian tantric ideas, incorporating geometric shapes and motifs taken from the rituals.
Swaminathan believed that proclaiming the west as the designated driver for modern art was demeaning the Indian culture and vast heritage that it encompassed, and for the same reason did not appreciate the Progressives and their predisposition with the west. With this view in mind, he with eleven other artists (i.e. Jeram Patel, Ambadas, Himmat Shah, Gulam Mohammad Shiekh and six others) came together to form Group 1890, named after the address of the house where they met. Group 1890 held their first and last show in New Delhi in 1963, inaugurated by Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru an introduced by Octavio Paz (Mexican Ambassador to India, also a poet and a close friend of Swaminathan)
Three years later, in 1966, in Madras (now Chennai), K C S Paniker with S. Dhanapal started the Cholamandal Artists’ Village. Paniker was the second Indian principal of the oldest art college in the country, taking over from D P Roychowdhury in 1957. Paniker, like many others, questioned the validity of ‘Internationalism’ and ‘provoked doubts about authenticity and questions of national identity’ (Shivaji K. Paniker) The art that came out of the ‘Madras Art Movement’ propagated the search for an Indian identity, adopting the use of traditional script, earthy colours and tantric motifs.
Then what the f***k is contemporary art?
There is not a specific year or decade that divides the Modern from the contemporary arts. Artists who we designate as ‘Modern’ today were the contemporaries three decades ago. Some artists like Vivan Sundaram, Nalini Malani have crossed this invisible threshold and are producing works using different mediums from what they started with. Art schools like Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai and M. S. University, Baroda and the Delhi Polytechnic (now College of Art, Delhi) have played an important role in bringing about changes in these artistic styles. The term ‘modern’ that stood for art from before our independence was absolved by the 1980s, and anything after was deemed contemporary.
Stay tuned for the next edition of The Art Catalogue where we look into the limitless world of Contemporary Art and how and why these terms came to be.
