folk in modern art

20
India International Centre is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to India International Centre Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org The Folk in Modern Art Author(s): SUNEET CHOPRA Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Monsoon 1990), pp. 63-81 Published by: India International Centre Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23002163 Accessed: 04-01-2016 16:10 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Upload: aishikpaul

Post on 26-Jan-2016

257 views

Category:

Documents


11 download

DESCRIPTION

Folk in Modern Art

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Folk in Modern Art

India International Centre is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to India International Centre Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

The Folk in Modern Art Author(s): SUNEET CHOPRA Source: India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Monsoon 1990), pp. 63-81Published by: India International CentreStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23002163Accessed: 04-01-2016 16:10 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Folk in Modern Art

The Tree of Knowledge: by Meera Mukherjee

Photo

credit:

Sharat

Kumar

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 3: Folk in Modern Art

The Ear Cleaner: by Nandalal Bose

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 4: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA

The Folk in Modern Art

When

we witnessed a motley collection of tradi tional bards, mountebanks, bear-trainers and

hand-clapping eunuchs parading as "Indian cul

ture" in Washington, Moscow, Paris and other

capitals of the world during the "festive" years of Mr Rajiv Gandhi, we had come a long way from the days of that

other Mr Gandhi. He who had coaxed and cajoled artists like

Nandalal Bose, architects like Mharte and Gulati, and connoisseurs

of the folk arts like Mukul Dey to come together, and direct their

creative energy towards serving the village people, and accelerating the success of the national movement. Whereas the Mahatma had

tried to inspire the most advanced creative people of his time to seek

out their roots in rural India, and to find inspiration in the national

movement that gripped the country, the latter-day approach has

brought rural India to the pavements of the world for people to gape

open-mouthed at the "wonders of modernisation" and to amuse the

faded consumers of coca-cola culture.

Mahatma Gandhi's vision was quite the reverse. He did not wish

to titillate the world's glitterati. He wanted to modernize India from

the grass-roots upwards, and he sought the raw material for this

from our vast rural land-mass. In March 1936, when he proposed an

exhibition on rural crafts to be held along with the Lucknow Con

gress session, he wrote:

We must see that we don't turn an exhibition into a museum. Muse

ums of ancient things which have disappeared from our economic life

have their use and place, but not in our programme which concen

trates on industries and crafts which are capable of being revived.1

The first exhibition of folk art and rural industry was mounted at

the Lucknow session of the Congress, with Nandalal Bose and the

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 5: Folk in Modern Art

Birth

of

Chaitanya:

by

Nandalal

Bose

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 6: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 67

architect Mharte taking on the main burden of work. Gandhi, who

remained largely behind the scenes at this Congress, took a special interest in the exhibition and inaugurated it on 28 March. He

congratulated the artists for:

The simply but exquisitely decorated walls done by Nandalal Bose, the eminent artist from Santiniketan and his co-workers, who have

tried to represent all the villagers and crafts in simple artistic symbols. And when you go inside the art gallery, on which Babu Nandalal Bose

has lavished his labours for several weeks, you will feel, as I did, like

spending hours there together.2

A few days later, on April 12, he again called on people to visit the

exhibition, commenting that it is "not a spectacular show, but a kind

of fairyland. But our tastes have been so debased that the miracles

happening before our eyes appear like so much dust or clay and

trifles coming from abroad become exquisite pieces of art."3

During the winter of the Faizpur session of the Congress Gandhi

wanted the exhibition of folk arts and crafts to be the chief attraction.

When Nandalal Bose was hesitant, saying, "I am merely a painter and I know little of architecture and, therefore, am not competent,"4 Gandhi overruled his objections. When we examine his instructions

for those constructing the venue of the Faizpur, and later, the

Haripura Congress, he states that while the stress was on what was

available in the rural areas, it was not to be an excuse for reproducing backwardness. In fact, he specifically called for the .electrification of

the venue, even though he knew that the villagers would not be able

to get electrification for quite some time afterwards. He appealed for

an innovative approach to our folk tradition; and in this his choice of

Nandalal Bose was most appropriate. This is borne out by a student of his, Bon Behari Ghosh, who

worked as chief artist in the Calico mills of Ambalal Sarabhai in

Ahmedabad at the time of the Faizpur Congress, and who had

helped Nandalal Bose with the exhibition there.

Nandalal started with works in the pat (Bengal folk) idiom but after

that he emerged from its influence. He broke with its conventions and

retained only its structure. In this he was very different from Jamini

Roy. Take his masterpiece, The Birth of Chaitanya: the treatment of the

house, the simplified trees, the contrasts, the use of dabs of colour—

they are all reminiscent of pat, but it is pat with his own innova

tions.5

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 7: Folk in Modern Art

The Vegetable Cutter: by Nandalal Bose

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 8: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 69

Here then, we have the synthesis of folk and modern are that was

to develop over the decades. The treatment of the hut and the trees

is that of the Bengal pat, while the general architectural scheme, of

the walled courtyard and a balcony-like window remind one of the

Rajasthani schools of miniature painting. The rough and ready

pointilliste treatment of the sky and other spaces, on the ground, on

the walls, and even drapes worn by female figures return us to the

pat styles of Kalighat and Orissa.

Bon Behari Ghosh describes the process:

The Japanese artist Okakura used to explain our approach by taking three match-sticks and putting them together as a triangle. Its three

corners represented tradition, the perception of nature and original

ity. They were all together and none could be stressed any more than

the others.6

Nandalal takes up each stress and explains its effect on the

creative process: "Art, solely and wholly dependent on tradition,

becomes stiff." Here we see a break from the past, where both

tradition and patronage had prevented art from becoming innova

tive and original. Then, he recommends "a thorough knowledge of

anatomical construction, form and bodily proportions ... but not in

the European 'academic' way." He calls for the comprehension of

"the totality by way of a detailed analysis," stating that "the mind is

the artist and not the eye" and that "art is creation. It is not an

imitation of nature."7 He felt imitation drained art of its purpose and

meaning. As regards originality as an end in itself, he thought of it

as superficial without its links with tradition and perception of the

reality around one.

As Bon Behari Ghosh, his student, puts it forcefully, "With origi

nality as the only aim of art, it tends to lose its seriousness and

becomes either gimmickry or a form of lunacy. Originality is only relative to tradition and perceived reality."8 So we see that early on

in the development of modern Indian art, the folk element is essen

tial as a part of tradition; it is not the only element nor even the

dominant one. Certainly the revival of folk art as it existed before

was not envisaged.

However, it is to his training in folk-art that Nandalal Bose

ascribes his most successful and innovative work—the Haripura

posters. In terms of the use of these images as wall-decorations, the

restriction of material used, including colour, to locally available

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 9: Folk in Modern Art

70 / India International Centre Quarterly

raw materials like lamp-black, ochre and chalk, and the use of bold

strokes to highlight forms and figures he makes a radical departure from the practice in art-studios and colleges of his time. He remarks:

I had once done some practice in Kalighat Pata—it was after all not a

waste of time. I reaped its fruits at Haripura Congress. What I drew

there was just a playful extension of the Kalighat Pata.9

He is, however, being modest. If one looks at the panel entitled

Cutting the Vegetables, one can see in it already a blend of the Kalighat tradition with that of Jain manuscripts (like the three-quarters face

that gives it its three dimensionality). This becomes a precursor of

the linear art of later artists like Bendre, as well as the choice of a

commonplace rural figure as the subject-matter of art. Today, when

the Haripura "posters" are over fifty years old, these things might not appear to be unusual. But half a century ago, they were definitely a radical break with the past—not only because of their technical and

formal qualities, but also because they led to developments that

were even more far-reaching in artists like Ram Kinkar Baij. He

joined Nandalal Bose at Santiniketan and sold his first work outside

Bengal from the exhibition which his teacher had organised at the

Lucknow session of the Congress. Ram Kinkar Baij's entry into the art world adds a new dimension

in the relationship of folk-art to modern Indian art. So far it had been

educated upper and middle-class Indians who had turned to folk

art, either as a reflection of changing tastes in the west, or of the stress

on village crafts and self-reliance that gripped the national move

ment from the Swadeshi period onwards.

Speaking of Mukul Dey, the Principal of the Government School

of Art at Calcutta and the critic Ajit Ghose, Mildred Archer recounts

how Bengalis were among the first to appreciate the fact that:

Modern painters such as Picasso, Braque, Matisse and Leger had

reacted against delicacy and refinement. They had ignored perspec tive, used colour for its own sake or for symbolic purposes and had

freely distorted and modified the human form. They had aimed at

intense simplifications and had abandoned the natural in favour of the

abstract or the geometric. Their work was seen to carry with it great

prestige and to have created a revolution in European artistic circles.

At the same time it was clear that these artists had been deeply influenced and fortified by the example of primitive art—in particu lar by that of Negro sculpture. Primitive and popular art were at last

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 10: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 71

interest for they appeared to possess many of the qualities admired in

the work of modern painters. Popular painting in Bengal seemed in

this respect no different from Negro sculpture and it was in a mood of

excited patriotism that certain Bengali writers, critics and painters

began to re-appraise Kalighat painting and at the same time to seek

out and collect another and distinctive form of village painting—the

scrolls made by the patuas of rural Bengal.10

While

it may be true that this shift of interest in the West

may have lent a certain credibility to a movement devel

oping inside the country, for a number of reasons it is

difficult to agree that the act movement in India was the same as that

in the West. The essential difference lies in the fact that here were

artists in search of their own roots, which had not dried up. For one thing there was never any wholesale rejection of the

figurative in India as there was in the West, for, photographic

representation was a relative rarity in Indian art. Folk forms, though

they had lost much of their vigour, were much alive. So they did not

need to be rediscovered, except in the case of a narrow English educated elite. Also, as we saw in the case of Nandalal Bose, folk

forms were only one element on which the developing Indian artist

of the modern sort relied, from a whole gamut of "tradition"

including the paintings of Ajanta and Bagh, the sculptures of Ellora

and the many schools of miniature painting. Finally, Mukul Dey returned to India in 1923, when the Gandhian movement was

already in full swing, with its stress on self-reliance and rediscovery of the village by the urban middle classes.

In fact, an account by Bon Behari Ghosh of how Ram Kinkar Baij came to Santiniketan (and whose room-mate he was from 1928 to

1931) is illustrative of this trend:

He came to Santiniketan in 1925. He was of a barber (Nai) family and

his parents served the local Bhadralok in Bankura. Ram Kinkar spent his childhood among the craftsfolk and was attracted to the potters, one of whom let him paint toys, and later even images, for him. Then

came the 1921 movement, and Ram Kinkar was active in it. The

Principal of a local college, Anil Baran Ray, was its leader. His

supporters had got Ram Kinkar to make posters for the movement.

Their quality and sharpness brought him to Baran Ray's notice and he

recommended him to Ramananda Chatterjee, editor of the Pravasi,

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 11: Folk in Modern Art

Santhal Family: Drawing by Nandalal Bose

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 12: Folk in Modern Art

SUNSET CHOPRA / 73

who then sent him on to Shantiniketan with a letter of introduction.

We find here, then, a far broader basis for the intermingling of the

folk and modern elements in Indian art than any elite process of

enlightenment could provide. With the emergence of Ram Kinkar

Baij as a full-fledged artist in the mid-thirties, we begin to perceive the organic development of a child of craftsmen into the mainstream

of modern art. With this, the relationship between the folk and

modern idiom undergoes a change which could only occur in India

in this manner—a change that is very different from the metamor

phosis that modernism in Europe has experienced. Ram Kinkar's teacher, Nandalal Bose, recognized this, and he has

left us artistic evidence of it. There is a sketch of his, dated 4 July 1944,

entitled Ram Kinkar's Statue, showing his masterpiece in rough

concrete, Santhal Family, which Ram Kinkar made in 1938 at

Santiniketan. The aspect that Bose highlights is art in its natural

environment—a Santhal family passes by the statue, with the husband

carrying the children in baskets, his wife carrying the household

effects on her shoulder, and a dog at their feet. Nandalal sketched it

in his natural environment, with the Santhals walking by. The

figures resemble the ritual deities fashioned by Santhals out of

branches of trees, often following their contours, but there the

resemblance ends. The figures are monumental, celebrating a people

forging ahead to a larger-than-life future. They are modern, not

icons in static poses, but a group whose interrelated forms vibrate

with life like ripples in a pool of water. And the medium too, direct

concrete, belongs to the modern world. The figures reflect a powerful zest for life, which has been described by a number of critics, who

stress its spontaneity and see in it "a style and a body of work that

is essentially individualistic, based and rooted in his own personality and environment." This, however, is a superficial analysis.

The joy of life in the work of Nandalal, Benode Bihari or of Ram

Kinkar is not joy in the abstract, like the mask of a Greek drama,

meaningless without the actor behind it. It is the concrete joy of

participating in a movement of self-liberation of a people. In the case

of Ram Kinkar, we see the depth of this joy expressed by one of the

oppressed. In fact, the failure to understand that the participation of

artists like Nandalal and Ram Kinkar in the national movement was

the social and historical context in which their joyous and spontane ous creations emerge is probably one of the major reasons why

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 13: Folk in Modern Art

He who Saw: Bronze by Meera Mukherjee

Photo

credit:

Sharat

Kumar

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 14: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 75

monumental works of such intensity are rare, now for joy in the

abstract or from self-gratification can never be compared with the

intense joy of a huge country in the process of liberating itself.

While

the artistic expression of post-independence could

never again achieve the holism of the artist expression of

the national movement, a number of trends emerge. These return to folk idiom for a far more specific and limited purpose which may lack the heady days of the late thirties and early forties,

but they are imbued with different qualities that give them rele

vance.

Take the work of Meera Mukherjee, starting with the bronze He

Who Saw. In terms of size this monumental figure of a tribal youth reminds one of the work of Ram Kinkar but the similarity is super ficial. The urban sculptor has to integrate herself with her subject

using the ancient technique of the tribal artisans, in this case the

Gharuas of Bastar. But that in itself does not make her work notewor

thy or even distinguish it from the craftsmen. It is the attitude of the

giant youth, with one arm behind the head, that links him with a

tradition going back to the Mohenjodaro dancing girl. Here, just as

in Nandalal Bose's Birth of Chaitanya, there is a blend of the folk and

classical that places this sculpture in a far broader framework of

artistic tradition than the average work of the Gharua craftsmen. In

1965-66, when she cast her statue of the tribal figure, Meera Mukher

jee was treading the same path as Ram Kinkar—but from the

opposite side, as it were.

This process, begun in the sixties, culminated in a work Andolan

(struggle) whose originality reminds one of Ram Kinkar's creations

of the late thirties and early forties.12 The visual image which domi

nates the sculpture is a tree, sacred to the tribals whose techniques she has ingrained in herself, a proper symbol for a hallowed institu

tion. And the students, another sacred element, tongues of fire,

devour it. Here we see a reflection of how institutions, hallowed and

sacred, at one stage of social development, are devoured by the

forces of the future. Such concepts of the transitory nature of our

institutions and the forces of change transforming them are unhear

dof in the world of craftsman. When they began to inhabit the world

of timeless images, then indeed, new art is born. If in Ram Kinkar Baij

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 15: Folk in Modern Art

76 / India International Centre Quarterly

of five decades ago we see the awakening of modernity in a rural

artisan youth, then in Meera Mukherjee we see the sharing of a

common grievance against society. This sculpture reminds me of

something the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz told me about the nature of his

verse: that it was to give voice to those without a voice. So, Meera

Mukherjee's sculpture speaks the language of the oppressed and

down-trodden; but what she says is something the traditional

craftsman cannot say, and there lies its originality. Folk art serves as

a language in her work; while for Ram Kinkar Baij it was a figure of

speech. We have come a long way from the thirties, forties and fifties.

In the Indian context today, the variations however have vastly increased the field of the possible relation between folk and modern

art. We find, for example, in the canvases of Francis Newton Souza,

folk symbols starings at us from works that are a profound negation of the context of folk art. Take his canvas of 1984, Tivo Men and

Pregnant Women. The figure of the woman is obviously modelled on

the clay figurines of the mother-goddess used as ritual objects in the

prehistoric past and in village India today. Indeed, if one compares the figure of the pregnant woman with that of Prakriti/Yoni, also of

the same year, one realises that the folk figurines were the prototype for both of these.

In Souza's work, however, they serve another function. They

highlight the disjunction between the values he stresses and those

enshrined in our traditional art. The female figure with two residual

men cannot but strike one as a powerful antithesis of the traditional

representation of Vishnu with his two consorts. Consequently, it is

a challenge to the doctrine of male supremacy so deeply ingrained in the traditional hindu life-style. This view point is brought out

even more forcefully in his reply, in 1985, to the question of Jamshed

J. Bhabha: "Does Christianity mean something to you?" Obviously

trying to negate any attempt to burden his many portrayals of Christ

with a religious aura, he firmly states: "Religion is prejudice and

prejudice is a misjudgement induced by malice and ignorance."13 As

distinct from ritual, which tries to create a disjunction between the

human worshippers in their day-to-day existence and the ritual

object and its sacred context, Souza uses the symbols and structures

of the sacred to highlight the profane. Here, the forms of folk art

serve as the very antithesis of their role in traditional life. They are,

in the work of Souza, distinctly and self-consciously modern. In fact,

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 16: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 77

Souza's iconoclasm has a rare force which few have been able to

equal. A similar trend, only far more evasive and less self-conscious, is

discernible in the work of another Bombay artist, Bhupen Khakhar,

whose work was described to me by the poet Asad Zaidi as "urban

folk". The raw material of his paintings are the images of small town

in India. For example, in his canvas The Deity, the figure of the god is recognizably that of the Nathdwara paintings, as is the colour

scheme. The curtain in front of the deity reminds one of those in

Persian or Mughal miniatures, and the figures seem to have walked

out of Kalighat paintings. But it would be a great mistake to reduce

the totality of the effect to disparate origins of each of these images. Here, folk forms function in relation to contemporary trends, as a

contrast and a starting point for a journey that folk art never

envisaged. Khakhar himself describes the myriad possibilities that

he can realise at any one time, a range no folk artist can possibly boast

of.

In the room, there's the curtain. The curtain moves because of the

wind. There are folds in the curtain, and where the folds come forth

clearly, they are of 'life colour'. How can one paint the curtain? If the

curtain were painted with great care and precision it would look like

a Persian or Mughal miniature. If painted with spontaneity it would

remind one of Matisse. .. If the colour of the curtain is dark I would

paint it in a dark light, and the inside left-out white portion would look

like a Kalighat painting. But if it is painted like a stone then it would

remind one of Leger... I see the pattern of the cloth, one is reminded

of Grandma Mase or Henri Rousseau. The curtain moves like a cloud.

It reminds me of Gericault's painting 'Rafts in the Ocean' or a Renoir

woman running with her clothes like a fish in the ocean. In my

painting, the curtain occupies only one-tenth of the whole...14

Other artists, like K.G. Subramanyan have taken up the narrative

tradition of the pats; but here too, the resemblance is purely formal.

The pats deal with epics having a ritual content, with origin myths and with rites of passage. On the other hand, in his "narrative"

paintings, Subramanyan mocks the rituals of middle class life, as in

his Reverie of an Army Officer's Wife. Here, the folk narrative is but one

aspect of a complex language incorporating

the talk of the street, the village wag's dialogue with its puns and turns

of phrase, the story-teller's narrative, the folk song and ballad, to the

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 17: Folk in Modern Art

Spaceman: Acrylic by Narinder Pal Singh

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 18: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 79

compositions of a sophisticated poet with its areas of clarity and

mystery and the loaded enunciations of a philosopher; its life content

and richness depends on a simultaneous presence of various levels of

expression, their continual intersection saving the higher levels from

a mere linguistic virtuosity and the lower from crassness.15

Here, the linguistic metaphor used by Subramanyan reflects the

same situation described by Bhupen Khakhar. The folk is merely one

level of a multi-layered discourse that covers a modern canvas.

All these approaches explore the folk images, use them as points of reference, but go beyond them to more sophisticated levels

involving a knowledge of the place of a particular discourse in the

history of art, a comprehension of society, philosophy, and a famili

arity with the global concerns of modern art. Obviously, such a

synthesis is not easy to achieve; all too often, forays into the folk

idiom result in unimaginative and repetitive "airport art". Such

works are distinct from those with a genuinely modern perspective, as street language is from The West Side Story'.

Of course, changing times too have contributed to this new,

selective synthesis of the folk element in modern Indian art. The

national movement and its institutions have lost much of their

glitter, and less pervasive but equally engrossing social movements

have taken their place. There is woman's art, using the language of

the nursery as in the work of Madhavi Parekh. Or equally feminine

concerns presented in the manner of a chamba rumal as in the work

of Arpita Singh, both using a language that was traditionally used by women.

Modern art, however, with its iconoclasm and irreverence, is no

respecter of tradition. We find a young artist, Narendra Pal Singh of

Nawada in Bihar, who uses the language traditionally restricted to

women's wall-paintings and applique work. Not only is his perspec tive very different—but his choice of themes too has no parallel in

the annals of folk art. He is not given to georgics like the earlier

artists, Bendre, Rawal or Chavda. He depicts women cooped up in

darkness, grinding corn; or a young man and woman reaching out

to each other across the colourful but well-defined divisions of rural

society; or a rural youth, not herding cattle or resting under a tree,

but breaking out of the strait-jacket of patriarchal authoritarianism.

Narendra Pal Singh's most powerful metaphor, however, is that

of the Spaceman: ironically, in this case, a scare-crow in a field. His

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 19: Folk in Modern Art

80 / India International Centre Quarterly

irony reminds one of the same emotion expressed in the works of

other artists who have integrated the folk tradition in their paintings, like K.G. Subramanyan and Jogen Chaudhuri. He integrates this

with the metaphor of the space-flight —so much a part of the twenty first century scenario that was being touted by trendy political ad

vertisers—but he deflates it quitely by giving us the image of a scare

crow flying in an air-balloon. The image reflects both the urge of the

rural young to free themselves of an oppressive environment, and at

the same time, their physical incapacity to do so.

Here we find folk art serving a new purpose. It is the full-throated

cry of our rural masses to be liberated from the fake-paradise which

the artists of the past had thrust on them. Their aggression is

reflected in bright colours that characterize the warning systems of

nature, be it in male birds or poisonous plants; and their ingenuity in breaking the age-old barriers which insult the art of the oppressed

by making it the vehicle of general discontent and the desire for a

better world. Yet, while he expresses his discontent and anger

against social limitations, oppression and backwardness, he also

expresses his joy in being able to transmit concepts unthinkable for

the traditional folk. It is this joy that brings an irrepressible buoyance to his work.

Today, when we look back at the last five decades or so of modern

Indian art, it is evident that the broadbased liberating passion that

gripped a whole people is no longer there; but many different

streams of emancipatory struggles have taken its place. It is in

finding a proper language to voice these concerns that our multiple

regional folk-traditions have played a powerful role, and found

themselves a new lease of life in our present-day culture. In a sense,

they are admirably suited to this purpose, being so varied that each

artist can find his own mode of expression, while liberating these

languages from their local restraints. So, while the folk-idiom pro vides our modern artist with plenty of raw material for originality, he in turn gives it a universality which it never possessed in its

traditional confines.

References

1. Tendulkar, D.G. Mahatma, Vol. IV, 1952, p. 68.

2. Tendulkar, op. cit., pp. 82-83.

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 20: Folk in Modern Art

SUNEET CHOPRA / 81

3. Tendulkar, op. cit., p. 84.

4. Tendulkar, op. cit., p. 133 seg.

5. Interview with the artist.

6. Interview.

7. Bose, Nandalal, Catalogue to the Exhibition.

8. Interview.

9. Bose, Nandalal, Catalogue to the Exhibition.

10. Archer, Mildred, Indian Popular Painting in the India Office Library, 1978, p. 2.

11. Interview.

12. Sen, Geeti, "The Image and the Imagination", IIC Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1,1986,

p. 78.

13. Interview in East-West Visual Arts Encounter, Marg Publications, 1987, p. 32.

14. Interview in op. cit., p. 115.

15. Subramanyan, K.G., The Living Tradition: Perspectives on Modern Indian Art, 1987,

p. 69.

Illustrations

1. Nandalal Bose

2. Nandalal Bose

3. Nandalal Bose

4. Nandalal Bose

5. Meera Mukherjee 6. Narendra Pal Singh

(Catalogue), Ear Cleaner, Haripura Panel.

(Catalogue), Birth of Chaitanya.

(Catalogue), Vegetable Cutter, Haripura Panel

(Catalogue), Raw Kinkar's Statue

He who saw.

Spaceman

This content downloaded from 202.41.10.3 on Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:10:23 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions