“Exciting a Wider Interest in the Art of India”The 1931 Burlington Fine Arts Club Exhibition (original) (raw)
Related papers
Indian Art History: Changing Perspectives, ed. Parul Pandya Dhar. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld., 2011
The shaping of the disciplinary practice of art history in the Indian context has been a fascinating process and brings to the fore a range of viewpoints, issues, debates, and methods. Changing perspectives and approaches in academic writings on the visual arts of ancient and medieval India form the focus of this collection of insightful essays. A critical introduction to the historiography of Indian art sets the stage for and contextualizes the different scholarly contributions on the circumstances, individuals, initiatives, and methods that have determined the course of Indian art history from colonial times to the present. The spectrum of key art historical concerns addressed in this volume include studies in form, style, textual interpretations, iconography, symbolism, representation, connoisseurship, artists, patrons, gendered readings, and the interrelationships of art history with archaeology, visual archives, and history.
Connected Histories- Exhibiting, Collecting and Pedagogy in late 19th century Calcutta
Caesurae - Politics of Cultural Translation Vol III, 2018
The essay is an attempt to evaluate and analyse the defining and connected histories of the colonial period in Indian art and pedagogy. The flowering of the nomenclatures like ‘academic art’ or ‘fine arts’, ‘exhibition’ and ‘collection’ that is so imbibed in the art practices of India, is a consequence of cross border power play, that has permanently reshaped the profession of Indian art practice and reconfirmed its global stage towards modernity. The essay maps certain key events in the colonial history of exhibition and collection to demonstrate the determining structure on art pedagogy in India, which is followed till date within art institutions. This essay is, for now, put together as an opening argument, in hope for a larger discourse on art pedagogic history. Keywords: Art pedagogy, Colonial art history, Museums, Collection History, Indian Museum, Calcutta International Exhibition 1883-84
In this paper, I consider the emergence of two art museums in the early decades of the twentieth century in the British colony of India: the Bharat Kala Bhavan of Banaras, founded by Rai Krishnadas in 1920, and the Shri Bhavani Chitrasangrahalaya in the princely state of Aundh, built by its last ruler, Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi, in 1938. As two of the earliest museums devoted to the arts, these endeavours distinguish them‑ selves not only due to their establishment by Indians but also for their insistence on the category of the art museum. This insistence on the art museum deviated from the prevalent model of encyclopaedic museum making, that aggregated materials under the rubric of Indian resources. The paper discusses this shift away from the encyclopaedic, to aesthetic judgement as exercised by these museum founders, in the light of the nationalist impulse. In foregrounding the relationship between art, nationalism, and institutional histories, the paper will unpack a range of questions: What did it mean for Indians to establish an art museum? How did the space of the museum suggest itself to Indians who were yet colonial subjects? Or is the alliance between an art museum and an incipient nation only natural? If so, how is the art museum envisioned and deployed by colonial subjects, and how does it relate to their claims for self‑rule? In exploring this relationship between the art museum and the colony, the paper focuses on the image of the art museum as was envisioned by these collectors in India's colonial period through the narratives of connoisseurship and patronage. Making collections with an eye to the nation that was yet to come, these collectors created diverse collec‑ tions and chose to address this new nation and its citizen populace. Foregrounding the role of collecting in institution formation, the paper will reflect on the processes and discourses of connoisseurship, aesthetic agency, and social transformation that undergird the collections of the two museums at Banaras and Aundh. In the initial section, the paper considers the relationship between the art museum and the nation‑state, in the light of the coming of the museum to the British colony of India; this will bring into relief the valence of creating an art museum in colonial India. Next, it delves into the institutional history of the Bharat Kala Bhavan in Banaras and the biography of its founder. Here the paper will lay out the high‑ art tradition that was being deployed by Rai Krishnadas in Banaras to present one articulation of a nationalist art history. The next section of the paper throws light on the collection at the Aundh museum, particularly its engagements with the western academic style, its collection of casts and copies, and draws attention to the politi‑ cal changes and gestures of self‑rule that were taking place in the small principality. In detailing these institutional histories, the paper will present two articulations of nationalism in the realm of aesthetics in the period before Indian independence.
Historical Development of Contemporary Indian Art: 1880-1947
Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2009
Historical Development of Contemporary Indian Art was visualized as part of the special publications programme on the completion of Golden Jubilee of the Lalit Kala Akadami. It was planned to cover the period from late nineteenth century when Raja Ravi Varma had flourished until the Independence of India in 1947. The scope of the material to be covered was the parallel manifestations in pictorial-visual arts of several regions of the whole country. This has been the period of what the editors call 'art-turmoil, which includes both breakdown as well as rediscovery of our rich art tradition at a point when European aesthetic norms were introduced. This Conflict between indigenous and western modes leads to further conflict when Indian artists confronted first waves of modern movement of European Art. Accordingly, the editors proposed the tripartite structure and placement of various regions in a time-line sequence within each section of the book. The authors were chosen and approached to document art manifestations of their region revealing continuation of tradition on one hand and also the setting up of art schools and impact of European style art training resulting in a new mode which we gave the nomenclature of Naturalism'. Accordingly the first section covers the naturalistic phase in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil-Nadu. The second section is devoted to the intellectual and creative churning that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century when traditional art is rediscovered and re absorbed in fresh creative ventures which is widely accepted as 'Revivalism'. These aspects are covered in terms of broadly the impact of the movement spreading from Bengal and several regions have their own phase of Revivalism' overlapping the mode of Naturalism'. These regional responses to the spirit of Revival', is a belated but a glorious culminating phase of India's 'Renaissance' during the colonial rule. Such regional involvements and initiatives also resulted in conflict between tradition and European modes, which served as the ground or base for the emergence of the first phase of modernity that saga is covered in the third section. For the first time the focus is not on a few selected individuals but regional art manifestations contributing towards the national level phenomena.