The Space That Art and its Market Occupy in Indian Society

Aryaman Kakkar

The Space That Art and its Market Occupy in Indian Society - Part 1

In this series, I explore the artistic movements of the 20th century, hoping to reveal to you the important roles artists played in our Independence, and how despite years of being silenced, the voices of our greatest artists were finally recognised for their expression of identity in the 1990’s.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE, PIYALI, PEN AND INK ON PAPER, 1940 REPRODUCED IN R. PARIMOO, ART OF THREE TAGORES: FROM REVIVAL TO MODERNITY, KUMAR GALLERY, NEW DELHI, 2011, P. 498. Image Source: Sothebys.

The fifties saw the shift of Artistic endeavour to Baroda, the result of the creation of the Fine Arts Department in M.S. University. There, artists such as Sankho Chaudhuri, N.S. Bendre, Nasreen Mohamedi, Gulammohammed Sheikh and later Bhupen Khakhar, Jeram Patel and K.G. Subramanyan furthered India’s delve into modernism with their works in Pop Art, Abstraction, and Neo-Dadaism.

With the seventies came turbulent times with The Indo-Pak War in 1971, the Bangladeshi famine, the Naxalite movement in Bengal, the Bangladesh War, as well as the suppression of freedom with the imposition of the Emergency. In a time marred by tragedy with intense social and political overtones, artists such as Tyeb Mehta, Rameshwar Broota, Gieve Patel, Somnath Hore, Ganesh Pyne, K.K. Hebbar, Krishan Khanna. and Bikash Bhattacharjee felt it their duty to speak out about the crises and document the horrors of the time. By turning towards the social and political through figuration, they questioned an artist’s role in an infant democracy. These times also witnessed the recognition of women artists such as Nalini Malani, Arpita Singh, Madhvi Parekh, and Navjot Altaf among others, who addressed feministic issues, subjectivity and victimhood among other schools of thought through their work.

We grow up in a time where stories of survival, sacrifice, and blood-painted borders are told in quiet living rooms, in opulent halls that were built up from the remains of golden nightingales. Once a proud empire, the Indian subcontinent was a breadcrumb of its former glory when the British finally departed from our shores in 1947. Yet, their colonisation did not end there. In the advent of their Western Civilisation, our cultural heritage was pillaged and reduced to a commercial world, with our art having decidedly no meaning in the eyes of the Redcoat conquerors. In the wake of the freedom movement, the visual arts in the Indian subcontinent witnessed revolutions of style, identity, and rebellion. With the likes of Rabindranath Tagore and Amrita Sher-Gil at its forefront, Indian Art of the 20th century was seen as ‘derivative’ when embracing our historical heritage and ‘hypocritical’ when making space for Western influences. Historians and critics held this double-edged sword against our artists for decades, refusing to acknowledge the deeper meaning behind great works, reducing our contemporaries to mere decoration, inhibiting the birth of a new world of art.

Yet, we persevered. With the 1990’s came revolutionary thoughts which led to the establishment of the commercial world of art worth Rs. 1460 Crores as recently as 2017. As proud peoples of the sub-continent, we visit museums and heritage sites to understand and appreciate our cultural heritage, and miss out on one of the greatest artistic revolutions of our histories. It is with that in mind that I explore the artistic movements of the 20th century, hoping to reveal to you the important roles artists played in our Independence, and how despite years of being silenced, the voices of our greatest artists were finally recognised for their expression of identity in the 1990’s.

The Evolution of Indian Art (Twentieth Century and onwards)

Art in Pre-Independence India (1900-1947)

The suppression of cultural identity that accompanied the colonising policies of the British faced great opposition from the artists who belonged to the Bengal School of Painting. They rejected the romantic artistic renditions of a colonised India, the western influenced works of Ravi Verma, and all Western schools of art. Instead, they drew inspiration from mythologies and religions, focusing on the techniques of painting which can be seen in temples and sculptures pan-India, going so far as to adopt other techniques water-colour, tempera and ink, and the Japanese wash technique. Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, D.P. Roy Choudhury, A.K. Haldar, Kshitindranath Mazumdar, Sarada Ukil, and M.A.R. Chugtai were among the artists who focused on varied aspects of the Bengal School of Painting. This movement was taken further by the post-impressionistic works of Amrita Sher-Gil and the Calcutta group, the latter of who incorporated foreign elements to create socially responsive and international works, and by Damyanti Chawla, student of Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal.

While Calcutta and Bombay were already established as cultural capitals of India, Delhi had only the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) to show its appreciation of the fine arts. This changed with the founding of the Delhi Silpi Chakra. Founded by Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, Kanwal Krishna, Dhanraj Bhagat, K. S. Kulkarni, and Pran Nath Mago in January 1948 in the Jantar Mantar Lawn. The idea of the formation of a group came as a rebel against the AIFACS and provided the needed space for many young artists of that time to exhibit, for discourse and to have a sense of belonging to a creative society.

Art in Post-Independence India (1947-1985)

Independence of the nation produced various responses of artistic endeavours. The artists of transition focused on the trivial aspects of day-to-day living, exploring life through the creation of simple forms and sprightly colours. They were accompanied by the Progressive Artists Group of Bombay - founded in 1947. Comprising artists such as F.N. Souza, S.H. Raza, K.H. Ara, M.F. Husain, H.A. Gade and S. Bakre, they strived to create art that was a perfect mix of Indian and modern - a style they sought to achieve through Post-Impressionism and Parisian Abstract Expressionism. The abandonment of colonial art and naturalism was followed in suit by sculptors as well. Many sculptors - Sankho Chaudhuri, Dhanraj Bhagat, Pillo Pochkhanwalla, Adi Davierwalla, and Meera Mukherjee - experimented with various media and techniques to inculcate their personality and identity into their artworks. Printmakers Jyoti Bhatt and Krishna Reddy were at the forefront of revolutionary methods of artistic expression: stencils made of old prints, reusing used canvases for new collages, discovering the simultaneous colour printing method with Stanley William Hayter. They, in turn, gave artists new avenues to explore.

Contemporary Indian Art (1985-present)

Turning over a new leaf, the artists of the eighties gave less importance to the events of the preceding decades, choosing postmodernism as the preferred style in light of the ever increasing global economy. The genres of hyperrealism, photo, and installation art permeated the Indian artistic and public consciousness. Despite being condemned by artists such as Jagdish Swaminathan in the past, the “hybrid mannerisms” of Europe and other styles like it seemed to become regular features of artistic expression.

With the 1990s, the nation witnessed a rise in pluralist moods in the production of contemporary art. The age of information and instant gratification provided a myriad range of stimuli for artists such as Shibu Natesan, Surendran Nair, Jayashree Chakravarty, Rekha Rodwittiya, and G. Ravinder Reddy to respond to: their reactions of being exposed to foreign environments. The country and slowly, the world, became cognisant of the subtle themes and emotive contexts of artists such as Atul Dodiya, Baiju Parthan, and Anju Dodiya. However, the contemporary art market focused primarily on mainstream art following similar styles not tribal art. One of the best artists of tribal art, Jangarh Singh Shyam belonged to the Pardhan Gond clan and pioneered his own unique style of art, which came to be known as the ‘Jangarh Kalam’. Prominent artists of today include Nilima Sheikh, Shilpa Gupta, Reena Kallat, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen, and Bharti Kher.

With these shifts in style and perspective, contemporary sculptors looked beyond the traditional restrictions placed upon sculpting media and techniques. This new concurrent evolution of sculpture with paintings saw the popularisation of kinetic sculptures and site-specific installations, along with new techniques being used to treat stone and metal among other materials. Furthermore, with the hybridisation of sculpting and painting by artists such as Anandajit Ray, Sudarshan Shetty, G.R. Iranna, and Jagannath Panda the boundaries of the two disciplines fell.

Despite these revolutions of style and identity in 20th century Indian art, it was for the greater part of the century ignored due the double-edged sword held by art historians and critics of the time. In the continuation of this piece, I shall explore why these opinions when coupled with other factors led to the delayed fruition of the commercial world of art that we know and enjoy today.