In the history of Indian art, the first few decades of the previous century played a very vital. Indian art, under the Imperial influence, was getting lost in the pages of history, but in this period a sudden flow of artistic genius injected new life to this mostly dead practice. The success of Ravi Varma and Avanindranath Tagore voiced the existence of artists of international stature in India. Using this as the pedestal, from the third decade of the twentieth century, a number of artists came with new approach and treatment. Interestingly, among these artists, most were the student of Kala Bhavana.
During the foundation of Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati University in 1921, Rabindranath Tagore, the noble laureate poet–dramatist–lyricist–novelist–essayist–artist, had envisaged to form a school of education, altogether different from the conventional British style of education. The open communication between the teacher and the student, the creativity, the close acquaintance with nature – Shantiniketan was characterised by these propensities. It, perhaps, evoked from the horrible personal experience of Tagore as a student that urged him to found a new method of education inspired by the Vedic way of study, known as “Brahmacharya”. Actually, Tagore believed that expression of joy is the result of the abundance of energy in the human self. Hence, in Visva Bharati University he looked into the way to create an atmosphere to recreate this expression of joy. As a poet himself, Tagore understood the topical importance of an arts faculty of exceeding quality to enfranchise the ordeal to weave an ambience capable of nourishing that expression. As a result, Kala Bhavana became the first fine arts faculty in Indian University.
Since then, Kala Bhavana has produced a number of internationally acclaimed artists of the highest quality – from Binodebehari Mukherjee to Ramkinkar Baij to k. G. Subramanian, this journey continued. But when one tries to decipher the secret behind this radical success in visual arts, he finds one single person paving the way for this brilliant originality and talent – that man is no other than Nandalal Bose (born in 1882), the pioneer of modern Indian art.
Bose, a student of the Government Art College (1906), was deeply influenced by Avanindranath Tagore. During his study under Avanindranath and Havell, Bose displayed sparks of his genius more than once. It is because of the immense potential that Avanindranath and Gaganendranath saw within him that they recommended Bose as a professor of arts in Kala Vabhan. In fact, the legend of Kala Vabhan is, chiefly, wrought from the creative and earnest teaching of Nandalal.
But, Nadalal Bose’s acclamation is not merely a result of his success as a teacher of a bunch of artists with worldwide reputation – Bose himself had been the most celebrated creator of Kala Bhavana. The importance of Bose in Indian art is, chiefly, owing to his conscious attempt to deviate from the western style of artistry. While Avanindranath chose to do the same, he went for subjects mythological – shapes out of the lost past or epics. On the other hand, the paintings of Varma were deeply influenced by the courtly British treatment. The connection between art and the commoners was not established. But, despite of the inspiration that Bose found from the murals of Ajanta and the sculptures of Sarnath, he did not choose mythology as his sole subject. In his paintings, for the first time in the modern period, we witness the life of the commoners set against their natural habitat. The rich images of stern, raw nature and the tribal santhal people living in harmony with it, and the influence of the outside world on them served to be Bose’s subjects in many cases. This is clearly evident in his painting “Bagadar Road” (1943, or in “Kinkar’s Statue” (1944) – in both of these paintings, against the background of serene and calm village life, war machines are set in motion in the subtle most manner pointing towards how the waves of the world politics surged to even a village hundreds of miles away from the urban civilization.
In his zeal of reviving the Bengal school of art, Nandalal Bose delved deep into the otherwise unrefined sources of art too. In fact, as Chandi Lahiri, the famous cartoonist, said, the lost art of Kalighat pot was revived by Nandalal in a manner of his own – the sharp contrast of black and white, and the drawing style of the baby of Tagore’s “Sahaj Path” (The Simple Studies), and the unique usage of black at the edge of the painting as if forming a border, bear the essence of this lost art form of Kolkata. In the techniques of his paintings, Nandalal never stopped being versatile.
The oeuvre of Bose’s artistic creations is high in volume – since his early days of a student till the end of his life (1966) Nandalal continued to produce artistic outputs ceaselessly. Apart from the painting, Nandalal also created murals. The famous ‘Black House” of Kala Bhavana is one of the richest example of it. The versatility and deep knowledge of Bose in various forms of art is clearly depicted in this project –from the traditional Indian to the Egyptian and Persian, figures from completely different school of artistry is put together in this mural. In his artistic journey of nearly sixty years, Bose was able to mould the shape of the flow of Indian art. This pioneer of Indian modern art, the doyen of Kala Bhavana was awarded Padma Vibhusan in 1954. Bose’s influence over Indian art is clearly comprehensible from the simple fact that his works are under the National Treasure Act of India.
Somnath Hore
From the moment we open our eyes after sleep, waking up from a world full of shapes and shadows, not prominent, marked by lines, contorted and abrupt, where is no balance of colours, delightful or languid, but mere patches, we move towards the corporeal – towards the high skyscrapers shinning with steely sunlight, towards the streets signed by the tires of the automobiles, red and green, the coffee – shops and waiters with collars prim and modest. We try and imagine the world to be a proper place – a place where everything is fine, and happy, a place lacking suffering and pangs of depression – and, lighting a cigarette, indulge in another dream shaped by the multinational dream – sellers weaving aspirations, tirelessly and with conviction. These dreams that we live wide eyed are luscious, true; as a bioscope of the withered decade, set to our eyes to make us believe the manipulated reality, like a drug the Utopian bliss in our mind, blindfolding the truth. However, Somenath Hore (born in 1921, Chittagong) denied looking into the idiot box. The essence of the muddy air and the crusty earth was more fascinating to him than the Heaven’s Garden.
From Aristotle’s poetics, to the 21st century modern drama the approach of tragedy, going through many winters and springs, shed the age – old apparel of the monarch’s grandeur to become pedestrian, but the intensity remained unchanged. Hore’s drawings and sculptures tell the tale tragedy that our modern world inherits – those suppressions and impoverishment, the death of the budding desires against the thwarting society. They create a reverse panorama, not Utopian, of the real and the ragged. From the early works in the Communist journal “Jannayuddha” to the “Tevaga” series (1946), to the critically acclaimed creations of the “Wound” series of paper – pulp prints (1971) we encounter this other, or perhaps the only, version of reality.
It, perhaps, had been the purpose of Hore’s life to seek for a language suitable to speak out the words of this infinitely suffering, infinitely gentle story of the people living in the darkness of the lamp. From the days of a student of the Government College of Art and Craft, to those of the Indian College of Art & Draughtsmanship as a lecturer this search continued. It is Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, that witnesses the attainment of Hore’ enchanting dialect. Shedding the earlier influence of the Chinese Socialist Realism and German Expressionism, or that of the robust style of German printmaker Käthe Kollwitz and Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka, Hore evolved the style later to be his signature – reducing detailing his individual style of contorted and suffering figures created with a genius use of lines was born.
The later days spent in Shantiniketan, Kala Bhavana as the Departmental Head of the Graphics and Printmaking Department matured the seed of innate talent of Hore – the bucolic trance along with the sweaty figures full of life and dreams, the camaraderie of Ramkinkar baij and K.G Subramaniyam, the characteristic receptivity of the ambience as well as a bunch of students brimming with innovation added to the artistic craftsmanship of the artist fuelling his life – long experiment with form and pattern evident in the etches, intaglios, lithographs, drawings and the sculptures produced during this period (including the “Wound” series, and a number of sculptures among which one of his largest sculptures, “Mother and Child”, a tribute to the people died in Vietnam, was , unfortunately got stolen soon after its completion). Beginning sculpturing since the 70’s, Hore did not fail to develop a language of his own. In fact, the sense of pathos and languidness, the humanity’s inheritance, is, perhaps, even more startlingly manifested in his sculptures – the torn and rugged surfaces, rough planes with slits and holes, exposed channels, subtle modelling and axial shifts – they all added to the integrity of the essence of pure humane tragedy.
Somenath Hore’s journey as an artist expanded in various courses throughout his life in different experimental forms and treatments, all pointing towards to direction of a world beyond the flowery vegetation of the bee and the breeze. Unlike other loud artistic embodiments of despair that hit the mind only to turn it away, Hore’s creations are subtly insidious – going under our skin they disturb us, and make us think – they make us doubt the integrity of the world we see looking into the bioscope sold by the social exploiters. The bones of the unfed ribcages, the stillness of the eyes, the natural tan on the skin, the silenced hunger of the mouth of Hore’s each work are like persistent mosquitoes in the net – they forbid the drugged sleep, leaving us wide awake.
edited by Arnab Mazumdar
thank you for sharing that Image of Somnath Hore.
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