Bengal School of Art

The Bengal School of Art

A read of the Wikipedia article on the subject reveals that it was a movement colored by Indian nationalism. It was a response to the western academic style of art promoted by various art schools in India during the British rule.  The movement started with the reformation of the teaching methods. The reformation was started by a British art teacher – Ernest Havel. Havel started off by asking students of the Calcutta School of Art to imitate Mughal paintings  (Mughal School of Painting and the Patna School of Painting have already been covered on art-hose). Earlier the students were imitating Western art. This call was met with protest and was considered by many as a step in the backward direction. He however also had the support of a well-known artist in Abanindranath Tagore. There was also support from Japanese artists who had an appreciation for the old Indian painting techniques. The influence of Bengal School was short-lived and it did not see much past 1920.

Here is the iconic painting made by Abinindranath Tagore.

Discussion

It was not clear to me if the switch in style meant that students were encouraged to switch the types of subjects painted or the painting style. The few examples I found made me incline to the former. Then I came across a passage from essay by the film-maker Mani Kaul and stopped thinking about it altogether. Here is a snip from Kaul’s essay – Seen from Nowhere. I found this here.

“Totally different from the cubists whose multiple perspectives brought them on the verge of destroying the object itself, the ‘perspectiveless’ view of space in the Moghul miniatures recovered a unity amidst the apparent planar distortions. For long we were made to believe the imbalanced optical proportions between corresponding dimensions in the miniatures were defects in the presentation of an objective reality instead of being, as we know today methods of generating an experience of individual spaces. The apparent contradiction triggered off by the juxtaposition of varying planes and proportions within a single-perspective-orientation towards the event finds illuminating parallels in certain philosophical and musical realizations.  On a lived level we have the example of Kabir whose non-dual insights into phenomena did not make him abandon the act of weaving cloth every single day. The sense of the real surging into the phenomena like the ocean into tides, waves after wave, made him never shut his eyes or close his ears to the suffering or enjoyment of a world awake. It is this deeply moving synthesis of the immediate and the ultimate that makes a single-perspective-orientation in a miniature release floating visual perspectives, much as the traditions of elaboration in the classical Indian music transform a single-scale-theme into a concert of floating auditory perspectives…”

Us and Them: Role of Nationalism

It is one thing to protect evolved forms of art from ‘cooler’ things, and another to manufacture divisions based on hollow self-interests. Mukul Dey, in his essay “Which way India art?” lists the rationale behind the call for reform of India art made by Havel. Here is a snip from the essay.

“The younger generation in Bengal gradually got rid of their superstitions and prejudices, and broadened their minds by coming into contact with a virile literature. They were, for at least fifty years, completely overcome by British influence. Many at that time even tried to forget Bengali to learn English. Many even embraced Christianity mainly for the sake of its prestige, and young Bengal in general tended to look down upon anything, which had the slightest Indian flavor in it. Indigenous literature and art found a precarious refuge in Bat Tala and Kalighat while the educated classes wore frock- coats, furnished their homes with plush furniture from European shops and gratified their artistic cravings with nude marble statues bought from undertakers, garnishing their conversation and letters with fluent quotations from Shakespeare, Milton and Byron.

Educated Bengalis soon came to realize that unless they laid a solid foundation of Indian culture underneath the European culture which they were striving so hard to imbibe, it would lead them nowhere…

Thoughtful Englishmen in India were, however, horrified to see themselves thus caricatured by the young Bengalis of the day, and their ill-disguised contempt for these outcasts from their own traditions proved eventually to be their own salvation. Educated Bengalis soon came to realize that unless they laid a solid foundation of Indian culture underneath the European culture which they were striving so hard to imbibe, it would lead them nowhere, but merely make them the laughing stock of thinking Englishmen and Indians alike. The result was a quickening of the national pulse in every field of life, followed by what may be called the birth of Modern Indian culture….”

The call for reform was also influenced by Japanese artists. Several Japanese artists visited India from 1900. They had an appreciation for old Indian paintings and some were driven by their own brand of nationalism – Pan-Asianism. It is important to note that Japan at the same time was influenced by the West and not all the artists were happy about it. It is worthwhile to mention that the Japanese liked Indian art. During their visit to India they used Indian techniques to paint Indian subjects. According to Mukul Dey, they also demonstrated how to draw and paint on paper/silk using techniques similar to the ones used to paint the famous frescoes of Ajanta and Bagh.

Any mention of pan-asianism should be accompanied with the colorful Okakura Kakuz?. Okakura Kakuz? contributed to the development of art in Japan and was one of primary founders of the Tokyo School of Art. His thoughts on Pan-Asianism can be gathered from this snippet on him from Wikipedia

“….The Ideals of the East (1904), published on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, is famous for its opening line, “Asia is one.” He argued that Asia is “one” in its humiliation, of falling behind in achieving modernization, and thus being colonized by the Western powers. This was an early expression of Pan-Asianism….”

Lessons to be Learnt?

The above story is one where certain individuals fought to maintain individuality – the ways of people of a region. Why did they fight? Did they foresee a tragedy? Your answer to this question is probably a lesson to you.

This post is based on two articles – Which way Indian Art? by Mukul Dey and An Artist Remembered by Satyashri Ukil. I have tried to embellish it with things I found here and there.