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(Trends, Motifs and Affinities in the Visual Art of Karnataka)
PART I
(a) Introduction:
The visual culture of 20th century Karnataka can be subdivided into those that included verbal, literary elements as appendixes (as in films and theatres) and those that believe in belonging to a ‘pure visual expression’. It means deletion of the experience of other senses when the ‘eye’ operates. This was, by and large, due to the global influence of Clement Greenberg’s notion of ‘Modern Painting’*1* that was internalized into a desi form. This very division between ‘pure visuals’ and ‘multi-sensory visuals’ is also the division between the pre-independent era and the post-independent era of visual culture of Karnataka. However, as per now, the focus should be necessarily on the post-independent era due to various reasons: The pre-independent era, mainly undocumented, due to the very ideological outlook that artists of that era had nurtured–both in Northern Karnataka school and the Southern Mysore Palace school and its close associates–was operating on the level of a bourgeoistic pleasure rather than on a serious theoretic or philosophical angle. Criticism is what they despised, rather deliberately and (hence) critical appraisal is that which never took place with the pre-independent art of Karnataka. On the other hand the post-independent works of Karnataka–mainly after the “We Four” group and new media ventures—almost act as ‘critical visual texts’ to what happened in/to their past, apart from existing as independent artworks.
(b) Schools of Influence:
Bengal Revival school (in Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan) and Sir J.J.School of Art (Bombay) were the two major influential schools which framed the mindset of the art of Karnataka, through our pioneers whose initiation into art was from there. While K. Venkatappa studied at Calcutta and was the student of Abhanindranath Tagore, K.K.Hebbar and others studied at J.J.School of Art. Nutan Kala Mandir in Mumbai, run by the artist Dandavathimat was the poor man’s J.J.School of Art, for most Karnataka artists, on either side of those decades of Indian independence, say, between 1930s to 70s. Shankaragowda Bettadoor (Santiniketan), N.H.Kulkarni (New Delhi) and S.G.Vasudev (Cholamandalam) are points of references for the influence of various schools on Karnataka art. I am not sure–or rather, sure– that these personalities, by and large, are not recognized/acknowledged with the history of those schools in a pronounced way (exception being Vasudev). In other words, if the art history of Karnataka claims Shankaragowda to belong to Sanitiniketan School, the ‘Nandan’ annual art historical issues from Kala Bhavana might not have even a trace of either Gowda or even K.Venkatappa in its articles! To make a sophisticated intricacy of the formation of twentieth century Karnataka art brief, The main schools of thought that influenced the art of 20th century Karnataka were:
(a) Bengal school (Santiniketan, 1910-1950s),
(b) Sir J.J.School of Art (Bombay),
(c) Progressive Art Group (Bombay, 1945-47)
(d) Cholamandalam (Tamil Nadu) and
(e) The Baroda Narrative School of Art (Baroda).
(c) Public and Private sponsoring agencies for Karnataka visual arts:
Before independence, the ‘north’ and ’south’ art schools of Karnataka were almost unfamiliar to each other. Even in the northern part of India the Progressive Group of Artists (PAG, Bombay, 1945-47 to which M.F.Hussain, Ara, Raza, F.N.Souza belonged) thought that they were the first Indian modernists artists. By then it was already two decades since the heydays of the Bengal art movement, initiated by Abhanindranath Tagore, was over (1910s-30s). Recorded rumours confirm the appreciation of Rabindranath Tagore for the works of Raja Ravi Varma and a later refusal of it, much before Bengal school of was initiated. Thus there is an enormous sense of forgetfulness and fragmentation that underlines the pan-Indian art history. The art history of Karnataka doesn’t seem to lag behind this, problematising the basic questions of whom and what is it that is included and excluded from the history of Karnataka art.
Perhaps the inception of Karnataka Lalitkala Academy (in Bangalore) in 1960s was the first attempt by the political, governing agency, to bring in a sense of ‘Statehood’ amongst artists who basically hailed from two main geographical part called North and South Karnataka. The birth of the academy also raised a serious theoretic question about the problem of:
(a) Diaspora; and
(b) Art democracy.
Who are the artists and on what basis are they called as Karnataka artists? This seemingly simple question doesn’t have an easy answer. While S.G.Vasudev and Yusuf Arakkal, two popular artists settled in Karnataka are diasporic, they also share other identities. Vasudev has been identified with Cholamandalam art movement that occurred in Tamil Nadu, while Yusuf has been identified with Malayalam linguistic identity (geographically with Kerala). This dual or multiple roles of the art and artists of Karnataka, arguably, is very specific to Karnataka and the attitude of its art community!
The academy has acted as a governing body that, in the beginning, helped a mutual familiarization of art and artists from various parts of the State. However, the immense mediocrity evidently retained in its publications, lectures, monographs, workshops and ideology (more than anything) implies that its ‘logical end’ is in itself already an aspect of the past. The art of Karnataka has passed through several stages:
(a) The gallery culture of the 60s,
(b) The painterly ventures of the 70s,
(c) The opportunity for Karnataka artists to study outside in the 80s, mainly at Baroda, Santiniketan and Royal College of Art (London),
(d) The avant garde movement of the 1990s and
(e) The 2000 decade in which the very meaning of art (of Karnataka) has been redefined, resembling anthropological essence and has a pan-Indian identity for the first time. The Lalitkala Academy, owing to its democratic nature, after passing through these five chronological stages of art sponsorship and practice, has forgotten one core essence of art production. Being a government agency, it had and has forgotten that avant garde (an attitude to revolt through art) and a government democracy cannot go hand in hand anymore!
(d) International Recognitions for the Subaltern:
It is a relevant fact that all States of India are formulated on its main spoken language, which is inevitably proximate to the literature of that land. While this has facilitated a self-complete identity for those fields of cultural expression, that depends on literature (like fiction, non-fiction books, theatre plays, films, music and dance forms) visual arts–of any State in general and Karnataka in particular–doesn’t consider Kannada language as a ‘binding agency’. For instance, the art produced by most women artists of Karnataka (Pushpamala, Sheela Gowda, Shanthamani, Surekha, Prabhavathi among others) draw the spirit and inspiration from someone like Frida Kalho of Brazil, they might address Akka Mahadevi—the medieval Kannada mystic-poetess with the new media. It is only in the history of Karnataka art of last two decades that one could imagine Frida, Akka and new media appearing together, in the same line, spirit and place! This is the Dadaist confidence of Karnataka art, wherein the identity of being from this land has been considered as optional but not as a compulsion. For the same reason, the art of Karnataka (’of Bangalore’ to be specific) has drawn the attention of whole country. The importance of this can be felt better if one considers the fact that before 80s, the best of Karnataka artists were in the last lines of the pan-Indian art history books.
For the same reason, the art of Karnataka has been recognized in spaces and places ‘outside’ the imagination of its literature and theatre forms. Sheela Gowda’s work has been represented in ‘Documenta’ show 2007, a show held once in four years in Kassel (Germany) and supposed to be the best on this earth, as per now. International awards, fellowships, grants and recognitions like Inlaks ( G.Jayakumar, B.V.Suresh, Ramesh Kalkur, Sheela Gowda, Om Prakash), Charles Wallace Trust of India (British Council award) (Suresh Jayaram, Ranjini Shettar, Abhishekh Hazra, H.A. Anil Kumar), Unesco-Aschberg (M.S. Prakash Babu, Surekha, Anil Kumar), Sanskriti award ( M.S.Umesh) have been availed to the art of Karnataka. This is true despite the fact that the overall cultural field and crowd of Karnataka, defined and controlled by mainly the discourse conducted by its litterateurs, is in total darkness about such performances and achievements in the visual art field of its own land! The visual arts of Karnataka have undoubtedly its roots in this land but reap its fruits and springs elsewhere.
1950s was also a decade that created a stir in those cultural fields that did not always adhere to the ’specific’ characters of a language. Within this paradox, the recipient of the one lakh rupee worth K. Venkatappa annual Award, given to a well known artist (only) from Karnataka by Karnataka government, is very predictable but is held in high esteem. Migration, interactivity and exiledom *2*are three important subjects that have never been addressed by art governing agencies but have already become the subjects for ‘critical scrutiny’, that too from ‘within’ the works in Karnataka art.
(e) The Northern & Southern Schools, Art Institutions:
1950s was a decade when Karnataka had two important styles of art schools. Art-wise the State was divided geographically horizontally into two. The art of North Karnataka differed from the southern school of Karnataka. The northern part of Karnataka was away from the aristocratic Southern Mysore, from wherein the Maharajas (kings) ruled. Hence, a State-sponsorship for art was literally a ‘distant’ possibility. Mumbai, a port-city and hence a multicultural setting served as the place for the Northern school artists (mainly from Gulbarga, Dharwad and Raichur) to study, interact and sell art. J.S.Khanderao and V.G.Andani were to set up prominent art instutituions in Gulbarga only in the distant future, after independence. This became the main center for art education which was followed and compensated to a large extent by the Fine Art faculty established at Kannada University, Hampi. G.Jayakumar and then Dr.S.C.Patil, with the assistance of Dr. Shivananda Bantanoor and Dr. Siddhalingaswamy Hiremath, were to take over, frame and inculcate the skeletal outline of the nature of art education over there. Its focus, arguably, has been more of the regional, subaltern, folklore, thus sparing the cultural discourse of the urban and mainstream to cities like Mysore and Bangalore. Also, it is important to note that ‘art-in-practice’ has been laid more stress instead of ‘art-in-theory’, owing to the practical initiation of the above said scholars.
The trump card of North Karnataka artists’ lies in the landscapes and colourful pictures they have been consistently creating. As art historian Rudolf Arnheim argues, a society hailing from a dry geography tends to create greenery and colours, as a gestalt, to compensate what they lack in their domestic settings. This argument appropriately fits into the Northern school of art. There is also an element of nostalgia in the works of Shankar Alandakar, M.A. Chetty, Makali, Andani, Vijay Bagodi, Chandrahas Jalihal among others. Owing to the recent trends of the phenomena of diaspora, these artists and others are bound to refute such a classification owing to:
(a) their migration to other States,
(b) a desire to be recognized on a national scale and
(c) The inborn tendency of the Northern school artists’ refusal to be placed within the art-in-practice, mentioned earlier.
Let us chronologically fast forward a bit. Since the migration has increased in the recent decades, the artists of Northern or Southern schools no more adhere to their own places. At the same, Bangalore is made up of artists whose ancestry is from elsewhere. It is a city of migrants and hence the accepted fact that Karnataka art is by and large a Bangalore-based right now, means that the city is a miniature version of the State to which it is the capital, nothing more and nothing less.
The Northern school artists were termed as artists of Hyderabad Karnataka and Mumbai Karnataka. These two areas already had pre-independent art schools. D.V.Halabhavi’s school at Dharwad (now headed by his son Suresh Halabhavi) and Kalamandira School of Art at Bangalore (now headed by the founder Aa.Na.Subbarao’s grandson A.M.Prakash) were already as old as 25 years in the 50s and are yet alive and active. Interestingly Ken School of Arts (established in 1960s) and College of Fine Arts at Chitrakala Parishath (both at Bangalore) were two important art schools that were yet to be born, after a decade, in the mid and late 60s, both at Bangalore. The pioneers who began those two institutions were Nadoja R.M.Hadapad and M.S.Nanjunda Rao, respectively. It is interesting to note that most of the schools have been passed on from generation to generation within the family genealogy. The Chamarajendra Technical Institute (CTI), begun in the last quarter of 19th century in Mysore, was to be fragmented and sub-divided into the existing structure under the name CTI and an art school CAVA ( Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts) in 1980s.
Most art schools in Karnataka were and yet continue to be Diploma schools, there are almost one hundred and fifty art schools—the largest in the country, almost all of them come under secondary board of education. The only reason why Ken School of Art stands out of the rest of 149 schools is because of the fact that its founder R.M.Hadapad laid an immense stress on ‘philosophizing’ visual culture rather than ‘beautifying’ it.
(f) Multidisciplinary Visual Arts:
It is a historic fact that Kannada literature, by and large, has the ‘hegemonic privilege’ of being the one which defines Kannada culture by and large. The creative novelists, poets who were also literary teachers in the State Universities were the ones who handled the responsibility of defining what Kannada culture means. In the due process, they were attempted to decide the boundaries of visual arts as well by turning a blind eye to it. The litterateurs, over the decades, have proven that a cultural dialogue is basically verbal one. And the visual artists of Karnataka, over the decades, have proven them wrong but getting associated with cultural agencies and dialogues, which is beyond the perception of the gate keepers of Kannada culture via Kannada literature. One of the several reasons behind this is the fact that the visual discourse of Indian art—of which Karnataka art is only a part—is largely in English. Though regional language like Kannada has attempted to place the visual discourse within ‘Kannada discourse’, the former has evaded it, owing to its commitment to the legacy of the national(istic) hegemonic dialogue occurring in schools like Santiniketan, Baroda and sponsoring agencies at cities like Madras-Delhi-Bombay-centric. However, the visual arts did gain only a marginal entry, owing to its non-verbal characters. The prominent humourist, botanist, writer B.J.L Swamy, literary giants like Jnanapeet awardee K. Shivarama Karantha, Purnachandra Tejaswi illustrated their own books and were initimate friends with artists like K.K.Hebbar and K.T.Shivaprasad. So was another writer Vyaasaraya Ballala who became the voice of Hebbar in a posthumous biographical film directed by Girish Kasaravalli. The decision of Kannada university fine art faculty to consider the research of artists yet alive and largely representing the Northern schools was a definite focus upon the subaltern Statehood of art as against the mainstream discourse of the pan national. Most M.Phil and PhD dissertations done at Hampi (Dr. Siddalingaswamy Hiremath’s research on R.M.Hadapad, Dr. Laxmidevi Gawai’s research about M.A.Chetty exemplify the argument herein).
(g) Popular & the Private discourses:
To repeat the argument, the visual arts of Karnataka, since 1950s has been defined in the light of what Kannada literature defined its own ‘culture’ to be. Accordingly visual arts is treated as a formalist, self-complete unit and field which serves as an entertainer and illustrator of a literary idea and not the one which can add newer dimensions to philosophy, like, say, literature has been able to do. Hence K. Venkatappa and B.K.Srinivasa Varma are popularly acknowledged while Rumale Chennabasappa and K.T.Shiva Prasad are pedagogically received. It is already a known fact that the popular is more contestable than the pedagogical in visual arts and films of the land . It is notable that any ‘visual’ catering to the pure visual delight that deletes the verbal, vocal capacity was written off. Poet Ramachandra Sharma used to repeatedly equate the “We Four” kind of Karnataka Progressive semi-abstract visual exercises with Navya attitude in Kannada literature. He often mentioned this in talks but never wrote it. “Both were un-understandable” he used to say, “because both were there for an experience”. Even to this day, it is un-understandable why people don’t understand the most important sentence, while watching a picture, “pictures are there to be experienced, not to be understood, like, say, a mathematical formula!” This, I believe, is a hegemonic contribution by the Kannada literary discourse to one of its marginal art form, while in itself has been in rift with that which has marginalized it on a national scene—the Indian English literature. Paradoxically, the prominent visual dialogue of Karnataka art, due to the same reason, has been pursued in English (G.Venkatachalam, S.N.Chandrashekar, Marta Jakimowitz, Suresh Jayaram among others) as though to contest the literary suppression of visual forms, through Kannada as a verbal language. It has now been considered as a ‘marginal visual arts’ protest against the mainstream literature, specific to Kannada. U.R.Ananthamurthy had once metaphorically stated that “English is Brahmin and Kannada is Shudra”. I would like to reinstate that as literature is Brahmin and its visual culture as Shudra in Karnataka“.
Rudrappa Mallappa Hadapad (R.M.Hadapad) initiated two visual projects that gave way to the birth of modernity in Kannada visual arts. He was one of the four “We Four ” artists group (the others included the popular G.Y.Hublikar, Patel and Munoli. Later others like M.B.Patil, G.S.Shenoy joined the ‘We Four Plus’ group) and was the founder member of the Ken School of Art. Both were begun in the mid 1960s. Just before that, during this modernist movement and even after this period, the relation between words, visuals continued to exist and persist. Hadapad laid much stress on it and Ken School literally became the place for such an activity. Hadapad, for the first time in the art of Karnataka, made artworks that were pedagogic exercises, and made class room demonstrations that were his artworks. Today, neither of them exists nor is museumised though his contribution is nothing less than K.K.Hebbar and K.Venkatappa. Both KKH and KV have museums instituted in their names at Bangalore.
The difference between mainstream art and illustration was not so distinct before ‘We Four’ during the reign of Northern and Southern schools. Naagi Reddy’s “Chandamaama” was the popular magazine that brought the art of artists like Ravi Varma, Shankar, M.T.V.Acharya, Baapu (Andhra Pradesh) and others to everyone’s home. That was the first MTV visual arts of Karnataka, wherein the origin of the artist was of less importance. All of them–like Swamy Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (West Bengal)—were thought to be personalities from Karnataka. Perceptual migration and exiledom began in Karnataka visual culture along with the advent of ‘ Chandamaama’ magazine aimed at children and read by elders! Appropriately, the logical heir to Chandaamaama was the multi-channeled television that was to strangely contest the argument of visual art’s sole purpose of ‘pure visual happening’ as futile.
However, the popularity did not do much in initiating the public into various ways of seeing. R.S.Naidu , like the Kannada play writer Samsa had a mysterious, communist attitude and suffered from the same kind of phobia of the authority. He was a conscientious artist whose ballet sketches (B.V.K.Shastry has written a book about his ballet drawings); the post-card drawings and tiny-Daumier-like sculptures gave a personal touch to the public literary portraits he did in plaster. Even to this day, those works persist, despite the fact that they have been unable to enter the agencies of art institutions.
(h) Hegemonic Marginalization & Art Groups:
Mute the television and ‘watch’ the Kannada theatre plays, films, tele-serials telecast in it. The overall blindness evoked due to the repetitions, stylization and cliché in ‘visualising’ is the first thing that strikes the eye. Added with the overwhelming music, it is an attempt to evoke visuals through anything other than visuals (music, digital manipulation) which proves to be a futile exercise. Kannada as a visual linguistic experience is dominated by Kannada, a culture, that treats sound and words as alternatives to visuals, at which they actually don’t excel *3* while the mantra of the mainstream visuals arts is to produce visual experiences largely through visuals (alone) the non-visual culturalists tend to legitimize those pastiches of sound and words’ attempt to evoke visuals. This has also been the difference between the mainstream visual arts and the world of illustrations (Ramamurthy, Satya, Chandranath Acharya, P.S.Kumar, Gujjar, Makale, Rathode, Ra. Suri among others) before and after the arrival of the digital facilities.
It was in the fifties, that the first student from Karnataka, Shankaragowda Bettadoor, went to Santiniketan to study the indigenous, national mode of representing art. K.Venkatappa, the iconised artists of Karnataka was already settled in Bangalore and had also retired from painting but his famous court battle with the then Maharaja of Mysore and was yet on. *4* His study of art at Calcutta art school was to become a mistaken identity in the future. Most writers mistook him to be an ex-student of Santiniketan, the first modern art school of the Bengal region which had already acquired the status of a ‘national’ school. This shows the ‘critical attitude and desire’ of the Kannada critics who wished one of their protagonist to be the part of a larger boundary of art. *5*
Since the day when the Gulbarga legendary painters Pandit S.M.Pandit (of Gulbarga) was excelling as the first artist to paint colour posters for Hindi films, even before the advent of colour films, the art of Karnataka has resisted two things:
(a) There has been no extremes in representation itself—no ‘hyper realistic’ or purely ‘abstractionists’ (exception being a certain stage in the works of K.T.Shiva Prasad and J.S.Khande Rao whose works came close to those two extreme painterly tendency, at least in the way they appealed to the retina); and
(b) There were no groups like ‘1890′ (Baroda) , ‘Shilpi Chakra’ (New Delhi) ,’Cholamandalam’ (Madras) etc., Curious enough is the fact that some artists of Karnataka have identified themselves as members of groups elsewhere, outside the boundaries of Karnataka. S.G.Vasudev (Cholamandalam group of art, Madras) and K.K.Hebbar (Progressive Art Group, Bombay) are two such examples. The relevant art groups within Karnataka ( Samyojitha, South Canara Art Council (SCAC), Mysore Art Council (MAC) aimed at considering the ‘State itself as a self complete unit’, which made it anonymous outside its boundaries.
(i) A brief historic conclusion of the two schools:
The artists who were well known in the north were Halabhavi, Dandavathimat, Pavanje, Badiger, M.A.Chetty and the like. Badiger was the first artist from Karnataka to have studied in Royal College of Art, London in the early 20th century. It was another three-four decades since then for an artist from Karnataka to get an opportunity to study the visual language of another land with hands-on experience. And when they got it, there were too many of them. At certain point in mid-90s poll, five out of ten Inlakh scholarships were acquired by students who had passed out of the physically tiny but nation-wide popular Ken school of Art (Bangalore) alone (Sheela Gowda, B.V.Suresh, Om Prakash, G. Jayakumar, Ramesh Kalkur among others).
The artworks produced by the norther painters of Karnataka were actually about nativity. This becomes important today, since the creation, production and circulation of art is today focused upon the urban location—Bangalore. This is true even if one considers three to four generation of Northern artists like J.S.Khande Rao, Vijaya Sindoor, V.G.Andani, M.G.Doddamani and P.B.Harsoor. While the northern-style remains to remain evergreen, there is nothing like a southern ’style’ that prevails. Southern school was mainly sponsored by the Mysore Palace and ended with its official termination, at the arrival of political independence. Basically Northern school was a protest against city-centric, urban-centric, national-centric notions about mainstream art. Ironically, none of the above mentioned artists are in the mainstream of Indian art and this need not be a loss of virtuosity but a pledge for addressing them on their own independent self, which is one of the specific characteristic of Karnataka.
Among the northerners, there is a specific non-urban subject that has been dealt since decades, before and after independence. It is the addressal of Veerashaiva and lingayath religion on a popular note. Most religious centers (Matts) have pictures of their religious centers—be it Shiva and Basavanna, as if there is no difference in between—by artists belonging to a strong Northern community. And most of the techniques used are the J.J.School-oriented Victorian style, coming from the British colonization, through easel painting technique which was innovated to serve Christianity, historically speaking!*6*
M.A.Chetty’s*7* works are classical examples for this Northern tendency. Interesting there were very few sculptors, printmakers and the other media artists, due to the lack of facilities and infrastructure in the northern art schools and the absence of art schools in most places. The shape of a creative image depends on the absence of the facility to create it! The second strong community next to the Veerashaivas of Karnataka, the Vokkaliga Gowda’s don’t fine an appropriate, self conscious visual representation by themselves or outsiders.
(j) Southern School (Mysore ):
The Southern school consist of artworks that were created by artists who were within the regime of the then dying Mysore palace sponsorship. Termed as court-painters, the artists had all the possibilities and more limitations to get involved in visual perception beyond the bounds and norms of the palace. Though art history is full (and more so) of art produced under the aegis of court-sponsorship, a sense of creativity herein had its own definition—rather an outdated one. Hence when Venkatappa had to learn more about visuals he had to go to Bengal. One art form was preferred (music) and honored more than the other (visual arts) that made Venkatappa give up painting for the sake of music, received a letter of admonition from his guru Abhanindranath Tagore and was answered back in the form of a now legendary painting ” Mad After Veena” (1920s).*8*
Mysore was a city that also had leant its name to the State before it was renamed as Karnataka. M.Ramu’s studio was well known in Mysore. The amount of creative urge and what the court painters understood to be ‘creativity’ was quiet different from that of the Northern schools and the contemporary visual exercises of the north (Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta). The court artists who were well within the bounds of the power-structure of the Mysore palace were assigned, commissioned with scenes that had European predecessors. The notion of ‘realism’ that prevails in those innumerable ‘albums’ which serve as court-documents–reminding one about the Mughal miniatures in spirit—have an overall imprints of documentary album-like character. The works of the southern school that roughly include the works of M.Veeranna, Kesavaiah, Basavaiah, Y.Nagaraju, Y.Subramanya Raju, S.S.Kukke etc., arguably, fall into the premises of a visual confrontation between the art of Mysore traditional painting (itself derived from the Vijayanagar miniature paintings) and the mediocre European mode of realism that came to India through the bored, Sunday-painter wives of the military sergeant who were posted to India at places like Murshidabad, Patna and Lucknow.
The Southern school was not as soul searching as the Northern one for one reason—their subjects, mode of execution etc., were pre-determined by the representing agency. Their creative urge was within a ’specified’ range and that was specified by someone else for them. In fact the differences and confrontation between the Northern and Southern school existed outside itself in time and space, since 1960s in the form of two schools in Bangalore. M.S.Nanjunda Rao’s Chitrakala Parishath and R.M.Hadapad’s Ken School of Art represent the Southern and Northern school’s attitude, posthumously—that too for a long period of time! While Ken retained nativity within a metropolitan city, CKP was trying to be a part of defining what a metropolitan should be, in attitude and style.
(k) Aesthetics-Politics of the interdisciplinary Navodaya artists:
Is there the possibility of a “Kannada Eye”? An eye that is unique but is not different from other kind of visions, for the sake of being different? An eye that is constructed as a result of having passed through a cultural influence, but retaining something of -in-itself at the core? The works of K.Venkatappa, for instance, is an amalgamation of the Mysore and Bengal school. Pictorially speaking, in one of Venkatappa’s painting “ Buddha“, we see that the enlightened man is depicted in similarity with the Bengal style of wash technique, while the dark blue cave behind him is rendered so as to suggest an academic perspectival depth of Victorianism. Can we say that the Bengal enlightenment (in this particular case, Buddha himself serves as a metaphor to it) is destroying the maara/satan called as the academic/colonial/Victorian mode of visual representation? Compare this analysis with that of M.A.Chetty’s painting seen at Lingayat Matts. Both Northern and Southern schools unitedly attempted at creating an identity that was very specific to Karnataka, and opposed:
(a) The European; and
(b) pan-Indian influence, both at the same, as if there was no difference in between! This is what can be termed as a typical, metaphoric ‘Kannada Eye’.
Consider one more example to prove the above point. If the works of F.M.Sufi are placed next to that of S.N.Swamy, N.S.Subbukrishna, S.S.Kukke and others, the difference becomes obvious (southern school). What seems to be ‘mere’ illustrations of animals (by Sufi) in today’s context can as well be a form of protest to the ‘royal’ palace art that was in vogue all around Sufi, in and around Mysore. The works can be compared with that of Peter Brueghel (of Netherlands) who opted to capture the essence of the mundane country life of the Alps mountain, while in the down south of Europe, the other Renaissance masters were busy painting the subjects as royal as the Biblical themes.
(l) North, South and the ‘Popular’ in between:
The fourth example can be that of N.S.Swamy, M.T.V.Acharya*9* and the like. Their ‘artworks’ are now confined within the boundary of ‘popular art’. It essentially means to lie low within the hierarchy of art. But one can realize that during their (own) times, the very barrier between the so called mainstream art and sub-stream art was non-existent . The landscapes of Rumale Chennabasappa, K.Venkatappa, N.Hanumaiah, for instance, can be ‘forms of protest’ against royalty which can react only through humans, human figures and the like. The absence of human figures in the main works of these and other artists were mild avant garde against royalty and sponsorship, which is subject for a fascinating story against the monarchy *10*
The notion that those were less ’serious’ art compared to our times–is what can/should be contested. Towards this end, I have already suggested two theoretic models to understand the art of the twentieth century Karnataka visual art. And the models are termed as ‘ vishwathmaka’ and ‘swajanapara’*11*. Read it roughly as the global and the regional, respectively. However these are different from the already popular notions of what we understand as desi and margi. Since we are so habituated to see ourselves through the eye of the ‘others’ (meaning those writing in English, and from outside Karnataka) that my above suggestion might seem deceptively anarchic. What exactly happens if we yield to the others’ viewpoint could be similar to that of the Orientalists’ view of the Orientals’ which was presumed to be the only way of understanding the latter.
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· However, the artists and artistic experience that were alive during the pre-independence period as well as those who were alive as artists during the political transition from the time of ‘Rajas’ to ‘democratic’ set up, underwent a kind of ‘cultural transition’ that has almost become alien and unavailable to us, now. It is through the government Academy’s (a) collection and
· (b) Its publication alone (often mostly only in the form of ‘monographs’ of artists as against a holistic, group discourse) that this ‘lost world’ of the artists of pre-independence Karnataka is yet alive to us. Both the possibilities and shortcomings of the boundaries of this unique world, however, are also ‘defined’ by this very Academy’s notion of art.
·
· Such oppression was the result of the ‘politically unconscious transition’ that these artists and their vocation together underwent:
· (i) It was as though their refusal to change was a protest to the external socio-political change as well as to the aesthetic avant-garde.
· (ii) To remain silent through artworks was a deceptive device that the visual art field of those times deliberately constructed during those politically demanding times.
· (iii) That was the time when there was a transition from the reign of the Rajas to the presumably less despotic democratic setup.
·
· All we can do now is to cross check as to how very well equipped we are in ‘attempting’ to measure those ‘men’ whom we have already over-simplistically classified as ‘Romanticists’, ‘Surrealists’ and the ‘Regionalists’. The vast body of what we today term it as ‘regional’ and ‘ sub stream genders’ of art, which can be simply identified through portraits (Madhugiri Ramu), landscapes (Rumale Chennabasavaiah, N.Hanumaiah), animal studies (F.M.Sufi), creative compositions (M.A.Chetty, S.S.Kukke) etc., was in vogue then. However during ‘their’ own period, those works received due recognition as ‘mainstream art’ by the general audience.
·
· Speaking in a pure pictorial language, what was submerged or lost from then onwards was the distinction between the ‘form’ and ‘content’. The famous but ancient visual dictum of a ‘foreign form’ and ‘National content’ (Karnataka has been addressed as ‘nation’ severally, in literature) was the closely guarded property of this period which lost its firm hold on our artists’ conscience since 60s onwards.
·
(m) 1960s –”We Four” & its Visual/Visible Impact:
With the initiation of “We Four”, was born a vocal critic of any visual that was romantic, surreal and verbal. His scientific outlook was to convert the sensuously pleasurable visual, a noun, into an element of discourse, into a verb without a final definition. His deconstructive tendency was to convert the composites of what one understands as ‘visuals’ into its basic essence, so that one can see through the pleasure of image-making. His found pleasure in breaking one’s easy belief, the ease is what was contested first, and the belief, next.
No other artist had tutored so many prominent contemporary artists of Karnataka with international bearings today as Hadapad has done. The free-spirit that he spread through his Ken school, within which he literally lived, was due to his skepticism about art-education itself, that too as a teacher. Can creativity be ‘taught’—was a genuine concern he evoked through ‘teaching’ itself, despite being aware of the ironic profession he had undertaken. Even J.M.S.Mani, the muscle behind Ken school for which Hadapad was the brain and heart, did attempt this: when everyone thought that the art of demonstrating a painting belonged to old school of art education, both these artist-tutors revived it. They erased the difference between a class room demonstration and a gallery exhibit. With that, the question of art and its teaching was not solved, but placed into face newer challenges. Telling it in another way, while enquiring about art, the very definition of art itself was re-defined. Surrounded by a police station, swimming pool, hospital and market, Ken was framed as a school with rural flavour, within a growing metropolitan city—Bangalore. It was a free school of thought, often remotely compared to Santiniketan and Bauhaus. I personally feel that if Santiniketan and Bauhaus were like Hinduism, Ken school was more like a Buddhist outlook of life—it refused even those schools that refused any kind of schools.
PART II
(n) A New era of New Media & Materials:
Art, since 1980s in Karnataka, has become anything and everything that it was not. Call it the ‘conspiracy of art’ (Baudrillard’s term), the ‘death of the author and text’ (Barthes and Foucault’s arguments), it is Gregory Ulmer’s notion of the art as an “object of post-criticism” that seems to fit the understanding of art of last two decades .*12* With a constant resistance for the very form of criticism, the new media works that emerged in Karnataka were also connected with the self-conscious arrival of gender awareness. New media, new medium, feminist awareness (Amrita Shergill, Frida Kalho and Joseph Beuys as inspirations), International Artist-in-residencies, Inlakh awards, Charles Wallace British Council awards—all in all came, saw and conquered the art and artists’s spirit in Karnataka.
K.K.Hebbar, as the President of Karnataka Lalitkala Academy offered scholarships for promising artists/art students of Karnataka and recommended them to study at the Fine Art Faculty of M.S.University, Baroda and Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan, West Bengal. After their spirited education, they came back, most of them taught at Mysore CAVA for a while and began a new wave of thinking, perceiving and grasping visual culture. 1980s was also the time when there was an intense change cultural focus on interdisciplinary nature. Interaction between two art forms was not ‘intercultural’ but between two unexpected forms of expression that were not already termed as forms of expression. This is the cultural act that Roland Barthes famously terms as ‘ from work to text‘. A group of artists began to use ‘new’ media of expression:
(a) It meant not using oil, watercolour, graphics and the like that almost were as old as two to five centuries.
(b) It also meant using of materials that were never used for artistic expression, like oil paint was not, before Italian Renaissance.
(c) The whole process of what art was to disrupt deliberately. ‘Art is not what you think it is’ became a slogan for newer expressions.
For instance, R.M.Hadapad, when he was the President of Lalitkala Academy, brought together various ‘individual’ sculptors to create the ‘Samooha Shilpa’, which is a permanent installation near Ravindra Kalakshetra. John Devraj, Sham Sunder, Pushpamala and others made a work for which the idea of ‘artistic authorship’ was re-defined. Hadapad becomes the producer of this work and art as cultural, participation production gained relevance. This and similar works gained prominence, that challenged the metamorphosis of art into a gallery ‘commodity’. In order to achieve this, there were alternative economic outlets traced. If they were unavailable through the Kannada culture, it was found, traced and applied internationally in the form of residencies and awards. Kannada culture, minus visual culture of Karnataka became more and blinder to this aspect. Kannada culture, plus Karnataka visual culture, since 1980s is, arguable one of the best achievement of Indian cultural experience, due to the simple reason that nowhere else in India has there been a case of a cultural ‘eye’ becoming so different and hence difficult, since last two decades.
(o) The Capital city: from ‘Place’ to ‘Subject’ for Art:
Bangalore as an entity has undergone a drastic change and challenge that its neighbours like say Tumkur is not faced with. It had also become ‘a contemporary site’ for most novel artistic expression as well. Earlier it was a ‘mere container’ of such performances. Visual culture itself had shifted from aesthetics to the political, leaving behind those formal aesthetics, beauty, divinity and spiritualism assigned to art, into the rural district. Arguably, owing by the direction in which the art and its criticism of Karnataka has taken, in par with the creative concerns at the national level, there is huge divide between the urban and rural art of Karnataka. By urban, I mean anything produced outside Bangalore, by and large, is passé to the historicity of art. On the other hand, there is no expression for the ‘angst’ felt by the rural against those creative circuits of the city, within or without their artworks. The other cities that genuinely contributed to the production of meaningful art in Karnataka are Mysore, Gulbarga and Dharwad.
Bangalore, one such city for instance, withholds evidences of being an exemplary site ‘responsible’ for a tradition of artistic adventures rather than being a mere catalyst or a force for creativity. Being withheld in such an intermediary state, the city had to embalm its ‘general nostalgic’ character through the ‘outsider’ artist (mostly teachers who came and settled down here from elsewhere) and the ’specific nostalgia’ through the insider-artist, in order to make an ‘artistic history’ of its own self, in the way Kolkotta and Mumbai have been doing, from a long time. Hence, Bangalore—the city—does not belong to the ‘insiders’ but finds an excuse to be ‘creatively historicized’ through creative personalities and their works, in an attempt to become what it was not. Thus it is a city ‘constantly on the move’ to be identified culturally. After 1980s, the vishwathmaka aspect of Karnataka means the art that took place ‘in’ and ‘around’ Bangalore and the city itself as the ‘main theme’ for such a venture.
Nevertheless, since mid-80s of the last century, it has served as ground to several experimental artworks that seem to be interdisciplinary in nature, as a text. It is a city—generally speaking—unlike Gulbarga or Mysore, somewhat similar to Rome of the great Renaissance period, wherein artists not only migrated into it, but also essentially ‘consumed’ it as a ’subject’ as well as ‘inspiration’ for their cultural expression. For instance, the research done at Center for Studies in Culture and Society (CSCS) has considerably focused on the city itself as an ‘object’ for theoretic study. As though to correlate to this, the artists associated with the city, in one way or the other, have also done something similar, with considerable amount of novelty (” Beledide Noda Bengaluru Nagara” meaning ‘Look at the growth of Bangalore, as a city’ curated as a part of a larger project by Janaki Nair and photographed by Raghav Shreyas). The city I am speaking about is less of a specific geographic location and more of a ‘miniature format’ of the State to which it is the capital, as well as an apt representative of the nation within which it is located.
Interestingly the second half of the post-independent Karnataka art has shifted its focus from ‘aesthetic’ concerns to’aesthetic-political’ probings.
There is a ‘remarkable’ (body of) artworks and their ‘intended’ and ‘intimate’ connection to the city. A few important works like “ Nelaakruti” (’Earthwork’ by M.S.Umesh, 1996), “Saakshi Gudda, Saakshi Gode” (Sheela Gowda), “ Sthalapuranagalu” (’Local Myths’, a curated show by artist N.Pushpamala and consisting of three artists from her immediate next generation), B.H.Srinivasa Prasad’s work (in “I as in India “), Surekha’s video-installation project at Max Mueller Bhavan (2007) called “Communing with Urban Heroins” gives a melancholic kaleidoscopic view of the various preoccupation and the which the ‘urban woman’ has been made to indulge either by will or force resulting in a chaotic order of her physique, psyche and her will. Suresh Jayaram’s eco-friendly paintings and photographs (all of them were created in the last two decades) had used specific ‘geographic locations’ (within the city) to comment upon the nature of the very sites that were being addressed in the first place (between Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park). In this case the sites of Bangalore were now used as ‘catalysts’ or ‘analogies’ or ‘personifications’ of something else the artists wanted to say.
(p) Farming and new framing for art:
Umesh’s “Earthwork”, intentionally tilled at the outskirts of the city, was literally a votive offering to the original profession (farming) of the man who built the city (a local chiefton, Kempegowda). Borrowed and returned to the owner who also used it for farming before and after this artistic tilling in real life, the time-space bound work was an act of drawing the Bangaloreans (or any other ‘citizen’, for that matter) to its own fast vanishing profession of the past.
(a) Farming as profession and
(b) The city’s mindless act of spreading out beyond its originally intended boundary was the two ‘binary opposites’ that were skillfully addressed through this work. While Umesh’s work could be a comment upon an overall modification of a city, Srinivasa Prasad’s usually large size works (exemplified in “I as in India” and “ Sthalapuranagalu”) re-evoke the forgotten glory of ’specific’ types of semi-urban structures. One of his works is literally developed upon a defunct socialist theatre house (called Samudaya) with the help of theatre props originally used as a part and parcel of the plays enacted by this house. He also laments on the ‘losses of a few other structures that defined the city. The general and specific modification in the form of what the artist feel as a ‘loss’ for a developing urban landscape is what is being ‘relocated’ by these two artist within a broad perspective as well as within the same real city as an ‘artistic advantage’.
(q) Casteism as a subject matter:
Kannada, as a language, unifies a set of artists of Karnataka in a sense very different from the way litterateurs get together. Casteism, in the general sense, is a factor that links the old timers to the city emotionally that the ‘outsiders’ can never cope up with. Arguably, it is (i.e., casteism), at its worst, a trump card much used in the political gains in the cultural circle and at its best, is creatively manipulated only in Kannada literature, particularly in regard to the experiences of ’shudra’ sensibilities. Dr.D.R.Nagaraj is the one litterateur who has theoretically and authentically justified its positivist side. For Suresh Jayaram, who runs the alternative studio space called “No.1, Shanti Road ” his geneology of being from the ‘Tigala’ community and the studio being placed between two lung spaces of the city acquires an autobiographical essence to create anything he does (like for Chittala, Mumbai is always evident in his works ‘only as’ a part of his autobiographical fiction), ‘womanhood’ has been the main caste that has been addressed. How the artists do this is subject for a lengthier dialogue, but their very willingness to address womanhood through new material and that too through what has been written off as a cliché in the art of painting (” And Tell Him About My Pain” by Sheela Gowda and “Bhagirathi” by Surekha and “Kismet-Phantom Lady” by Pushpamala) is a typical postmodernist attitude to revisit and re-evaluate a written off pastiche.
While Smitha Cariappa’s videos and performances are obviously about solitariness of lonely urban woman, Suresh probes at newer meaning of what it means to be from Thigala community, who were the gardeners (by profession) of this city known as ‘green city’, not so long ago. Babu Eshwar Prasad’s uninhibited landscapes are derived in Bangalore, but they might be reminiscent of Chikkamagalur, the place from where he hails and had spent his childhood. N.Hanumaiah, for instance would paint Chamundi hills of Mysore as if it was next to the Himalayas in scale. But the focus was more aesthetic. With the new-media-material artists, they were creating with concern and were not mere concerned with mere pretty beautifications, so to say.
(r) Photo-frames:
Not too long ago, the Karnataka Lalitkala Academy had refused to acknowledge photography as a media of creative expression. By the time the error was rectified, it was the age of moving images (video art) and digital images. The idea of skill shifted from the hand to the brain and heart. The picture frame was too limiting for the artists. The new kind of art forms included video art, installation, assemblage and all of them fell into the category of ‘new media, material work’ according to simplistic art writing that was abundant all around it. Visual art of Karnataka had entered the premise of anthropology, in more than one way. Many like Umesh, for instance, could easily move between acting in tele-series and films yet retain his identity as a new-material sculptor. But the artistic identity posed a new problem: could someone paint and create new material works (popularly and easily categorized as installations) at the same time.
This is too naïve a question, considering the art made in Karnataka with that of a global situation. *13* . The curators, critics and gallery people from throughout the country began to focus upon Bangalore. Khoj, a part of an international art workshop called Triangular Art Foundation (New Work) came to Mysore (Khoj-2002) and Bangalore (Khoj-2003). After being active for five years in Delhi alone, the second Indian place to be chosen was Karnataka! And it came here because of the confidence that Khoj had in the general preparedness of a group of artists here, who could stretch the very boundaries and definitions of art. Headed by N.S.Harsha, Surekha, Suresh Jayaram, Ramesh Kalkur, the two Khoj-workshops brought a couple of dozens of artists from a dozen countries. Most of them were chosen as friends and close accomplices from various continents. The dialogue about the art of a State or a Country was over and that of continents became pertinent. (Ref: www.khoj.com).
(s) Criticism & Critics:
Though a large body of mediocre art existed in the past, is existing and will continue to exist even in the future, this is the first common point that connects the art and culture of any place. It also proves the old dictum that art invites everyone but chooses a few. Art, in this sense, can never be democratic. And for the same reason the Academy’s structure to be democratic is self-defeating. However the new ventures in visual culture of Karnataka (since 1980s) has changed beyond recognition and those art journalists writing in the pretense of art critics had to modify the way they wrote about art. Most art writers were self-taught or were from other fields, which was/is their strength and weakness, at the same. This pretense of a re-adjustment of an old apparatus called ‘criticism’ whose logical end had arrived *14*The critics were self-taught or themselves artists, indologists, gazetteer officials and literary critics who were always trying to bring in the knowledge of their specific field to define what contemporary art means, to the readers and to even themselves! Thus, like the dual nature of an atom (as particles and waves, that too alternatively!), the shape of the art criticism of Karnataka never had an identity, was ever changing and the depth of criticism depended on the individual knowledge of each person attempting to write art criticism, or what he/she thought art criticism was. I am speaking about writings on Karnataka art that came after 1980s, and before that, there were art writings that were more autobiographical than authentic . Art magazines like “Kala” (published from Kala Mandira in 1930s) “Kala Vikaasa” (from Ken School of Art), ” Canvas” (artist M.S.Murthy’s sole editorialship), “Sankula” (Ila publication). Dr. Shivarama Karantha’s Kannada book “ Kala Prapancha” is a magnum opus text books for art school students who depend by and large on Kannada for art history lessons, even to this day, even after fifty years of its publication. Its first publication coincides with the building of Vidhana Soudha, with Navodaya literary movement and black and white movies. And if one considers that the book is still referred by those students who have, by and large, an apathy to reading, writing (hence thinking) the fate of art pedagogy throughout the State .
(t) ‘Home and the Outside’, Art & Feminism:
Threads, stitching and repositioning them from the known ‘media’ and ‘act’ of creating art to that which served both as ‘alternative profession’ and the mode of being active in a given house, for a woman. The family politics of the middle class sensibility, from wherein most of these women artists hail from, is what is pinpointed out here. At the same, Pushpamala’s photographs of herself as ” Phantom-Lady” splits this homely womanhood into two, pushing away half of herself ‘outside’ the home, and hence outside the defined position of a woman in a given city . Ravi Kumar Kashi is one artist who has dispassionately observed the visual celebrations of the urban popular culture imbibed within the elite streets, film hoardings and other entertainers—over the years, strictly from the middle class point of view. Hence Bangalore, behaved as ‘the’ representative of an urban locality that yielded itself to a generation of artists who were somehow linked with it while formulating themselves into becoming the creative professionals which they are now. Since 90s onwards, the artworks of the southern part of India, arguably, reflect this urbanization or are deliberately ’silent’ about it, but could never ignore it. Even those potential works of the like of Biju Jose, Archana Hande, M.S.Prakash Babu, Ranjani K.Shettar, the video films by Babu Eshwar Prasad, Ramesh Kalkur, Surekha, M.S.Umesh, Prakash Babu, Raghavendra Rao, Kiran Subbaiah, Ayesh Abraham, Tanikachalam, Bharatesh Yadav amongst others, indirectly propose a space for the urban through the eyes of the middle class experience—the most widely spread class throughout the nation, as Ashish Nandi so often confirms.
(u) Art and Economy:
The economics of Karnataka was restructured so as to do away with the notion that creating through ‘mobile visions’ was costlier than the static ones. This happened due to the drastic fluctuations in the IT boom and also due to the foreign embassy’s individual concerns, remote to the intention of the State, whatsoever. For instance, arguably, the tradition of short video-filmmaking by the artists was accelerated by a particular incomplete workshop conducted by a German filmmaker Meisner at Max Mueller Bhavan. The easier accessibility of the technique of video-filming, a few non-government organisation’s (like ‘ Vistaar’) enthusiasm to sponsor artworks, almost compulsively in newer media (time and space bound installations and assemblages) involved the ambitious young artists of the city, but not without a tinge of irony within. While the NGOs proclaimed that their artistic sponsor was in order to confront the gallery economics as well as its aesthetics, the very economics of the sponsors continues to remain mysterious to the art community! The intellectual artists were rather innocently caught between the private organisation’s match with the governing agencies. However, the thinking-artists were making something new out of them, rather than a mere socialistic-protest. Group shows like ” Pages from a Burning City” addressed the Urdu news fights, “Territories” dealt with historic definition of this term concerning nationalism, that perhaps invited Khoj to come to Karnataka. Also, arguably, in the history of past two decades of art in the south, the most sold works and the qualitatively better artworks are usually two entirely different entities! The galleries in Bangalore (or anywhere in the State, if at all there are galleries outside the city and inside the State) were mute spectators for such new movement which had come out from both the studios and galleries, on to the street, breathing next to the people on the street, literally.
(v) Verbal interrogation into the unknown visuals: the Avant Garde movement of Karnataka:
“Material as Metaphor” is arguably, one of the most popular spoken and written word in relation to the artworks in the new media, which is also supposed to be of better quality just because of this ‘unrealised’ quality of the new material. The over usage of this phrase and the meaning it evokes, has modified this term into a pun, and eventually there is no way it can be used anymore in a ’serious’ tone while addressing an artwork. The fate of words in this example also points out its forefinger at the fate of the ‘verbal understanding’ of the new material artworks as well. If being avant-garde was desirable at one point in the eighties and nineties and if the (supposed to be) more conventional artists argued that being against the well known avant-garde itself is neo-avantgarde, now there seems to be an idea that conveying the ‘essence’ of the radical avant-gade through the known/conventional mode of artistic expression is more radical than what the general term radical itself means!
One important reason for this might be that there is no ‘bridging’ between the known and the unknown media because those who have seriously shifted from the former to the latter have never returned to the familiar media (Sheela Gowda, Surekha, Smitha Cariyappa, Umesh Maddanahalli among others), those who seem to refute such a divide between the new and the known have an ambiguous relation with their specific media (Ramesh Kalkur, Ravi Kumar Kashi, S.Gopinath among others) and a few more seem to have been born into the new material from the day one (B.J.Shyamala, Suresh Kumar Gopalreddy, Srinivasa Prasad, Ranjani Shettar). There are no prodigal sons and daughters over here who would return back to a given popular media of art making. However a clear-cut ‘attitudinal’ divide exists between those expressing in the known/conventional media and those with fresher outfits (for instance place the paintings of Bhaskar Rao, Ramesh Rao, V.G.Sindoor against the same theme dealt in the ‘Vistaar’ shows). The lack of a set pattern for what it means to create something new often gave rise to some artistic embarrassment wherein the conformists, at times, might have conveyed more fresh experiences than the pretentiously non-confirmists. The notion of the idea of being different, to the extent of being totally out of the immediate cultural context, at times, became a guise and the idea of novel experience itself dwelled into camouflaged forms of expression.
Consider a classic case wherein a painter expertised in the easel tradition of painting has been addressing the very formal aspects that, first of all, define his canvases. It is a self-critique rather than a parody, and this whole process from using the painterly tradition for a socialistic purpose to turning self-critical is something K.T.Shiva Prasad has been doing from past two decades. Being an outside to Bangalore and to the new media experiements of the 90s, he has created a work in the newer mode (though not in newer media) that seem to be an anti-thesis to those works in new materials. Installed in 2000, ” Kuvempu Smaaraka” in stone is a classic structure that addressed the issue first and then the media employed, as a continuation of the self-critique that Shiva was so much concerned in his canvases. It is a mega ’smaaraka’ for the first Kannada Jnanapeet awardee poet KuVemPu at his birth place Kuppalli (at the western ghats, about 10 hours journey from Bangalore), costing around 60 lakh rupees, reminiscent of the famous “stone Hinges” and trying to address the local, interdisciplinary and the nostalgia in a straightforward manner, with a sense of tourist implication as well, for it is a lasting structure. These are the very characters that the young artists operating from within the framework of an urban circumstance are trying to address. The difference lies in their affinity to the material they employ for communication and how much at home each one feels. In other words, the proximity and comfort that a watercolour or a oil paint would provide for an artist trained to use it and the way s/he contemplates a new material contradict each other in such a way that the very notion of an artwork and its creative process is laid at cross roads . For those artists like Sheela, Surekha, Ravi Kashi, Shiva and others who had to criss-cross form the known mode of creation to the unknown, it is obviously an act of ‘parakayaa pravesha’ (a kind of rebirth).
(w) A Skeptical Hierarchy
There exists a hierachic notion between the ’superior new media work’ (vishwathmaka) and the ‘known media’ (’ swajanapara’). It is a notion that is as young or as old as twenty years, prevailing in Indian, more rigorously but very much orally and verbally addressed in a city like Bangalore, within Karnataka. Though the new media and material work is seen as a continuation of the form of sculpture, there is a stark experiential difference between a ’sculpture’ and ’sculptural’. While Shyam Sunder, Venkatachalapathy, G.Jayakumar and others did create sculpture in a high-modernist mode, the notion of making a video as sculptural was opted by a younger group of artists. Often this hierarchic privilege is alleged upon the birth of feminine awareness but over simplistically associated only with women artists . Nevertheless, this issue, like most of the others raised in this article, could at least serve as the entry points into the experience of what happened in this soul (though not heart) of southern part of India over the past two decades.
The fact that a few artists, fewer celebrities amongst them, have shifted from the known modes of representation and from past two decades, to what we casually understand by the term ‘installations’ and ‘assemblages’ is a minor example of the possible existence of this supposition. Also, the absence of those artists who have traveled in the opposite direction, like Marcel Duchamp did earlier, elsewhere, intensifies this presumption, at least since the 90s in the contemporary Indian art’s situation.
Yet, we have been unable, in India, to bifurcate the subcategories of the new media works. In fact, generally speaking, most happenings of art since modernity onwards, in the form of a group activities, art movements, workshops etc., have left behind several issues or given rise to several others, before venturing into the next item. This structuring of art history that defeats the logic of continuity—an (age) old notion of art criticism in India—is one character of twentieth century Indian art and hence its history. The problem seems to lie in both the history and (of) the art it is based upon.
(x) A History of Miscellaneous Preoccupations
If a kaleidoscopic picture of the last two decades of this ‘new material art scene’ and its interconnectedness with urbanity is to be put in a nutshell, its detail could be as below:
After completing the archaic diploma courses in a state (Karnataka) that has the maximum art schools in the country, the aspirant artists of the past found that Kala Bhavana (Santiniketan) and M.S.University (Baroda) were the exotic land to unveil more mysteries of art since 80s. The aesthetic sojourn was intensified when some of them were rewarded with fellowships scholarships and residency programs at foreign nations (mostly Europe and America). A sense of modest aversion existed towards the commercial art galleries, only as an ‘attitude’ but not as a ‘practice’, and more important was the fact that these artists had no idea of an alternative mode of economic sustenance, whatsoever. While the neo-rich artists could sustain this blank space, most other middle class artists of the new generation have taken to art pedagogy seriously, refuting an earlier prevailing notion that teaching and practice of art do not go hand in hand. Some of them like Suresh Jayaram and H.A. Anil Kumar could indulge into serious art writing (mainly through the tradition of newspaper review columns and began a newer tradition of catalogue writings) for the very same reason. Often the NGOs sponsored the making of new material art, arguably to meet their own purposes, whatsoever. These shows were programmed, well spaced out and often finally catered to the portfolio of the sponsor.
(a) Being active of Bangalore Film Society,
(b) Willingness to adopt regional mystic poetry of the medieval period,
(c) An urge to provide a renewed definition to their city,
(d) The lack of a potential critical apparatus or the presence of a diplomatic ones –were some of the main ‘facts’ that formed the skeletal structure of the works of the artistis who emerged through this city.
Most artists of relevance, in Bangalore are diasporic in one or the other sense. Their ancestry hails from elsewhere, their works don’t match with that of the ones produced around them, or their works coincide with other movements in other lands and the like. The earlier Marxists were essentially distanced (like John Devraj) as usual terming them as jugglers of art, the conventional artistes were bemoaned, but a severe sense of comradeship was built up amongst the new material artists. This has been one time and space wherein scores of artists (a) stayed so close by, (b) shared their differences, (c) worked in their own(d) studios within a range of 30 kilometers and (e) altogether brought about a sense of guilt amongst even those who couldn’t sensibly place these happenings, that includes painters, sculptors as well as a few writers—in the history of Indian art in general and Karnataka in particular. Cholamandalam artist’ village and the Santiniketan art movement are two other such art historical comradeships that happened within a stretch of 100 years, but with a difference. They were well programmed and articulated! The Bangalore group essentially succeeded in lacking this, perhaps distantly recalling the 1890s group! While art looked at its roots, its criticism was looking at its leaves.
Between the government agency for art and art educational institutiton it was the latter that responded faster to the contemporary art world outside them. A few young tutors like Ramesh Chandra, Ravindra Gutta and Ramesh Kalkur were specifically conscious about and addressed the distinction between the ‘image for the masses and the ‘image as cultural product’. The limitation in the funding as well as the outlook of the government cultural agencies had given way to commercial galleries that sold collectors items to the industrialists, which in turn led to an alternative mode of economy of art, traditionally speaking. This often was emotionally misunderstood as protest to the gallery culture. Own old houses (Ayesha Abraham), defunct urban marked areas (”Sakshi Gudda Sakshi Gode” by Sheela Gowda), modified spaces (’Sankara’ studio which is a modified industrial factory), resorts (Sun Valley club with Umesh Maddanahalli’s works), defunct theatre spaces (’Samudaya’ theatre house modified as a time-bound artwork for ‘Sthalapuranagalu”), a few lakes (Ulsoor lake, worked upon by B.J.Shyamala)—were the favourite arty spots used not only for but as a part and parcel of the art production that addressed the city that contained them at the first place.
(y) Art in Practice and Pedagogy:
The difference between art pedagogy and practice was far removed, with altered and renewed art school syllabus, that too revised by youngsters belonging to the same generation (Ravi Kumar Kashi, Ramesh Chandra, T.N.Krishna Murthy, 2000). It aimed more at reducing the Euro-centricity of art and more so to make the students aware of their immediate surrounding. While no one from elsewhere came here, some from the older generation migrated within the country to teach in a place that had taught them to be different (Natraj Sharma, Vijaya Bagodi, G.Jaya Kumar and B.V.Suresh taught or are yet teaching at M.S.University, Baroda). The one and only Kannada University at Kamalapura (Hampi) dominated by the literary personalities of the State, found it own structure of art pedagogy which do not coincide but alternates the ongoing mainstream urban visual practice.
There is also a belief that most new media art is supposed to keep the cost effectiveness of the production low and huge in scale. But to counter this, the production of video art, thought to be costly, earlier, was easily done due to the equality in the expense of new media work or a video. With due respect to the new visual experiences evoked by videos, they are, by and large, technically archaic *15*. Being not sold in galleries, with no regular market and demanding technically sophisticated apparatus that costs dearly have been some of the reasons that were, ironically, the reason for the birth of the video-art. The sheer excitement of ‘moving-imagery’ that most artists (as Indians and after seeing those thousands of films in their life time) makes these artists as modern day monks—they do what they feel like, and do it despite the Kannada culture (minus visual awareness) claiming innocence about what they make, despite the fact that the conventional-media-user artists’ mockery at them. This is the reason as to why the new media and material artists demand a due salutation in this write up.
(z) Post-Script
The main achievement of the visual art of Karnataka–while looking at it from the fag end of the century or even from the beginning point of the new century—is its loss of an excitement about enlightenment. A certain amount of ‘innocence about art, about its historicity and its philosophy acted as the main source of inspiration for artists to get involved into a peculiar non-verbal social activity called visual arts. This was, by and large, the way the Northern, Sothern schools and their followers of today believe in. Dr. Shivarama Karantha had once commented about enlightenment, the ultimate aim of all art forms perhaps—as, “What does one do after being enlightened. I would get bored of it”. Today, the visual artists of Karnataka face this genuine problem and face it genuinely. The best of them have seen the secret, unveiled the code of making art-imagery. Being thorough with and in touch with the global movement, our contemporary artists have a much more intense responsibility. Does one get bored with enlightenment? Isn’t boredom of excessive knowledge/epistemology the very path that led them to this point, here and now? //
FOOTNOTES:
*1* By now, this very well know Greenberg’s argument states that a visual or a picture should be able to excite ‘ only the eye’ ignoring the other faculties, as if Leo Steinberg’s concept of the ‘eye as a part of the mind’ is not true. Greenberg says that anything ‘represented’ on the canvas should aim at reaching its own two-dimensional self. For instance, according to this argument, a picture with outline and flat colour is better than an illusionist three dimensional image, for the latter lacks a sincerity to the surface from within which it emerges. Greenberg also says that the difference between the old and the new masters is this very thin. The new ones (like Picasso, Matisse and his favorite Jackson Pollock) make you realize the ’surface’ of the painting first and then the ‘image’ emerges. The older ones (like Michelangelo) had reversed this mode of perception.
*2* the basic question is a simple one. How does one identify an artist as belonging to Karnataka? With the capital of the State becoming the main center for art activism and also the largest place for migration within India, this question acquires a cultural relevance. Artist Svetoslav Roerich, a diasporic Russian exile, lived in Karnataka most of his lifetime. There is an urgency to address this question of Diaspora and exiledom, which is a typical twentieth century phenomena that challenges the identification of artists ‘from’ and ‘of’ Karnatak. The idea of ‘art of Karnataka’ is a construct during the time of the concept of ‘home away from home’ which is an ironic representation within the institution of epistemology. However, in the absence of an alternative, deconstructive mode of representing a compilation of a century of art of a land, one need to keen these questions in mind while reading this essay about the art of 20 th century Karnataka.
*3* In support of this argument, read my bilingual article ” The Possibility of a Kannada Eye” (hereon referred to as ‘POKE’ in this article), pub: Shankarappa, Karnataka Lalitkala Academy, Bangalore, 2000.
*4* Read: “Venkatappa: Ondhu Samakaaleena Punaraavalokana” by K.V.Subramanyan for a comprehensive account of Venkatappa’s diary entries regarding this case.
*5* The history of Indian art is by and large the history of groups, not individuals. M.F.Hussain, though popularly known as an iconic figure after Ravi Varma, is ‘critically’ identified as a part of Progressive Art Group. Karnataka art is aversed to art groups. Hence the longest living group like ‘Samyojitha’ (from past three decades and headed by N.Marishamachar) is a small-time intimate group for convenience, without the vast ‘art-as-activist’ concern that art personalities like Hadapad or Shivaprasad or Andani had dreamt of.
*5* Read: the five essays about film appreciation way back 1920s by Dr. Shivarama Karantha in “Prabuddha Karnataka” magazines, Ed: Galaganatha.
*6* I have elaborated this aspect in one of my article in the book “ Nota Pallata” (Kannada), published by Abhinava, Bangalore, 1998.
*7* For a comprehensive account of the socio-political situation of the Northern school, read the published version of the PhD research undertaken at Kannada University, Hampi, by Dr. Laxmi Devi Gawai,
*8* For a full formal and cultural reading of the issues ‘within’ and ‘around’ this work, read: (a) Janaki Nair’s essay; and (b) my essay, yet to be published, Ed: Sadananda Menon, published by R.M.Palaniappan for Lalitkala Regional Center, Chennai, 2007.
*9* Read: “Kale Maththu Naanu” (’Art and Me’), autobiography by M.T.V.Acharya.
*10* Ibid, Janaki Nair ” Palace/Gallery/Museum: the importance of being “National”.
*11* Ibid, “Nota Pallata”
*12* Simply stating, art was looked as produced by the artist, not by the society, earlier. It was artist-centric. At present, there have been well contemplated group participations by artists, thus endorsing the death of the artists and hence that of the work as well, (at least by will) if one is familiar with the Structuralist and Post-Structuralist arguments against modernist notion of authorship of cultural products. However, Gregory Ulmer takes the argument further and says that art criticism is basically a collage of the text/work it refers to. Thus in order to escape criticism becoming collage, by referring to a select, chosen phrases and visuals while describing the work, one needs to write about art in such a way that this collage is avoided. So when a human figure is drawn, the surrounding is drawn, only ‘hinting’ at the figure. This is an attempt to imitate criticism-as-collage within art practice itself. Such possibility, wherein artworks becomes critical about their predecessor is very much felt in the recent art of Karnataka and is a wonderful subject for investigation. Read: article by Gregory Ulmer’s “Object of Post-Criticism“, Anti-Aesthetic Essays in Postmodern Culture Ed: Hal Foster, 1983, Routledge publishers .
*13* Read: Michael Rush’s book on new media work exemplifies this beyond any doubt
*14*Ulmer’s argument, Ibid.
*15* Johan Pineapple’s article about Video art in India, published in Art India magazine (2005-6) gives a detailed account about the heavy technical borrowing.
Bibliography:
For a comprehensive account of the art of twentieth century Karnataka read:
(1) “Kanna Kanike” by K.S.Srinivasa Murthy, published by Select Book Shop, Bangalore.
(2) “Nota Pallata” by H.A. Anil Kumar, Abhinava publishers, 1998 & 2000, Bangalore.
(3) Karnataka Lalitkala Academy publications. Mainly refer to the innumerable monographs that are basically chronological and informative. They can be treated as primary sources for further research.
(5) ‘Shringaralahari’ by M.H.Krishnaiah.
(6) “Venkatappa: ondhu samakaaleena punaraavalokana” by K.V.Subramanyam
(4) Article ‘Karnatakadalli Chitrakale‘ by Prof. V.G.Andani, Page: 47-56; Kale maththu Rasasvadhane, 1992 edition, Lalitkala Academy Publication.
(6) Read: “Trends, Motifs & Affinities in the Contemporary Art of Karnataka“ (article published in LKContemporary no.46, Ed: Amit Mukhopdhyay, New Delhi, 2002, page: 7-15)//
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