50 Years of Indian Art: Institutions, Issues, Concepts and Conversations

Convener: Prashant Parikh
Co-advisors: Gieve Patel and Yashodhara Dalmia
Speakers: Apinan Poshyananda, Avani Parikh, Geeta Kapur, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Irfan Habib, Partha Mitter, Pranabranjan Ray, Prashant Parikh, Ranjit Hoskote, Ratan Parimoo, Romila Thapar, Sadanand Menon, Shivaji Panikkar, Sundaram Tagore, Tapati Guha Thakurta, Tasneem Mehta, Thomas McEvilley, Vishakha Desai, and Yashodhara Dalmia

Conversations with Artists:
M.F. Hussain with Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni
Jehangir Sabavala, K. G. Subramanyam, and Ramkumar with Abhay Sardesai
S. H. Raza, F. N. Souza, and Mohan Samant with Narendra Panjwani
Tyeb Mehta, Akbar Padamsee, and Krishen Khanna with Sumitra Srinivasan
Laxman Shreshtha, Mehli Gobhai, and Bhagvan Chauhan with Amrita Jhaveri
Bhupen Khakhar, Arpita Singh, and Nilima Sheikh with Veena Kotian
Rekha Rodwittiya, Surendran Nair, and Ravinder Reddy with Niyatee Shinde
Atul Dodiya, Anju Dodiya, and Nataraj Sharma with Chaitanya Sambrani

January 14 to 17, 1997 | 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

Concept Note: Prashant Parikh

The conference is structured around the concept of a phenomenology of Indian art. The same object is viewed from different vantage points: the institutional context, the issues and concepts, and conversations with artists. The topic is vast and not everything can be covered of course, but much of the material has been selected from the point of view of taking stock of the past and looking forward to the future of Indian art.

Institutions:

Institutions form the context of art, the framework within which art is created and viewed, bought and sold. Primary among these is of course the nation itself. The project of the nation was intimately bound up with the project of art in the first 50 years. It is not clear if this linkage will continue, and if it does, in what way it will. The next context is the social topography of Indian art, the groupings and dynamics of different art movements in various parts of the country. The impulses driving these movements have been largely external rather than internal, reality-oriented rather than intramural. Museums and galleries provide the context in which art is viewed and disseminated, and perhaps the primary concern here is to build up wider publics that take Indian art seriously. Apart from news, publications help to create the intellectual framework in which art must reside. Here we need more educated writers familiar with the intellectual history of art and ideas. Demand will follow supply. Lastly, what should be the role of the government? Is its activity a help or a hindrance? In the 80’s, art boomed commercially. Will this trend continue?

Issues:

Issues form the discourse of art. They concern what artists and intellectuals must grapple with. In India, they involve three dimensions: tradition, modernism, postmodernism. All three dimensions overlap and intersect. Indeed, their occurrence is often simultaneous. We take up the uses of tradition first. Following this is the difficult problem of Indian modernism. Next comes the question of skill and originality and appropriation, an issue primarily of postmodernism. The progressives and the avant-garde, the periodization of postmodernism, art and politics create another cluster of issues. As you will see, these issues crisscross the canvas of Indian art, implicating one another from multiple perspectives.

Concepts:

Concepts are the distilled essences of issues. At times, the line between an issue like modernism and the concept of modernism appears thin. But the emphases are different. Conceptual analyses take principally two forms, historical and formal. I myself incline towards the formal, but it is the historical approach that has dominated the discourse of Indian art. In this discourse, the roles of artist, critic, and theorist need clarification. The human figure and figuration generally has dominated Indian art. What lies behind this realism? Beyond that, how does it happen that an image comes to represent an object? Why does a human figure represent a human being? This question in the philosophy of art is rendered more urgent by the tradition of the figure in Indian art. In light of this, we discuss social realism. We then move to abstraction and expression, two concepts central to all art. As with literature, interpretations of art abound. How are they legislated or does anything go?

Conversations:

The informality and accessibility of the conversational form suggested the last day. We see enacted before us a synoptic history of Indian art.