Bengal Art - New Perspectives

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About the Book Bengal Art: New Perspectives, the first volume in a new series, Pratikshan Essays in the Arts, takes a fresh look at the tradition of Modern Bengal Art in the light of several significant recent publications, exposing works by the Masters unseen till now, radically affecting the earlier readings of their contributions and achievements. Simultaneously, there is an attempt to see how the tradition lives and grows in the works of Somnath Hore, who passed away recently. The four contributors, major experts in the field, K G Subramanian, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Pranabranjan Ray and R Siva Kumar focus on Nandalal Bose, Abanindranath Tagore, Be node Behari Mukherjee and Somnath Hore respectively, in the context of the ethics and politics of art in colonial and postcolonial India.

K G Subramanian (b. 1924), painter, sculptor, muralist, art scholar and poet, is Professor Emeritus in Painting, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Pranabranjan Ray (b. 1934), social scientist, art critic and commentator, is the author of monographs on Somnath Hore and Ganesh Pyne. R Siva Kumar (b. 1956), is Professor of Art History at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, his most recent publication being Paintings of Abanindranath Tagore (2008). Tapati Guha-Thakurta (b. 1957), art historian and Professor of History, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, is the author of The Making of a New 'Indian' Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, 1850-1920 (1992).

Preface Bengal Art: New Perspectives is the first volume in a new series, Pratikshan Essays in the Arts, launched by Pratikshan to commemorate its twenty-fifth year in publishing. With art practice choosing new directions in India and all over the world, and the performing arts and electronic media interfacing in diverse inclinations, and market drives determining twists and turns in the process, there is a fresh need for continuing introspection. That is the urge that lies behind the present initiative.

Under this scheme, we propose to focus on a particular theme for a volume, and choose our contributors, and publish only when we have had the essays and illustrations in place. At one phase in the evolution of this idea, we had toyed with the project of an art periodical that proved to be abortive. Painter Jogen Chaudhury was the prime motivator in this project, approaching contributors and correspondents, and drawing up the ground plan. Three of the essays that go to make this volume were part of the crop that had been gathered for the periodical.

The rationale for the focus on Bengal Art for the first volume of the series lies, firstly, in the rediscovery of the critical concern evident in the Bengal Art of the 1920s to the 1970s vis-à-vis the social and cultural agenda of the ant colonial struggle and its postcolonial reorientation; and secondly, in the opening up of a whole new oeuvre of the works of Abanindranath Tagore, with the publication by Pratikshan of Paintings of Abanindranath Tagore (2008), with an excellent commentary by R Siva Kumar, and Khaddar Jatra (2009), also by Abanindranath. The pantheon of Abanindranath, Gaganendranath, Nandalal Bose, Be node Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, and the two later artists who draw inspiration and creative values from them-K G Subramanian and Somnath Hore-have created a body of work together that needs to be explored and studied more systematically-and read in terms of cryptic continuities and convergences, extensions and refinements, within and around a tradition, cogently defined and articulated by the practitioners themselves.

We have been fortunate in having contributions to this volume by K G Subramanian, Pranabranjan Ray, R Siva Kumar and Tapati Guha-Thakurta, who have been the major critics in this particular field for the last two decades at a stretch, and are best equipped to take a fresh view of the Bengal Art debate, which has too often obscured the distinctive and intrinsic values of the artists considered under the rubric of Bengal Art, and has likewise shifted the perspective away from their works to more generalized 'issues.'

We have been fortunate also in receiving constant support, assistance and advice from Gulammohammed Sheikh, Swapan Majumdar, R Siva Kumar, Nemai Ghosh, Naveen Kishore and Indira Chandrasekhar. Oindrilla Maity was part of the team that worked on the art periodical project, and had a role to play in the mobilization of the material.