We are celebrating the Birth Centenary of one of the great modernist artist of India Ramkinker Bai. His artistic activities spanned between the years of pre independence and post-independence India. Hailing from the village Bankura in West Bengal and born an under privileged Ramlinker became the most important modern artist of our times. It was the editor of Modern Review Mr. Ramananda Chhatopadhayay who discovered the talent of Ramkinker at an early age during his visit to Bankura and realized the potential of the making of a great artist. He took Ramkanker to Santiniketan and requested Rabindranath Tagore to take care of the boy. Thus began the journey of a legend. There are many phases of his artistic career, which are very difficult to categorize. Drawings, Paintings, Sculptures, Prints whatever medium he undertook, Ramkinker excelled in them. Caught between the western modernist paradigm and the development of Indian modernism in the context of the colonial India, Ramkanker became a compulsive experimentalist.
We have entered into the 21" century and left behind the tradition of modernism without giving it the tag of an antiquity. I have a feeling that no tradition of art dies out completely. While paying homage to Ramkanker Baij we should be conscious of his contributions as a modernist and explore the possibilities of extending certain artistic values inherent in Ramkanker's works in today’s art practices. I am happy that the Lalit Kala Akademi Regional Centre, Bhubaneswar organized the Camp as homage to Ramkinker Barj inviting 16 artists from various parts of India for a period of ten days. The Centre also organized two days symposium on this occasion. The works produced in the camp are being exhibited at Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi from 6 to 12 March, 2007. The camp, the symposium, the exhibition and the catalogue published on this occasion are Lalit Kala Akademi's tribute to Ramkinker Barn on his Birth Centenary.
People, Place and Nation: Locating Art and the Self
We are celebrating 100th Birth Anniversary of Ramkinker Bay Ramkinker was born in Bankura district, a far corner of West Bengal. In today's terms he was schedule caste. As a young boy he used to make stage designs and a few drawings occasionally. He was spotted by the famous Editor of Modern review and prabasi Ramananda Chattopadhayay. Convinced of his talent Ramananda brought him at Santiniketan and introduced him to Rabindranath Tagore. The rest is History.
What kind of a place was Santiniketan in the first half of the last Century Rabindranath's father discovered Santiniketan and thought of it as an ideal place for meditation. About 100 kms, away from Kolkata, the landscape of Santiniketan in terms of soil, plantation, water resources is quite contrary to any urban landscape. Hard and red soil, long stretches of Khoai (could mean land dunes which is similar to sand dunes?), hardly any trees and river Ajay flowing gently. It was a village and surrounded by other villages and inhabited by a large number of Santhals. The Bengali intelligentsia grew later after Tagore founded Kala Bhavan and Sangeet Bhavan, an idle/ideal locale where one could spend his/her life doing nothing. But Tagore made all the difference with his constant journeying across the globe, bringing in huge information, his involvement with the Freedom Struggle, his literary and other activities made a fascinatingly different paradigm for the self to identify himself as part of the larger National Body as well as his own which was rooted in the environment (both geographical, social & cultural) of Santiniketan.
Ramkinker is an example of such an unique phenomena where the artists/the self-registered his identity with the life system of the local and at the same time transformed it to level of the National without theorizing as we do today, as if there is a divide between the Local, National and the Global Integrate a Nation/ Country consisting of various languages, religion, caste and culture by bringing it under one system, or disintegrate it under one system (globalization), the fact will remain that the local culture, people, place, beliefs, dress code, behaviour etc. will to some extent dissolve but still it will retain the basic life system.
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