Indian Art and Letters

Author(s): India Society
Publisher: India Society

Page 24

Modern Art in Western India
But, unfortunately for these idealists, India, although the most artistic and romantic of lands, is not immune from those pressing economic problems of supply and demand which beset the artist elsewhere. The Indian art student also must produce credentials and guarantees of his training, knowledge, and skill before he can obtain commissions or employment; and when he cannot obtain his testimonials in India, he has to go to Europe for these guarantees of artistic capacity, so it is mere common sense to make it possible for Indian students to obtain a training in art in their own country. Once this question is conceded, the only question for those interested in art in India is whether the Bombay Presidency, which has twenty millions of inhabitants, and holds different views on the subject of art training to those which have been promulgated from Bengal, gives the sort of training in architecture, sculpture, painting, and the applied arts which is most helpful to the large number of students who pass through the curriculum. For, of course, it would be impossible to develop and maintain so comprehensive an institution without the strong support of the people of Western India.
The root principle which is the foundation of the Bombay School of Art is that all art is one, and that, however distinctive its Indian aspects may appear, these interesting distinctions are not necessarily destroyed, but may be appreciably strengthened by contact with the West. We do not ignore the fact that the picturesque theme of India's Oriental exclusiveness is a fascinating one for discussion. Nothing is easier than to expatiate upon some of those qualities of colour and decoration which really do differentiate East from West, and which really are to be met with in the marvellous pageant of external beauty which constitutes-India ; and nothing is easier than to dilate upon the elusive and compelling note of mysticism which vibrates in that land of mystery and ancient wisdom. I also could tell you, as others have told, that India does in art by occult means what the West cannot do by the materialistic study of nature, form, and pictorial composition, and by perseverance. I could talk, though of course I cannot practise it, of Yoga as the only inspiration of the Indian artist, whether Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, or Parsee, and I could quote translations of ancient temple rituals, spells, and incantations, or Sanskrit manuals many centuries old, to show how utterly different the methods of Indian art once were, and therefore must ever continue to be, to those of art in Europe. But Bombay does not regard Indian art as consisting of a repetition of the old Buddhist or Persian conventions ; nor as magical, unless indeed the finer ebullitions of human genius may be so described. The Indian artists of the Ajanta Caves produced some of the best mural decorations in existence by human methods, and I am unable to agree with Mr. Laurence Binyon that those decorations are due to some "occult 102